Northerly Magazine, Autumn 2019

northerly Byron Writers Festival Member Magazine | Autumn 2019

DR GREGORY SMITH HENRY REYNOLDS LISA BROCKWELL DAVID STAVANGER

Ben Franklin

CANDIDATE FOR BALLINA ELECTORATE

A proud and passionate supporter of the Byron Writers Festival I am thrilled to have secured government support for the Writers Festival’s wonderful Storyboard program. Taking children’s writers on the road and into schools in the region, it inspires our next generation with a love of writing, reading and creativity.

It is a brilliant initiative – very worthy of your support.

www.benfranklin.com.au 228 River Street, Ballina NSW 2478

benfranklinnats ben.franklin@nswnationals.org.au Authorised by Ben Franklin, 228 River Street, Ballina NSW 2478

benfranklinmlc 02 5632 1252

Contents Autumn 2019 Features 006 Life in the freezer Author Jesse Blackadder reflects on a residency in Antarctica 012 New growth Dr Gregory Smith in conversation about his book Out of the Forest 015 Indian summer Dispatches from Jaipur Literature Festival

Regulars 002 Director’s note 003 StoryBoard update Jackie French visits Byron Bay

northerly

northerly is the quarterly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

Byron Writers Festival is a non-profit member organisation presenting workshops and events year-round, including the annual Festival.

LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1, 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: byronwritersfestival.com POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com CONTRIBUTORS: Jenny Bird, Lisa Brockwell, Laurel Cohn, Alexandra De Vydler, Polly Jude, Gabby Le Brun, Deborah MurrayKippax, Colleen O’Brien, Carol O’Sullivan, Katinka Smit, David Stavanger BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Hilarie Dunn, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight.

LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne

004 News and events Festival AGM, May events, Early Bird tickets and more

MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER

007 The Books That Shaped Me Poet Lisa Brockwell on the three books that most inspired her writing

DESIGN & PRINT Kaboo Media Dark Horse Print & Design

008 Feature Poet Two poems from David Stavanger 010 Notes from the Festival I Ali Alizadeh interviewed by Katinka Smit 016 Notes from the Festival II Henry Reynolds interviewed by Katinka Smit 018 SCU Showcase Short fiction from Deborah Murray-Kippax 019 Book reviews Fiction from Jane Harper and Hwang Sok-yong and memoir from Kerry O’Brien 023 What YA Reading?

YA fiction reviews with Polly Jude 024 Workshops 026 Competitions

ADVERTISING We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior.

Email northerlyeditor@gmail.com DISCLAIMER The Byron Writers Festival presents northerly in good faith and accepts no responsibility for any misinformation or problems arising from any misinformation. The views expressed by contributors and advertisers are not necessarily the views of the management committee or staff. We reserve the right to edit articles with regard to length. Copyright of the contributed articles is maintained by the named author and northerly.

CONNECT WITH US Visit byronwritersfestival.com. Sign up for a membership. Stay updated and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

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028 Writers groups

We acknowledge the Arakwal Bumberbin People of the Byron Shire as the traditional custodians of this land.

Director’s note Greetings all from my deck, surrounded by native bush and birdsong – the perfect spot to welcome the exciting new year and tell you about the early 2019 Byron Writers Festival member activities. There has been a terrific response to our February membership drive! Warm thanks to all of you who have renewed your membership and congratulations to those who won the great prizes on offer from our sponsors and supporters.

Late last year I was riveted listening to author and Vogue sustainability editor Clare Press talk about her book Rise and Resist at Griffith University’s ideas forum Integrity 20 in Brisbane. In it, she examines the new activism sweeping the world for environmental and social justice. Her views are so topical and timely, therefore we are particularly pleased to be hosting a free event featuring Clare Press at the Beach Hotel on Friday 5 April in partnership with our friends at Dumbo Feather magazine. Please register your interest and come along. I can assure you that you will be inspired by Clare’s ideas.

Another free event for members will take place on Sunday 10 March at SAE – where we will be live streaming two headline sessions on gender from the main stage of All About Women, a day of discussion and events at Sydney Opera House.

All About Women features emerging new voices from around the world speaking on future directions in feminism. Yet another reason to become a Byron Writers Festival member! If you’re not a member, you are still welcome to join us – you just need to pay $10 to come along.

As soon as we get the green light from our friends at Sydney and Auckland Writers’ Festivals we will be announcing a couple of exciting collaborative events in May – so keep an eye out for those.

Applications for our highly regarded Residential Mentorship will open on 6 March. The mentorship provides five days in a glorious Byron Shire location with accommodation and some meals provided, one-on-one mentoring with Marele Day and the company of three other committed writers. It’s an outstanding opportunity to participate in a writing experience that has already proved to be a launch pad for numerous regional writers. The roll call of past participants who are now published authors continues to grow every year. Could 2019 be your year? Applications close on 27 March.

Inside this issue of northerly are details of our 2019 Workshops. If the spoken word is more your style, perhaps you have an idea for a podcast? Join local radio documentary maker, journalist and author Samantha Turnbull for her one-day workshop on 30 March to learn all the tricks for making a compelling podcast. All you need to sign up is an idea, a smartphone and headphones.

We look forward to seeing you at these workshops and many exciting events throughout the year.

Edwina Johnson Director, Byron Writers Festival

NEWS & EVENTS

French lessons Byron Writers Festival’s ongoing travelling creative writing workshop, StoryBoard, started the year with a bang thanks to a special event at Byron Bay Library with much-loved children’s author, Jackie French. StoryBoard project manager Gabby Le Brun reports.

StoryBoard has hit the ground running in 2019. My first day back coincided with a golden offer from the Gold Coast’s Somerset Storyfest to co-host a creative writing workshop and story time with Jackie French in Byron Bay, an event which took place in late January.

Yes! Jackie French AM: Australian author, historian, ecologist, honorary wombat (part time), 2014-2015 Australian Children’s Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year.

On a balmy summer Monday morning at 11am, two toy wombats

and eighty-five human pets gathered around Jackie, who taught us to speak wombat for any occasion that may warrant it. Just so you know, ‘neeh’ is wombat for ‘let me in, the door is closed.’

Jackie shared with us the backstory to her famous books, Diary of a Wombat, Nanberry, Just a Girl, Hitler’s Daughter and Dippy’s Big Day Out and read to us with the masterly intonation and sound effects of an accomplished storyteller. We were enchanted.

The event culminated in a free workshop titled The Seven Second Secret to Great Writing, in which forty-five aspiring and professional writers, aged between twelve and seventy, took part. Jackie guided participants to create a collaborative story around a central character, Frances. Jackie challenged us to find the ending early in the writing process. She also shared some honest truths about

how to make it as a writer, about her process (she never does historical research) and, I didn’t see this coming, her admiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

Thank you so much to the wonderful staff at the Richmond Tweed Regional Library (Byron Bay branch), to Somerset Storyfest and most of all to the incredible Jackie French for truly making dreams come true.

‘We were thrilled to be able to partner with StoryBoard and Byron Writers Festival, as well as Byron Bay Library, to offer two interactive sessions with Australian Children’s Laureate, Jackie French,’ said Andrea Lewis, CEO and Festival Director of Somerset Storyfest.

‘Taking a collaborative approach ensures greater opportunities for our communities.’

For more information on StoryBoard visit byronwritersfestival.com/storyboard

NEWS & EVENTS

Margin Notes News, events and announcements from Byron Writers Festival Notice of AGM We advise of the upcoming Annual General Meeting for the Byron Writers Festival Inc. is taking place at 5:30pm on Tuesday 12 March at Byron Writers Festival Office, 1st Floor, 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay, 2481.

Members will receive by email an agenda for the meeting and a link to the minutes of past meetings. At the meeting, members will be asked to vote to accept the minutes of the last AGM, accept the annual report, accept the auditor’s report, and accept annual financial statements.

Early Bird tickets at even lower prices Exciting news for Festival-goers: this year we are offering an additional release of Early Bird tickets with 3-Day Passes at an even lower price of $225 for members/$265 for nonmembers. This super special rate is available for one week only, 3–11 April, 2019.

A second release of Early Bird tickets will be available in early May when we announce the first names from the line-up, at $235 for members/$275 non-members.

Tickets will be available for purchase online, over the phone or in person at the Festival office.

