northerly march-april 2016

northerly The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre Magazine

March-April 2016

CRAIG MCGREGOR · KOORI MAIL · LISA BROCKWELL · PETER MITCHELL AIRDRE GRANT · NEWS & REVIEWS · WORKSHOPS & COMPETITIONS

CONTENTS

>> THIS ISSUE

MARAPR2016 002 Director & editor’s notes 003 News

New staff at NRWC, Storyboard and Books-2-Screen set for launch, funding for NORPA and more

6

006 Earth spirit

Lisa Brockwell talks us through her debut poetry collection

008 Pathways through loss

An extract from Stumbling Stones, a work of non-fiction by local author Airdre Grant

8

010 Voice of Indigenous Australia Iconic newspaper the Koori Mail in focus

012 Checking in

Veteran author Craig McGregor profiled as he launches his new book, Motel

015 Poem

‘The Nightly Trip’ by Peter Mitchell

10

016 On track

The cultural impact of the railways at the next ADFAS lecture

017 Television set

Carly Lorente observes a TV writers’ room first-hand thanks to Northern Rivers Screenworks

018 SCU showcase

12

Poetry from Sara Khamkoed

016 Learning Curve

Finola Wennekes on setting up a WordPress blog

020 Book review

Kathleen Steele reviews Wolf Wolf by Eben Venter

021 Workshops

16

022 Competitions 024 Writers’ groups

17 northerly | 001

>>HELLO

Director’s Note The year has undoubtedly started with a bang here in Byron Bay, and so it should – 2016 heralds the milestone twentieth Byron Bay Writers Festival, and we’re already gearing up!

That momentum was spurred by Australia Day, when we discovered that Byron Bay Writers Festival was the recipient of the coveted 2016 Australia Day Award for Community Event of the Year. Chairman Chris Hanley and members of the Board Marele Day, Jesse Blackadder and Lynda Dean were there to accept the honour against a backdrop of Australian flags.

Community recognition is fundamental to Photo: Angela Kay building and nurturing brand reputation, and the BBWF team will do their best to deliver an even more entrancing event this coming year.

Another Australia Day honour with local resonance was the Australian of the Year Local Hero award given to Catherine Keenan, Executive Director of the Sydney Story Factory. A not-for-profit creative writing centre for young people, the Sydney Story Factory has provided mentorship to BBWF to develop our StoryBoard project, which will roll out creative writing sessions in primary schools in the Northern Rivers from May. We are looking for volunteers to assist with this project, so please get in touch if you can help with this important initiative.

The premise of Sydney Story Factory is that all Australian young people, no matter their background, should be given opportunities to develop the communication skills and flexibility of thinking that will allow them to live their lives to their full potential and flourish in a rapidly changing world. Our warmest congratulations to wonderful Cath! Look for more news on BBWF’s StoryBoard in forthcoming issues…

You may also wish to keep an eye out for the new Byron Bay Writers Festival brand identity that has been created by Brisbane-based brand strategist Kevin Finn, from TheSumOf. Kevin consulted widely with Festival stakeholders and has created a simple, striking and contemporary identity. We hope you agree when you see it. Sneak previews soon…

Meanwhile, happy reading – and writing.

Edwina Johnson Director, NRWC

FROM THE EDITOR Towards the end of the time period that this March/April issue of northerly covers, the four-hundredth anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death (April 23) will be upon us. Celebrations to mark the event will be held worldwide – perhaps even to the point of overkill.

There are plenty of productions on in Australia if you want to get into the spirit of things. The Bell Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is currently on at Sydney Opera House, while the same bunch is producing Othello in July.

The Sydney Theatre Company is doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in September, and the Brisbane Arts Theatre is currently offering The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) for another couple of weeks.

There have, of course, also been fairly 002 | northerly

regular runs of Shakespeare’s plays in the Northern Rivers in recent years, not to mention the Royal Shakespeare Company productions that appear on the screens of local cinemas.

Perhaps an underrated way of experiencing the Bard, however, is simply to sit down with the plays and sonnets and read them. However well read you might be and however long it has been since you studied him at school, that is still a profound reading experience.

Please enjoy the second northerly of 2016.

Barnaby Smith Editor, northerly magazine

northerly northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre.

The Writers’ Centre is a resource and information base for writers and readers in the Northern Rivers region. We offer a year-round program of readings, workshops and writer visits as well as the annual production of the Byron Bay Writers Festival. The Centre is a nonprofit, incorporated organisation receiving its core funding from Arts NSW. LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@nrwc.org.au W: www.nrwc.org.au POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerly@nrwc.org.au CONTRIBUTORS: Airdre Grant, Angela Kay, Sara Khamkoed, Carly Lorente, Peter Mitchell, Kathleen Steele, Finola Wennekes NRWC COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON Chris Hanley VICE CHAIRPERSON Lynda Dean SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Kate Cameron, Marele Day, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight, Emerald Moon, Jennifer St George, Adam van Kempen, Teresa Walters 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 MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in JANUARY, MARCH, MAY, JULY, SEPTEMBER and NOVEMBER MAGAZINE DESIGN Kaboo Media PRINTER Quality Plus Printers Ballina 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 northerly@nrwc.org.au.