Be sure to get your friends on board, book early and save! For more details on key dates and ticket prices for the 2019 Byron Writers Festival, head to our website byronwritersfestival.com/festival

Greer, Roslings in town for May events This May will see Byron Writers Festival host two special events from influential global authors.

Firstly, we welcome novelist and short story writer Andrew Sean Greer (below), whose comic novel Less won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for

Fiction. The novel tells the tale of Arthur Less, a white, gay, struggling novelist nearing fifty whose life is transformed when he decides to begin accepting invitations to ‘halfbaked literary events around the world.’ Join Andrew on Friday 8 May at 6pm at Byron Theatre.

We also invite you to an insightful evening with Ola and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, lifelong collaborators of the late Hans Rosling, whose book Factfulness is impacting how many view the world. When you ask people simple questions about global trends, they systematically get the answers wrong. How many young women go to school? What’s the average life expectancy across the world? What will the global population be in 2050?

Do the majority of people live in rich or poor countries?

In Factfulness, Hans Rosling, together with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, show why this happens.

Based on a lifetime’s work promoting a fact-based worldview, they reveal the ten dramatic instincts, and the key preconceptions, that lead to us consistently misunderstanding how the world really works. The event takes place on Thursday, 23 May at 6pm at Byron Theatre.

Tickets for both events are $25 for members/$30 for non-members.

Rise and resist with Clare Press Byron Writers Festival and Dumbo Feather magazine would like to invite you to a free talk with writer and sustainability expert Clare Press about her recent book Rise & Resist: How to Change the World.

NEWS & EVENTS

LAUREL COHN Cover story

This issue’s cover art is Leaf No.2

by Carol O’Sullivan. This piece (oil and cotton on canvas), was shown at the Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina across October and November 2018, as part of O’Sullivan’s Allure exhibition.

O’Sullivan is a Brisbane based artist who works in painting and textiles. She writes, ‘In Leaf No. 2 I have combined oil on canvas and luminosity of directional single cotton thread in forming the leaf.’

O’Sullivan is a Griffith Fine Arts Graduate who has also exhibited in Brisbane.

Editing and Manuscript Development ~ Manuscript assessment and development ~ Mentoring ~ Editorial and publishing consultations ~ Structural and stylistic editing ~ Copy editing and proofreading

Congratulations to Brad Cooper on the publication of his memoir with Scribe, late 2018: ‘The Finest Gold is a gorgeous, sumptuous feast of a book.

Cooper is a naturally gifted writer whose brilliance appears effortless.’

Chris Saliba, Books+Publishing

“Laurel was among the first to offer constructive feedback on my early attempts at the manuscript which would (7 years later!) become The Finest Gold. Writing is a mercurial act, and the sooner you get help pushing it around, the sooner it takes shape. Thanks Laurel.”

Brad Cooper

www.laurelcohn.com.au info@laurelcohn.com.au 02 6680 3411

Firth launches new collection

Rise & Resist takes a wild trip through the new activism sweeping the world. The political march is back in a big way, as communities rally to build movements for environmental and social justice. But today’s context calls for increasingly creative strategies to make our voices heard.

Crossing the globe, Clare Press (above) meets passionate change makers who believe in the power of the positive. From eco-warriors and zerowasters to knitting nannas, introvert craftivists to intersectional feminists, they’re all up for a revolution of sorts.

Join Press in conversation with Zoë Gameau, as she discusses the formation of a new counterculture, united by a grand purpose: to rethink how we live today to build a more sustainable tomorrow.

The event takes place on Friday, 5 April at the Beach Hotel, 1 Bay Street, Byron Bay from 10am to 11am. Entry is free but bookings are essential, visit byronwritersfestival.com for more information.

Murwillumbah poet Nola Firth recently launched her second collection Counting on Murwillumbah with an event at the town’s Regent Cinema. Published

by Mark Time Books, the collection includes the title poem which won the 2017 Dangerously Poetic/ Byron Writers Festival Poetry Prize.

Congratulations on the book’s publication from northerly and Byron Writers Festival.

Any local writers are invited to let northerly know about their recent commercial publication or competition success: email the editor at northerlyeditor@gmail.com

Black Inc. invites writing about disabled experience Publisher Black Inc. Books is seeking submissions for a new anthology in its Growing Up series, this time focused on writers in Australia who identify as disabled, deaf, Deaf or chronically ill.

Growing Up Disabled In Australia is inviting non-fiction pieces that address growing up with these

conditions, and will be edited by blogger and activist Carly Findlay. Submissions can be in any manner, tone or style, but should not be academic or scholarly. They should be written in the firstperson and be honest accounts of lived experience – positive, negative or anything in between.

‘I want young disabled people to read this anthology and know what’s possible for them,’ says Findlay, ‘to see that other disabled people have had similar experiences, and to feel the impact of visibility and positive representation. While I have had a life-long chronic illness, I first identified as chronically ill and disabled when I heard other chronically ill and disabled people’s stories.’

Submissions should be between 1,000 and 4,000 words, and the deadline is Friday 1 May. For full details go to blackincbooks. com.au/news/call-submissionsgrowing-disabled-australia

FEATURE

Writing the Antarctic Festival board member, author and screenwriter Jesse Blackadder recently completed an eighteen-week writing residency at Mawson Station, Antarctica. Jesse and screenwriter Jane Allen were jointly awarded the 2018/19 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship. Together, Jesse and Jane are working on two projects: a trilogy of adventure novels for children and a television series. Here, Jesse chats from Mawson Station with Jenny Bird.

You’ve been to the Antarctic twice before, won a previous Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship and written two books set in Antarctica (Chasing the Light and Stay: The Last Dog in Antarctica).

What draws you there?

The TV project is a drama series – an authentic, humorous look at what it’s like to live and work in Antarctica. The main character is a first-timer to Antarctica who steps into the role of station leader in very sticky circumstances.

It’s hard to articulate. I’m drawn to it both personally and as a storyteller. There is some compulsion for me about this landscape, the ice, the beauty, and the otherworldliness. It’s very stark; the palate is incredibly simple and very beautiful – just white and blue and rock. I’m also fascinated by how people try to form a connection with the landscape.

What has your writing process been?

The book series is about four kids from Hobart who win a competition to be the first kids on Antarctica.

Their adventure turns into a thriller when they discover a secret, and they find themselves surviving alone in a challenging environment.

Screenwriters work differently to novelists. They’re much more collaborative. We start off in what seems a very circular rambling conversation that can go on for days, but which ultimately coalesces into a firm structure.

It took us three weeks to talk through the book, by which time we had the plot worked out. So when we sat down we just wrote it. To the surprise of both of us we ended up

Jesse Blackadder takes her turn drilling ice.

Can you tell us about the two projects?

Jane has mentored me on the TV series and I have mentored her on the books. We met only last year so it was a pretty high-risk proposition.

To our relief, we’ve been very creatively compatible.

writing together. We finished a first draft of the first book – 33,000 words – writing alternating chapters as we sat side by side. It was quite an experiment, surprisingly successful and great fun.

We also nearly finished what’s called a ‘bible’ for the TV series – a blueprint outlining the characters, tone, feeling and episodes.

Do you spend the whole day in your writing room?

We have a work schedule that starts at 8am or 8.30am each day. But when opportunities arise to get out in the field we take them. Also, once a month you have to be a ‘slushy’, basically a dish pig in the kitchen, and every Saturday afternoon we collectively clean the station.

If Jane and I are in a conversational stage of our work and it’s a nice day we’ll go outside and sit on a rock and talk through an idea.

What sort of personal challenges have you faced?

The highs and lows are incredibly intense. There are twenty-nine people living and working together in the same building. Our rooms are right next door to each other. You’re interacting round the clock. It’s a big change for me as at home I live with my partner and work on my own.

The outside environment is very big and very still visually. You’re surrounded by enormous skies and horizons. Everything is on display and the sun beats down on you twenty-four hours a day. There’s nowhere to run or hide.

FEATURE

The Books That Shaped Me: Lisa Brockwell Only three? There are hundreds of books that have shaped me, so this is necessarily incomplete, particularly as it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact contours of the shaping process.

Some books stay for the long haul, some are brief flings, and some are slow burns – I don’t realise the impact until I see the transformation in my own poems, sometimes years later. Michael Hofmann writes about something similar in a terrific essay on the poet James Schuyler: ‘Not first sight, often enough, but a second look – it is a mysterious thing with poetry that it finds its own moment.’

The book that marked a turning point in British poetry Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (edited by Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney) focuses on the second half of the twentieth century, and was published soon after I moved to London, at a time when British poetry was loosening its class-bound solemnity and sententiousness in exchange for something much more important: a commitment to individuation, a respect for mystery and telling the truth of human experience (but telling it slant). The 1990s was a rich decade in British poetry, and this anthology encapsulates that turning point. As with all great anthologies, I am surprised by its potency every

time I open it. Just last weekend, flicking through, I had my socks knocked off by a brilliant Patrick Kavanagh sonnet I have no memory of ever reading before – there it goes again: a poem finding its moment.

The post-colonial novel destined to become an Australian classic The Cleanskin by Laura Bloom is one of the most brilliant Australian novels I’ve ever read. It speaks the truth about the ongoing impact of trauma passed down through generations. It’s a book about how the past lives through us, and what consequences really look like in a person’s life and family. It tackles the impact of sectarianism in Ireland and the UK, and how that has affected us here in Australia, deeply ingrained in our country’s roots and in many of our own ancestries. It’s a truly post-colonial novel about The Troubles that draws parallels with sectarian conflict in India and provides a uniquely Commonwealth point of view on the British Empire and its aftermath – a book that couldn’t have been written from the centre, only from the periphery (and in this case the periphery is Mullumbimby, beautifully evoked and an important character in its own right).

It is a big book, and an important book, but it’s also a very human, funny and deeply moving book. I find many female protagonists in fiction too perfect and prim – completely unrealistic and way too ‘heartwarming’. Women are rarely allowed to be fully dimensional characters, but in The Cleanskin, Halley is an original: flawed, intelligent, heroic, passionate and culpable.

The book by the Australian poet who has meant most to me Dorothy Porter was the most inspiring teacher I have ever known.

She taught me at university during the time she was writing Akhenaten – a groundbreaking verse novel that paved the way for her bestseller The Monkey’s Mask, and I hear her singular voice every time I pick it up.

A master of dramatic monologue, her poems are risky, full of swagger, imagination and immediacy.

Akhenaten tells the story of the ‘smirking’ iconoclast pharaoh who started the world’s first known monotheistic religion, but focuses on his complex relationships with his wife Nefertiti, his daughters and his younger brother. It’s a rollercoaster of a book and the poems bubble with Dorothy Porter’s original and unmistakable cadence.

Lisa Brockwell’s most recent collection of poetry is Earth Girls (Pitt Street Poetry). She hosts a Byron Writers Festival workshop, Poetry: Deep Reading For Better Writing, on Saturday, 6 April. For more information see page 24.

POETRY

Feature Poet: David Stavanger How to be an Alpha Male Doubt your position, then stand over it.

Use expansive gestures in small halls.

Do not confuse confidence with white magic.

This can be overstated. This can’t.

The eyes have it. Look. Every one. In the Eyes.

Be the after-shave commercial you were born to.

Not everyone can smell like you. It’s true.

Possibly wear a tie. Red is a primate colour.

Balls are bigger in the face.

Never eat soft tacos. Fists before napkins.

Occupation. State perspiration. Flirt with potential mates.

Know how to treat a lady. Call her bay-bee in the bath.

Trade tender currency. Upgrade with a broker’s heart.

Let rooms enter you. Leave windows broken.

Evolve. Dogs are descended from wolves. Hunt indoors.

Stare. Look up like you’ve found an answer.

Fight to defend defenses.

Join a gym to become a hard shape.

Repeat: there is no quit in this man.

Open wounds. Learn the language of body art.

Issue expired notice of sexual intent.

Fill the bedroom with your presents.

Give nothing away.

First published by foam:e and Rabbit, 2018

POETRY

Farmers Market Etiquette 1. Coffee queues are a measure of economic health 2. Live local DJ and hive honey tasting don’t mix 3. An apple is worth less on the tree 4. The fresh face of seasonally sourced tourists 5. Morning acquisitions. Kale and silver beet merge in backseats.

6. Charity. Don’t buy school cupcakes, craft art or rescued bread boards.

7. The dealer selling bad vinyl knows what the eighties was cut with 8. Dream catchers net white witches’ monochromatic wings 9. Pocket the curry. Jerk the quinoa. Copyright the burrito.

10. Avoid eye contact with the chicken lady. She sees you first.

11. Counting free range eggs. The cracks are elsewhere.

12. Reggae-folk singer covers ‘Girl I’m Going To Make You Sweat’.

A sign not to buy fresh cut flowers.

13. Beef bone juice in a jar 14. All the dogs tethered, owners seeking unfamiliar scents 15. It’s a hard place to market community theatre 16. Avocado season is over. Real estate speculators spread thin across town.

17. Three types of pumpkin, one kind of soup 18. The old potato farmer’s skin is peeling 19. Discuss the cost of living over blue cheese 20. First sun at a market catches the produce off guard 21. Buskers at the front gate indicate nothing will be free 22. Dreadlocks do not assist in the counting of crows 23. Some weeks stalls disappear. Rumors unbound like morning’s hair.

24. The lost child. Will later be found. Selling wild herbs. Down town.

David Stavanger is a poet, performer, cultural producer and lapsed psychologist. In 2013 he won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, resulting in the release of The Special (UQP), his first full-length collection of poetry which was awarded the 2015 Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. David was co-director of the Queensland Poetry Festival (2015-17) and is the co-editor of SOLID AIR: Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, forthcoming 2019.)

He is currently based in the Northern Rivers.

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Ali Alizadeh Ali Alizadeh began writing and publishing as a boy in Iran. He won a national prize for young adult literature and consequently became the subject of an Iranian television documentary. In Australia, he has been shortlisted for both the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. His latest book, The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc, is the culmination of a lifetime’s obsession. Interview by Katinka Smit, Byron Writers Festival 2018.

INTERVIEW

When you close your eyes and you see the living image of Jeanne d’Arc inside your mind, what do you see there?

The first thing I see is a real person.

I can picture her. Maybe it’s not a very historically accurate picture of her, but I can see a real person.

I don’t see an image, I see a 3D person, if you like. That’s also part of my approach to her story, I’ve tried to humanise her. But she’s a real challenge to properly humanise, a bit like figures that we love or hate. It’s very difficult to properly humanise Jesus, for example, or Gandhi, or Hitler, or for some, Trump, because we think that they’re absolute, abstract entities. Joan is definitely a sort of character too. I’m also aware of historical traditions around her, whether religious, French patriotic, or a source of a symbol of people power, women’s power. They’re very admirable, but it’s actually really difficult to have a 3D image of that person, to imagine how she might sleep, eat, walk – all those sorts of things. I’ve got a very physical idea of her.

And a voice as well?

It’s an attitude of the voice, I can almost hear it. All of this of course is a product of my imagination – I imagine her speaking contemporary English as opposed to Medieval French with a mildly German accent, which is how she would have spoken. Again, all of that translated into my mind; I can see her as a real person. It might sound like a really trivial thing, but it’s really hard with her. I think I can count on a few hands the number of historical figures that so completely transcend realness, because of just how amazing they are in so many ways, that it’s very difficult to bring them back to earth. But I don’t see her as this tragic, comical figure that should be treated with irony – I still have a sense that her humanity

is still quite excessive for a normal human being.

You first saw Jeanne d’Arc in a book shop in Tehran as a boy.

You lived through the Islamic Revolution and the war after that, so obviously Islam was a big thing and Christianity not – is that true?

Sort of. Islam acknowledges Christianity, but also the Christian minority in Iran is thoroughly protected. What is more surprising perhaps about her image being in the Islamic Republic of Iran is that she’s Western and she’s French.

And that she’s a woman?

No, not really for the Shiite fundamentalists, because you have the figure of Fatima, Mohammed’s daughter. The big issue is really that she is a Westerner. The Islamic Republic of Iran was very adamant to demonise all things Western, to erase our European heritage. The Persian Empire once actually included parts of Europe; we had historical connections to Europe for centuries.

The Islamic Republic decided to destroy them. What was strange was that this clearly Western image would remain in a country that had decided to erase Westernism.

As a boy were you aware of that?

Frankly, maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. I was born just before the revolution was coming, and early on there were a lot of lefties, but when the revolution triumphed, they said, ‘You lefties are traitors, you are actually Marxists, and Marx is European. And you have colluded with the Soviets. They’re not Muslim people of colour.’ It became very ugly. It became very identity politics and I knew that. In that situation, perhaps the way to save one’s soul was to cling to a European image.

Has the image of her now changed from the one that fired your inspiration as a boy?

I think she has become a lot more real. When I went back to write the novel, she was still only two-dimensional. Yes, she was courageous, she was honest, sincere, vulnerable, all of those things, but, you know, like an angel.

There was nothing between her legs. And I had to decide to give her sexuality. When I did that, suddenly she became real. Other than those who have tried to denigrate her, I may be the only writer who has given her a sexuality. She’s often depicted as a young, sexually repressed, asexual person. When I decided that that was not what I was going to do, suddenly she became more. Now I can see her as a fellow human being.

History, memory, revolutions and love. It’s pretty huge. How do you approach your writing?

Do you begin in the poetic or is it some other seed that begins the process for you?

It depends what I’m writing. At the moment I am obsessed with history.

I read a lot of history, I’ve become a historian so I mostly go to historical documents or historical accounts and read them. Then I think about it and read a story or a poem out of that. So it grows out of that probably.

Do you get a spark of imagination where you see something, a scene?

I do. I feel like I can tap the unconscious history in a way that perhaps a traditional historian can’t.

Cautiously, I would say that certain creative writers can contribute to our understanding of the past. It can’t in any way displace history. I think you still depend on great historians, but, we can as poets, story writers and fiction writers contribute to an understanding of the past.

The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc is published by Giramondo.

INTERVIEW

From wilderness to wisdom Dr Gregory Smith’s extraordinary life story has by now been well told: after homelessness, alcoholism, mental health problems and an eight-year stint living as a hermit in the remote rainforest of Goonengerry National Park, he is now a distinguished academic and published author thanks to his acclaimed memoir Out of the Forest. In 2018, he was the subject of ABC TV’s Australian Story and now devotes his life to understanding trauma and sociopathy and helping others. Here he opens up about social adjustment, writing, the publication process and more.

INTERVIEW

The last year has seen the publication of your book, your profile on the ABC’s Australian Story and an appearance at Byron Writers Festival. Has life been a bit different in the wake of these events and are you comfortable with the ‘fame’ and higher profile?

As much as I thought the publication and media events would not make a difference to my life, I was mistaken. Although my routines and approach remain pretty much unchanged, I do seem to be more recognisable today. For a person who spent so much time invisible, being recognisable is very different. Am I comfortable? I don’t think about it too much really.

Can you tell us a bit about how the process worked with your ghostwriter, journalist Craig Henderson, as you were writing the book? Why was he required?

When approached by Penguin Random House to write the book, my immediate response was ‘not interested’. I was time-poor and had many commitments.

My main objective was to better position myself to gain fulltime employment. With this in mind, I would not have time to focus on such a huge task. The editor’s response was to suggest a ghostwriter. I had no idea what a ghostwriter was. After some clarifications and a few other critical issues were resolved, I made the decision to go ahead.

Craig is an amazing person and great to work with. He travelled north from Shoalhaven to spend a few weeks getting to know me. We decided that I would purchase a dictaphone with Dragon software and I would use that to record my musings. I would tell the small device a story each day and plug it into my computer each evening

and let it translate the story into text. I would send this off to Craig who would shape it and tidy it up.

As is evidenced, he has exceptional skills. Today he, his family and I are very good friends. I like to say: I told him I was a sociopath and he invited me into his home.

What were the biggest challenges to preparing and publishing the book?

There were three main challenges to preparing and publishing. As I said, it was not my intention to publish and, so the first challenge was the decision to go ahead with the project and this was quite arduous. The second challenge was understanding the implications of such a book becoming a part of the public arena and being ‘out there’ permanently – there are potentially long-term impacts on those involved. I needed to consult with as many of the characters as possible. Having these discussions early helped me to ethically proceed to describe the challenging events in so many lives. There was also quite a bit of research involved. The final challenge was validity. As much as possible, accounts needed to be verified. This sometimes took research and time.

I read that one of the intentions with the book was to help others who have endured similar trauma. Can you describe how that has been the case?

As a direct result of Out of the Forest, I have been privileged to have had opportunities to speak to residents in drug and alcohol rehabs, visit homeless shelters such as the Matthew Talbot, attend several conferences on mental health, and speak with psychiatrists, medical doctors, psychologists and social workers

about the issues of homelessness and the complex symptoms and causes of it in this country.

I have also been inundated with emails requesting assistance.

Unfortunately, I have not been in a position to assist all. However, I have been able to refer many to other agencies for support.

What other books, if any, provided inspiration to you or acted as a blueprint for Out of the Forest?

There was really no inspiration or blueprint for this book. Just a quick explanation here: prior to my exiting the forest, my reading experience was very limited. There were perhaps five or six books I had read in my entire life. The majority of these were by Douglas Adams. Even then, my reading ability was not great. Often when in conversation with a person they’d respond to what I have said by saying ‘have you read this book?’ or ‘have you read this author?’ and name a book or author. One example was when Professor Richard Hill and I were discussing my philosophy on how I manage my days. He asked if I’d read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. To be honest, I had never heard of it. The thing is that once I began my journey of learning, I didn’t have time for recreational reading.

Everything I read was for research.

The first book I’ve read for pleasure since leaving the forest was by Tim Winton – The Shepherd’s Hut. It took me a couple of days to read and I completed it in the first week of 2019 while on leave.

Anyone who has heard you speak will attest to your startling articulacy and elegance with words. Are your expressive abilities purely the result of your learning since emerging from the forest or does an ability with

FEATURE

words stem from further back in your history?

One of the great challenges I had prior to entering the forest was in expressing myself. I simply did not have the language to describe how I felt or what had happened or what was happening to me.

Whilst in the forest I had time to ponder the challenges and meaning of words. I began to realise that, for me, words were the magic. They were the way to convey what seemed to be trapped in my conscious. When I exited the forest, I began to learn words – the etymology of words.

I was adding new words to my vocabulary as often as I could.

The study of phenomenology and existentialism – Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger – contributed significantly. In short, it was academic reading which developed my communication ability today. I find it fits well with the way I think. I do concede that there can be challenges to this way of talking. For example, I tend to take words literally and often miss the punchline in some conversations.

Your path to academia, it’s fair to say, has been different to most academics. Can you identify the advantages of working in academia for someone with your research interests and ambitions in writing, and also its limitations?

Agreed. To be honest, it is that difference which was the catalyst for this adventure in later life.

There are many advantages but the biggest is how I am positioned for ‘insider research’. Insider research at the depth I am able to explore is most unusual but it provides me with the unique ability to build rapport with many vulnerable people who have had similar

experiences. One of the challenges here is to link these experiences to the existing literature.

The biggest limitation continues to be my spelling and grammar. Given I have not had a solid background of academia to build these skills, I tend to rely on spellcheck quite a bit. I have learned there is no shame in asking someone to have a read and help me with the spelling and grammar.

In your recent experience, is Australia now becoming more aware of ‘Forgotten Australians’, and learning to approach the homeless community with compassion and care?

This is a really good question and to respond is only speculation on my part. Since the publication of Out of the Forest and Australian Story, I have received many emails saying that the sender has a new and clearer understanding of homelessness and Forgotten Australians. As I mentioned, there have been many invitations to address conferences and other gatherings on the plight of homelessness. Supported by other publications such as No Fixed Abode [a book of interviews with the homeless community in the Byron Shire, supported by Byron Writers Festival], hopefully the message is getting out.

What major things are you currently working on? Any more writing projects on the horizon?

At the moment, I am working on a couple of academic papers for journals. I need to publish academically to secure my work.

However, there are musings of another book in the not too distant future. Interview by Barnaby Smith Out of the Forest is published by Penguin Random House.

FEATURE

Five days in Jaipur After an exhausting first trip to the subcontinent, Laurel Cohn reports on the colourful feast of books and writing that is Jaipur Literature Festival.

I have an admission to make.

India has never been on my list of places I’ve wanted to visit, despite so many people extolling it as a life-changing, must-see destination like no other. But when my partner mentioned that the dates for the Jaipur Literature Festival coincided with our planned holiday time, my ears pricked up.

The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), held over five days in late January, was founded in 2006 and claims to be the largest literary festival in the world. In 2019, it featured 300 writers from around the world – from a wide range of fields covering literary and genre fiction, poetry, science, history, sport, religion and spirituality, food, geography, politics, the environment, migration, race, translation, travel, sexuality and more.

With an audience of about 100,000, the crowds were formidable, but it was always possible to find a seat or get a good view – except at the session on Indian cricket, touching on the new book Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians, which was crushing-room only. As a regular attendee of Byron Writers Festival, what struck me most about the audience was that it seemed to be dominated by twentyand thirty-year-olds, with the gender balance about even. Costing the equivalent of AU$10 for five days, JLF has become a popular place for

young people to meet up, as well as take in a bit of culture, which makes for a vibrant atmosphere.

And there was plenty of vibrancy on the stages as well. Canadian author Yann Martel was thoughtful and eloquent on The Life of Pi, his writing process and how he develops ideas. Booker Prizewinning Nigerian author Ben Okri (pictured top left) was mesmerising reading his highly charged poem about the Grenfell Tower fire.

German academic Sven Beckert was fascinating in illustrating the history of capitalism through the prism of cotton. Indian Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, Venki Ramakrishnan was articulate and accessible in discussing the culture of science and being an outsider.

British historian and television presenter Dan Jones’s experience in front of the camera was obvious in a very entertaining lecture on the Knights Templars. Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Andrew Sean Greer was delightfully humble and hilarious about his insecurities as a writer. British writer Kayo Chingonyi was powerful and compelling in discussing her book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Indian writer Anuradha Roy (pictured top right) was charming and enticing in opening up the world of her latest novel. And our own Markus Zusak looked like he’d end up retiring hurt after getting through the snaking book-signing queue.

One session in particular summed up the JLF experience for me. On First Novels featured Anuk Arudpragasam (Sri Lanka), Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Uganda), Omar Robert Hamilton (Egypt) and Tanwi Nandini Islan (Bangladesh/ USA) in conversation with Kanishk Tharoor (India). Anuk, whose novel has won many awards in Sri Lanka and India, talked of the shift he felt when he let go of worrying about whether the manuscript was going to be published and embraced being a writer. Jennifer recounted the glee in pointing out to her UK publisher that he had rejected her manuscript before it became a prizewinner and bestseller in the US. Tanwi had everyone in awe talking about writing her book at the same time as launching a beauty product business – the book became a bestseller and she now has over 120 shops across the USA. And Omar, a seasoned journalist, valiantly tried to describe that elusive moment when you know the manuscript is ready to send out. It was a feast of voices from a range of cultures, a celebration of differences and similarities, together acknowledging and honouring the shared experience of a writing life, and all that that may encompass.

My trip to India was not lifechanging, but it was enriching and inspiring, largely thanks to the Jaipur Literature Festival. I would highly recommend it.

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Henry Reynolds Henry Reynolds could have once been described as Australia’s most controversial historian, but his nation-shaking sleuthing has since come to be recognised as the ‘real’ history of Australia. Awarded Senior Tasmanian Australian of the year in 2015 for his continuing contribution to the nation, Reynolds changed the way history is taught in Australia, recognising history from an Indigenous perspective and putting Australia’s First Peoples clearly into the national story, long before anyone wanted to hear about it.

Interview by Katinka Smit, Byron Writers Festival 2018.

INTERVIEW

What prompted your career of controversial historical enquiry?

I grew up in a time when very little Australian history was taught. There was almost nothing about Australian politics and there was virtually nothing on Australian literature.

We were still a feeble outpost of Empire. I was offered a job in North Queensland at a then very small, very new university college, to teach Australian history. I had to read up Australian history and there was nothing about the Aborigines, not even an index entry. When you live in northern Australia, every day adds up to a picture of the relations between Indigenous and white Australians.

There was almost nothing about northern Australia in any of the texts. My students had grown up in this society. They knew that these questions were important and sometimes fraught. If you wanted to teach about relations between Europeans and Indigenous – both Islanders and Aborigines – then you had to do your own research. So that’s where it began. One of the first things that became obvious was that there had been this long history of violence, which shocked and surprised me. I had no idea.

How do you see the role of history in the progress of the nation?

I think it was extremely important that Australian history caught up.

Australia could not have continued in this somnolent way because the world itself had changed. By the 1960s, decolonisation had progressed so far there were virtually no European empires left.

There was also the question of race.

Race became one of the great issues of the age. And the convention against all forms of discrimination passed through the United Nations – Australia was coming under pressure of the same sort that South Africa had. Australia had to change.

Reluctantly. They knew they had to change, they had to change the position of Aboriginal people; they had to arrange for Aboriginal political rights, voting. Australia was one of the first signatories on the International Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which said that there can be no discrimination on any of the bases that Australia used to discriminate. The game was up. There was no way that Australia could go on with a history that was all just about white fellas.

What do you think lies at the heart of non-Indigenous Australia’s wilful refusal to acknowledge the sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples?

We don’t understand about sovereignty – it’s not something that’s ever been discussed in Australia. We have no idea about treaties; we vaguely know about New Zealand, but there’s a great absence of knowledge and understanding. In North America they had treaties from the early eighteenth century, it’s always been part of their tradition, they understand it completely. But in Australia it’s never been a part of our tradition. The High Court has avoided giving a judgement about sovereignty. I think the Mabo judgement was, apart from legally, such an important judgement because it was so educational.

People had to understand that the court had handed down from on high this extraordinary change in the law. And ultimately people have respect for the High Court. People came around.

Several countries, including South Africa, underwent a reconciliation process called the Truth Commission. Why do you think Australia was able to avoid such a commission?

In a funny sort of way, Australia did it in a partial way. The Bringing Them Home report and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody both had aspects of the Truth Commission but there hasn’t been a large scale one. In the other places, internationally, you had dramatic changes: a dictatorship fell, so there had to be an accounting of what the dictatorship had done, the Communist Party lost power and people had to know about their security. There were dramatic changes and in South Africa even more so with the end of Apartheid. In those countries the need for a Truth Commission was quite obvious. It hasn’t been so obvious in Australia, but I think we’re coming around to it. I suspect that that will be one of the easiest things to do, and I think that that probably will happen.

How does it feel to be digging around in the nation’s psyche and challenging notions of national identity all the time?

It’s not just out there, it’s also in your own head. You’re exploring your own upbringing, your own ideas. It’s a voyage of exploration, inside as well as outside.

So, you see yourself as emblematic, in a way?

Absolutely. I grew up in old British Australia, in an absolutely monocultural Australia. When I was young it was ninety-seven-percent British.

It’s changed out of all recognition.

I’ve lived for a long time now and I’ve seen these changes. And I had to dramatically change my view of Australia once I went to North Queensland. It was so unexpected and so shocking.

Henry Reynolds’ latest book is Unnecessary Wars, published by NewSouth Books.

SCU SHOWCASE

A showcase of Southern Cross University student work, compiled by Dr Emma Doolan

He Always Said Deborah Murray-Kippax

He always said he couldn’t believe he had married someone who hadn’t even finished high school. He had a silver tassel on his graduation cap and would be commencing at UCLA in the Fall. He didn’t, instead he fled to Australia escaping the Vietnam War birthday lotto. Tess fled, although hers a less grand escape, nothing more than abusive parents.

Their courtship too brief, wedding ceremony too long, even a life sentence didn’t mean until death do you part. Three months after the wedding when Tess by chance read his mail she wished she was a cat and that curiosity had killed her. His residency had been granted – shotgun weddings happen for more reasons than pregnancies.

Life wasn’t that bad.

Tess cooked some things better than his mother. She learnt to lock herself in rooms when he raged. That time spent hiding at the top of the neighbour’s mango tree wasn’t all wasted. She could now climb out of the windows and shimmy down the drain pipes with ease when needed. He made her promise never to sing to their children, he didn’t want them to become tone deaf. She never sang anymore anyway.

Tess was glad when he began to stay back late at work and working on weekends even better.

She was however surprised when his secretary called, informing her that if she used new liquid Dynamo, she would get his shirt collars much cleaner. It was a bad day that day: she had been forced into a wall during breakfast; the sunny side of his eggs had run uncontrollably across his toast; a toddler with tonsillitis; and a new baby with colic. Tess told him defiantly to give his shirts to the secretary to wash.

Surprisingly, he did.

Life wasn’t easy after that. She was prescribed ‘mothers little helpers’; they brightened the days and dulled the nights, but they didn’t pay the bills, feed the children or mop the floors.

He always said she’d never be able to survive without him.

One day she felt strong enough to wake up.

Tess changed the locks and started to sing again, she went back to school and learnt about the Mycenaeans, Hamlet’s betrayal, and most importantly, how to survive on her own.

She always wanted to write a book.

Dymocks Friday 5:00pm.

‘Don’t miss the launch of Tess Finn’s first book, Climbing Mango Trees’.

All welcome.

Deborah Murray-Kippax has had many honourable professions including being a teacher, single mum, grandmother and wife to two partners (not simultaneously). At sixty she realised she needed to stop getting mad and start writing about it. Deborah’s stories are as real as her characters. She plays with the unspoken secrets and silent strengths of women’s lives, framed by poignant humour.

BOOK REVIEW

The cost of progress At Dusk

by Hwang Sok-yong (trans. Sora Kim-Russell) Review by Alexandra De Vylder

When a mysterious young woman hands Park Minwoo the number of a near-forgotten friend, this top South Korean architect reflects on his life for the first time. He realises that, in his urgency to escape urban poverty, he has helped to destroy more than slums.

Success has not come for twenty-nine-year-old Woohee, who’s doing it tough on the suburban margins of Seoul while clinging to her dream of a theatre career.

In At Dusk, we ride along these characters’ memories through traditional Korean towns, urban slums, and modern cities. This latest novel from celebrated South Korean writer Hwang Sok-yong is a poetic critique of an unbalanced society, through the eyes of those surviving in it. Minwoo’s professional success is built on South Korea’s urban renewal, a period of development devoid of social conscience, which saw urban slums replaced by concrete apartment blocks.

As his friends die around him and a current project is investigated for corruption, we see the personal and wider consequences of Minwoo’s blinkered trajectory to success, and of the industry that supported it.

Through Woohee’s recollections we meet her unlikely friend, Black Shirt, who rescues her from commercial exploitation and questions her ideals and his own lack of direction. Black Shirt’s mother finds meaning in her past through written memoirs, yet is this enough for her to live through her latest loss?

These characters encapsulate the sense of emptiness amid the struggle to make ends meet.

The plight of these characters reflects the loss of values that occurred during South Korea’s shift from the ‘grinding poverty’ of Minwoo’s youth to the

economic exploitation of Woohee’s present. These first-person narrators are linked by more than anxiety and loneliness, and as the ties between them are revealed, there is a growing sense that they want something more than mere economic survival. Their connection is fully revealed in the last few chapters – with a twist that destroys any hope of a return to the past.

For a book about loss of meaning, meaning is everywhere, through elegant symbolism. Hwang conveys key moments in a sentence through understated scenes and simple, vivid imagery. We understand the significance of Minwoo’s teenage love interest when he recalls: ‘She was like a single white crane in a disaster zone.’

Natural imagery pokes through the story like grass through bitumen, expressing both what is lost and the potential for renewal. This theme endures to the powerful final scene, a moment of directionlessness and confusion but which feels, somehow, like a new beginning.

My eyes mist over and the narrative is slightly less compelling during rare sections where architectural and business terms make the prose depart from the book’s otherwise informal style. This is, however, the language of Minwoo’s world.

At Dusk is a vivid novel about landscape, memory, hope, resignation, values, success and meaning. It is a pleasure for the mind’s eye and a valuable insight into cultural emptiness, while the layered emotion in the simple prose makes it well worth re-reading.

Scribe / 192pp / RRP$27.99

BOOK REVIEW

A hard head Kerry O’Brien, A Memoir

by Kerry O’Brien Review by Jenny Bird

‘Memoirs are legacy-building instruments that do two things at once: the “I” of the author translates into the representative “we.” The personal life tells a national story.’

– Nancy Isenberg, The New York Review of Books, June 28-July 18, 2018.

Kerry O’Brien, A Memoir invites us to share the privileged front-row seat occupied by O’Brien during his fifty-year career as one of Australia’s most highly respected journalists.

The book can be read as history as readily as memoir, and will stand over time as a legacy-building reference work. In an interview on Radio National with Fran Kelly, O’Brien reflected that ‘one of the things that motivated me to write the book was the realisation of just how much history I had seen close up and reported on in one way or another.’ He went on to express a hope that the book ‘is a way for people to dip in and out of their history at an intimate level, but also retrace those times and look with some hindsight and hopefully a little bit of wisdom at the implications of those milestones.’

Some of those key milestones appear in his damning analysis of the John Howard government.

He describes how he and Howard ‘danced around the interview desk on close to one hundred occasions’ during twelve of his fifteen years at the helm of 7.30.

O’Brien sheets home to the Howard government a damning clutch of moral failures which reverberate

today in the politics of division: the fear-mongering surrounding the Wik case, the refusal to apologise for the Stolen Generations, the stoking of the ‘history wars’, the military response to Tampa, the purposeful fiction of the ‘children overboard’, the industrial relations debacle of the waterfront crisis, the Iraq war, East Timor, and the complicity with Pauline Hanson over her racism as a right to free speech.

The interiority that might be expected of a memoir, where the author draws from the depths of the personal ‘I’ in order to illuminate the collective ‘we’, is absent. This is no plumbing of psychological depths. One senses that O’Brien is not, perhaps by nature, prone to navel gazing. One also senses that his natural perspective is more socio-political than psychological, such that any ‘I’ is best understood within the broader ‘we’. Or perhaps O’Brien has, as his profession requires, simply got out of his own way.

The intimacy that it does provide lies with O’Brien’s recollections and musings about his long roll call of interviews with prime ministers and presidents, the famous, the infamous and the not famous; his experiences of reporting on wars, revolutions and major historical events; the tawdry politics of the corridors of power; and the shifting sands of the Australian media industry.

The book can also be read as a chronicle of a career in the media. O’Brien’s trajectory as a journalist shapes the structure for most of the book’s thirty

BOOK REVIEW

chapters, providing a fascinating commentary on the Australian media industry from the 1960s to the present day. As he says, ‘I’d reported straight news, daily and long-form current affairs. I’d made documentaries, I’d reported politics, I’d been a foreign correspondent. I’d written for newspapers and a wire service. I’d worked for every commercial network, but I was passionate about public broadcasting.’

What struck me about O’Brien’s ambitious and peripatetic career was that at that time a woman could not have built it. Going by O’Brien’s account, the media industry in Australia was a gendered world of often seedy, blokey, co-dependent relationships between journalists, politicians, criminals and racing identities, conducted in pubs and lubricated by rivers of alcohol. Only a few tall poppies such as Caroline Jones broke through in those early days. Even as late as 1986, O’Brien reports someone labeling the young female radio reporters in the old Parliament House in Canberra as ‘microphones with tits.’

During this career, O’Brien marries twice and has six children. He acknowledges the cost of his career to his wives and children, but the moves are all his. In a rare moment of personal reflection in the last pages of the book, O’Brien ponders the personal impact of the harsh realities that journalists confront: ‘it’s hard to quantify how that edge of toughness can affect the lives around you, the people you love and your sense of self.’

In the last chapter, ‘Origins’, O’Brien circles back to his family histories. He asks some hard moral questions that those of us with early settler/frontier family histories need to ask. In choosing to end the book here, we might see what O’Brien wants to leave us with.

It is here that O’Brien attempts, for me, a moving and unflinching reckoning between the personal, the historical past and the political present. It is here that, maybe, I get the full measure of the moral and intellectual integrity of the man as he wrestles with history and the unavoidably painful and challenging questions of settler identity, land theft, growth and prosperity at the cost to Indigenous Australians, a family-sized microcosm of a national reckoning that we are not yet able to have.

As Radio National’s Phillip Adams wrote in a review of The 7.30 Report in 1995, anchored by O’Brien, ‘Never mind the width, feel the quality.’

Allen & Unwin / 880pp / RRP$44.99

BOOK REVIEW

Grave matters The Lost Man

by Jane Harper Review by Colleen O’Brien

‘From above, from a distance, the marks in the dust formed a tight circle. The circle was far from perfect ... It also wasn’t empty.’ Thus begins Jane Harper’s latest novel The Lost Man. The circle in the dust is a mystery, as is the old grave around which it rotates. It is also an image of hopelessness and tenacity and of how vastness can be narrowed to a pinpoint in time and space.

This is the story of the three Bright brothers: Cameron, the middle brother, whose body etches the circle into the dry outback dirt of Queensland; the oldest brother Nathan, who is tortured by past mistakes and sets himself the task of solving his brother’s death; and the youngest, Harry, or Bub, who is more than he seems. The peripheral plots and characters appear just that until you are deeper into the story and realise they are all connected and all involved.

The prologue beautifully sets the scene and tone of The Lost Man – the feeling of expanse to nothingness in the outback of Queensland, desperation and mystery in both history and the present day. Two men have died by the stockman’s grave. There are many stories of how the first death took place in the 1800s and how the recent death of a local, well-loved cattleman, could possibly happen. As the novel unfolds, secrets and mysteries about both deaths are resolved. The lives and characters of the Bright family are peeled back petal by torturous petal until all are exposed.

Even though you can see forever in the vast flat spaces, you can’t always see the people around you

and their hidden inner worlds. Characters see the big picture in an effort to survive, but it is the little pictures that have the true impact – the precautions taken when moving about the landscape; the isolated families; the conservative townspeople; and most of all, the secrets people keep, even from their nearest friends and family.

Jane Harper is a master of place and character. I loved her first book, The Dry, because of this. I didn’t find her second novel, Force of Nature, as successful because I felt she didn’t portray the landscape as well, and although the character of Detective Aaron Falk recurred, it was without the detailed trajectory of The Dry. But The Lost Man is as good as her first – with even more subtlety. There is nothing superfluous. The slow resolution of carefully crafted plot is complex, relentless and surprising. Jane Harper feeds you plausible red herrings, all of which add another layer to the story of the deaths and Cameron’s family. I kept thinking I had it worked out, but I was wrong countless times.

Jane Harper’s writing masterfully analyses and portrays complex issues such as love, family, rape and domestic violence. A great crime novel. If you enjoy a focus on character and the Australian landscape you will love The Lost Man. Pan Macmillan / 384pp / RRP$32.99

YA BOOK REVIEWS

What YA Reading?

Reviews by Polly Jude

too late and now there is no way to take Rimu with them.

The dangerous journey to safety leaves Zeelie questioning her father’s decision to stay. For the first time, she realises that her parents aren’t perfect. She realises they made a terrible mistake that nearly costs them everything.

47 Degrees

by Justin D’Ath Zeelie is almost thirteen and just starting high school. She loves riding her horse, Rimu, and growing up in the country. But her whole world is turned upside down in one terrifying day.

With the thermometer inching higher, her mum rushes her brother, Lachy, to hospital in Melbourne after he falls and breaks his arm. Rising temperatures and high winds prove to be the perfect storm.

Her dad has a stay-and-defend fire plan. But it’s soon obvious that no amount of planning can beat the monster fire that’s ripping through the valley towards Zeelie and her home.

When the house next door goes up and the only thing separating the houses is a pine forest that’s already alight, Zeelie and her father must flee for their lives. But they’ve left it

They become refugees and are forced to accept charity from others when they shelter in the makeshift camp at the showgrounds with the other survivors who are also coming to terms with their losses.

But there’s a silver lining with the hope of new friendships growing from the worst circumstances.

February 2019 marked the tenth anniversary of the devastating Black Saturday bushfires that destroyed too many lives and families. Justin D’Ath saw the awesome power of nature when his own home was destroyed in the fires. His first-hand experience of this tragic event makes 47 Degrees a thrilling and sensitive survival story.

47 Degrees is a fast-paced glimpse at the terrifying events that took place that day; the luck of the draw and the unforgiving nature of living in Australia’s harsh environment are all presented here. 47 Degrees explores identity, survival, resilience and consequences. It will appeal to younger YA readers.

Puffin / 256pp / RRP$16.99

The Finder

by Kate Hendrick The mysterious disappearance of her twin sister leaves Lindsay searching for answers. But she was just a kid when Frankie vanished. Lindsay didn’t know where to look for the truth.

Instead, Lindsay turned to other things.

Elias is searching for his biological mother and calls on Lindsay to help. Together, they go on a journey. What they find along the way is an unlikely friendship, a mutual love of chocolate and eventually, themselves.

YA readers will identify with Lindsay’s sense of isolation and her search for her own place in the world. The Finder will appeal to younger YA readers and will get parental approval. It is the second YA novel by Kate Hendrick and deals with identity, sexuality and navigating the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood.

Text Publishing / 400pp / RRP$19.99

WORKSHOPS

PODCASTING WITH SAMANTHA TURNBULL SATURDAY 30 MARCH 10.00AM - 4.00PM

POETRY: DEEP READING FOR BETTER WRITING WITH LISA BROCKWELL SATURDAY 6 APRIL

Byron Writers Festival Office

10.00AM - 4.00PM

$120 / $100*

Byron Writers Festival Office $115 / $95*

Anyone can make a podcast with a microphone and a computer, but creating a good one that people (beyond friends and family) listen to is a little more difficult.

This workshop will focus on what makes a successful podcast, with an emphasis on writing, producing, presenting and promoting. It will also include an introduction to editing, and the nuts and bolts of how to record and release your own podcast. This workshop is suitable for content-makers across all genres. Participants will need a smartphone and headphones.

Samantha Turnbull is the writer of hit ABC children’s podcasts Fierce Girls and Animal Sound Safari. Fierce Girls was number one across all categories in Australia on iTunes, and Animal Sound Safari reached top spot in the children’s and family category. Sam is also a features reporter at the ABC.

*Byron Writers Festival members or students

Reading poems deeply is a surefire way to write better poems.

In this workshop we will closely read a selection of great poems, to see what makes them tick and to enjoy what they can do. For all skill levels, from published poets to those just starting out.

Lisa Brockwell lives on a rural property near Byron Bay with her husband and young son. She was runner-up in the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize in 2015, and has been shortlisted for the Australian Catholic University, Newcastle, Montreal International and Bridport Poetry Prizes. Her poems have been published in The Spectator, Australian Love Poems, The Canberra Times and Best Australian Poems.

COMMERCIAL AND HISTORICAL FICTION FOR BEGINNERS WITH KAYTE NUNN SATURDAY 8 MAY 10.00AM - 1.00PM Byron Writers Festival Office $60/ $50* If you’ve always wanted to write compelling, page-turning historical and/or commercial fiction, this interactive workshop will serve as the perfect introduction.

Topics will include starting your story in the right place, point of view, creating memorable characters, building narrative tension, plot and the importance of structure, writing effective scenes and much more. The workshop is suitable for complete beginners, those who have a writing project underway or those who may have completed a first draft and are looking to refine it.

Kayte Nunn is a former journalist and book editor, and is the author of two commercial fiction novels, Rose’s Vintage and Angel’s Share. Her 2018 historical novel, The Botanist’s Daughter, was an Australian bestseller.

NARRATIVE NON-FICTION WITH BENJAMIN GILMOUR SATURDAY 25 MAY 10.00AM - 4.00PM Byron Writers Festival Office $115 / $95* Just like fiction, successful narrative non-fiction must immediately engage its readers. But how do we thread the messy texture of lived experience into a cohesive narrative form? From what narrative position or voice do we tell our story and how should we structure it? What should be left out and what should be included? In this workshop we will explore the many questions that arise when telling true stories.

Benjamin Gilmour was the writer/ director of the recent Australian/ Afghanistan feature film Jirga which won the highly-coveted Film Prize at CinefestOZ in 2018 and the AACTA award for Best Independent Film.

Gilmour is also the author of five books including Paramedico and soon-to-be-released memoir The Gap. He lives in Bangalow with his family.

For workshop details and to register visit byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on

Competitions WB YEATS POETRY PRIZE There is a fifty-line limit for the 2019 WB Yeats Poetry Prize, which invites entries in an open style.

Winner takes $500, with second and third winning $75. Entries are via email or post, with a deadline of 31 March. There is a fee of $10 for the first entry and $4 for further entries.

Full details are available at www. wbyeatspoetryprize.com

BRONZE SWAGMAN AWARD The 48th Bronze Swagman Award invites submissions of traditional bush verse with rhyme and rhythm and on an Australian theme. There is an entry fee of $20 with no limit on number of entries. The winner takes $500 and a bronze statuette of the swagman, and there are further awards for runners-up and highly commended. Entries close on 30 April. For complete entry details go to www.abpa.org.au/events.html

THE WOMBAT AWARD The Wombat Award for poetry is organised by the Henry Lawson Memorial & Literary Society. Children aged twelve or younger are invited to enter up to three poems on the theme of ‘Our Heritage’. First prize wins $100, second prize $75 and third prize $50.

The school libraries of the winning entries will also receive prizes. The judge is children’s author Meredith Costain. Entries close on 30 April and there is no entry fee. For more information go to henrylawsonsociety. org/the-wombat-award

BEST OF TIMES SHORT STORY COMPETITION The Best of Times Short Story Competition is held twice a year, with entries for the 2019 autumn competition due by 30 April.

Humorous short stories are invited

on any theme with a wordcount of up to 2,500. Prize money for first place ranges between $300 and $500 depending on number of entries, with second place taking $100. Entry is $10 per story. For further information including submission requirements visit www.bestoftimes.com.au

THE MOTH INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY PRIZE The Moth prize is open to anyone aged sixteen and over. There is an open theme, with first place taking out €3,000. Word limit is 5,000 and entry fee is €15 per story. This year’s judge is award-winning author Kit de Waal.

This Ireland-based competition closes for entries on 30 June. For full details visit themothmagazine.com

QUESTIONS WRITING PRIZE The 2019 Questions Writing Prize aims to recognise and reward talented young writers aged between eighteen and thirty. Submissions should be between 1,500 and 2,000 words and can be fiction or non-fiction on any topic. Prize money of $2,000 will be awarded to one winner or shared among several winners, while the winner(s) will also have their work published. Entry is free.

Deadline for entries is 1 May, for further information visit www.questions.com. au/writing-prize/index.php

ADELAIDE PLAINS POETS INC. POETRY COMPETITION This competition invites entries of poems to the theme of ‘Location’ and features an open class (ages eighteen and over) as well as classes for primary school and secondary school students. Poems should be no longer than sixty lines, while there is an entry fee of $10 for the first poem entered and $5 for those entered thereafter. Entries close on 5 July.

Total prize money available comes to $700. For full details go to carolynpoeticpause.blogspot.com.au

KYD UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARD Organised by the journal Kill Your Darlings, this award will assist an earlycareer author in the development of an unpublished manuscript. The award is open to writers of fiction and non-fiction. The winner will receive $4,000, while all shortlisted entrants will receive a one-week fellowship at Varuna, The Writers House in the Blue Mountains. Submissions close on 30 April. For further details visit killyourdarlings.com.au/awards

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA VICECHANCELLOR’S INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE This prestigious international poetry competition offers a first prize of $15,000, with the runner-up receiving $5,000. Poems should be no longer than fifty lines and 1,000 words in total. There is an entry fee of $25 per poem, while entries close on 30 June. For full details regarding entry conditions go to www.canberra.edu. au/about-uc/competitions-andawards/vcpoetryprize

THE SHEILA MALADY SHORT STORY COMPETITION This Gippsland-based competition aims to celebrate and breathe new life into the works of Shakespeare by inviting writers to send in their own creations. These creations should be short stories of up to 2,000 words and according to a 2019 theme of ‘Shakesfeare’. First prize wins $300 and theatre tickets, while there are special prizes for those local to Gippsland and those aged under eighteen. The closing date for entries is 25 March and there is an entry fee

of $5. See more information www. stratfordshakespeare.com.au/ writing-competition

FUTURE LEADERS WRITING PRIZE The Future Leaders Writing Prize is designed to recognise and reward talented young writers and to encourage expressive and creative writing. Year 11 and 12 students in Australian secondary schools are invited to submit a piece of writing of between 800 and 1,000 words. The writing can be fiction or non-fiction and on any topic. The winner will receive $1,000, and when there is more than one winner the prize money will be shared. Winners will also have their work published. Entry is free, with the deadline for entries 31 May. For full details go to futureleaders.com.au/ awards/index.php

PETER CAREY SHORT STORY AWARD Organised by the Moorabool Shire Council, this award is for short stories between 2,000 and 3,000 words, and is open to all Australian residents. The winning entry receives $1,000, while the runner-up wins $500. First and second prize stories will also be published in the Spring 2019 issue of Meanjin.

Longlisted entries will be judged by Nic Low. Entry is $10 per story and closing date is 21 March. For more information see www.moorabool.vic.gov.au/ events/2019-peter-carey-award

POETICA CHRISTI ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION The theme for this year’s Poetica Christi competition is ‘Love’s Footprint’, with poems welcomed of no more than fifty lines in length. First prize wins $300 with second place taking $200, and twentyfive poems selected for publication in an anthology. Poets must be aged sixteen or over and residing in Australia,

while a $7 reading fee is charged for each poem. Deadline for entries is 30 April, and for more information visit poeticachristi.org.au

THE VALERIE PARV AWARD The Valerie Parv Award is open to aspiring or emerging writers of romance. Entries should be the first 10,000 words of a manuscript alongside a 1,000-word synopsis. A maximum of two entries are allowed per person.

First place wins a one-year mentorship with Valerie Parv herself, while entry is $44 for members of Romance Writers Australia and $110 for non-members.

The competition opens on 8 April and closes on 29 April. For further details visit romanceaustralia.com/contestsoverview/valerie-parv-award

FUTURE VISIONS AWARD The Future Visions Award invites short story submissions of between 3,500 and 7,000 words for unpublished stories, and 10,000 for published stories (must have been published between January 2017 and January 2019). First place wins $500 and publication in The Blend International.

There is an entry fee of $5 per story and a closing date for entries of 1 July. For more information go to theblendinternational.com.au/ future-visions

ABR ELIZABETH JOLLEY SHORT STORY PRIZE Australian Book Review welcomes entries in the 2019 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for an original short story. The prize is worth a total of $12,500, with first prize taking $5,000. Entry is open to anyone in the world who is writing in English, with a deadline of 15 April. Entries must be a single story of 2,000 to 5,000 words in

length. Three shortlisted stories will be published in the journal. For full details visit australianbookreview.com.au/ prizes-programs/elizabeth-jolleystory-prize/current-jolley

BRISTOL SHORT STORY PRIZE A British competition, this prize invites short story entries of no more than 4,000 words on an open theme and in any style. The competition is open to writers of all nationalities aged sixteen and over. First prize wins £1,000 and publication in Bristol 24/7 magazine.

There is an entry fee of £9 per story with a closing date of 1 May. For more details go to www.bristolprize.co.uk

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Writers Groups Alstonville Plateau Writers Group Meets second Friday of each month, 10am – 12pm.

All genres welcome, contact Kerry 66285662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Mandy Waring on 6628 7263 or 0427 327 381 Byron Bay Memoir and Fiction Writing Group Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Dianna on 0420282938/6685 5387 or diana.burstall@ gmail.com Casino Writers Group Meets every third Thursday of the month at 4pm at Casino Library. Contact Brian on 0266282636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com Cloudcatchers For Haiku enthusiasts. A ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement. Contact Quendryth on 6628 3753 or email quendrythyoung@ bigpond.com Coffs Harbour Writers Group Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Tom Strickland on0424 010 950, email: lmproject@bigpond.com or go to www.coffsharbourwriters.com Cru3a River Poets Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on 66458715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au Dangerously Poetic Writing Circle Meets second Wednesday or each month, 2pm-4pm at Brunswick Valley Community Centre. Contact Laura on 66801976 or visit www.dangerouslypoetic.com Dorrigo Writers Group Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm.

Contact Iris on 66575274 or email an_lomall@ bigpond.com or contact Nell on 66574089

Dunoon Writers Group Writers on the Block. Meets second Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Dunoon Sports Club.

Contact Helga on 66202994 (W), 0401405178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com Kyogle Writers Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on 66242636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com Lismore Writers Group Meets second Tuesday of the month from 7.30pm to 930pm at Communities Hub Art Space on Keen Street.

Cost is $5 for Hub members, $7.50 for non-members.

For more details phone 0410832362 Nambucca Valley Writers Group Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca. Contact 65689648 or nambuccawriters@ gmail.com Taree-Manning River Scribblers Meets second Wednesday of the month, 9am-11:30am, Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on 65532829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com Tweed Poets and Writers Meets weekly at Coolangatta Senior Citizens Centre on Tuesdays 1:30pm – 3pm NSW time. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short storywriters all welcome. Phone Lorraine 0755909395 or Pauline 0755245062

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