DISCLAIMER The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre 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 www.nrwc.org.au. Sign up for a membership. Stay updated and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. www.facebook.com/pages/ Northern-Rivers-Writers-Centre twitter.com/bbwritersfest

Cover art: Maku by Carly Lorente.

The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre, Byron Bay Writers Festival and northerly magazine acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of this land.

>> NEWS

New blood at NRWC

Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre is delighted to welcome two new additions to its team. Emma Keenan has been appointed Sponsorship Manager, while Coralie Tapper takes the reins as Special Projects Co-ordinator.

CLOSE-UP Editing & Assessment Close-Up provides honest, constructive advice.

We assess both fiction and non-fiction in all genres and for manuscripts at all stages of development.

We believe that consultation is vital in order to provide a truly meaningful and well-tailored assessment.

Please feel free to contact us to discuss your project.

Emma Keenan We are thrilled to introduce our new Partnership Manager, Emma Keenan. Emma comes to us with twenty years of experience in sales and marketing for music and media organisations. In recent years she has worked in a partnerships capacity for Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival (amongst others), and as head of sales for Sydney not-for-profit radio station FBi 94.5FM. Originally from the UK, she now lives in Bangalow with her husband and young son. In case work and family don’t keep her busy enough, she is also studying parttime for a Bachelor of Counselling degree. Emma is thrilled to be joining the BBWF team this year (and she hopes for many years to come) and her email is emma@nrwc.org.au

We offer: • Free 5-10 Page Sample Edit • Manuscript Assessment • Line Editing and Proofreading • Flexible Pricing

Contact us:

• www.closeupediting.com • closeupediting@gmail.com

Her work is grounded in live performance, cultural and educational development and community. She has enjoyed working with an extensive network of artists and companies including DMG Entertainment, Spiegelworld Productions, Woodford Folk Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Disney’s The Lion King musical and Inner Voice Productions.

Most recently, Coralie worked as producer of the feature documentary Acharya, an international production shot in India and the United States. Having obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Swinburne University, and after many successful years working in a variety of creative industries overseas, she finds herself relocating to the Northern Rivers and is thrilled to be joining the team at the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre as the Special Projects Co-ordinator for 2016. Coralie can be reached at coralie@nrwc.org.au

StoryBoard launched Coralie Tapper Coralie Tapper is an experienced media and film producer, with a background in the creative arts, project management, music and events industries throughout Australia, United Kingdom and the United States.

NRWC is delighted to announce StoryBoard, its newest project for young writers. This mobile creative writing project will connect writers with schools and school kids with writing. A ‘Storyteller-in-Chief ’, plus volunteer helpers, will visit Northern Rivers schools and run exciting and inspiring workshops for students aged between eight and eighteen. northerly | 003

>> NEWS

will help authors get their work noticed by producers and assist with the first stage of preparation before a book can be adapted. It will be a valuable learning experience for those who are interested in progressing to screenwriting.

Authors and screenwriters interested in Books-2-Screen should visit www.nrwc.org.au for guidelines.

Applications for authors close on March 30 and for screenwriters on May 6.

Australia Day award for BBWF

BBWF is named Community Event of the Year at the Byron Shire Australia Day Awards 2016. From left: NRWC committee member Jesse Blackadder, chairperson Chris Hanley, committee member Marele Day and vicechairperson Lynda Dean.

You may have seen that Catherine Keenan won the Australia’s Local Hero award at the Australian of the Year Awards for her work establishing the Sydney Story Factory. StoryBoard is a regional adaptation of the Story Factory, itself inspired by author Dave Eggers and his ‘826’ creative writing centres in the USA. The program will be defined by free activities, a projectbased approach, adult support for students through volunteer tutors and publishing the work produced by participants.

The key ingredient, as Eggers says, is ‘keeping it weird’. All these centres are based in weird and wonderful shop fronts, such as the Martian Embassy in Sydney, the Pirate Supply Shop in San Francisco, and the 100 Story Building in Melbourne.

Rather than a shopfront, we will raise money for a specially decorated bus to carry the storyteller and volunteer tutors directly to schools.

Beloved local children’s author Tristan Bancks will be StoryBoard’s Storyteller-in-Chief for the pilot workshops beginning in May. NRWC committee member Jesse Blackadder has been developing the project, while Special Projects Co-ordinator Coralie Tapper is also organising the pilot project. Watch this space for more news. Anyone interested in volunteering can contact Coralie at coralie@nrwc.org.au.

004 | northerly

Books-2-Screen call for applications

Byron Bay Writers Festival and Northern Rivers Screenworks are delighted to open applications for Books-2-Screen, an exciting mentoring program for authors and screenwriters. This is an innovative approach to screen adaptations of Australian books that will see authors paired with screenwriters to work together on preparing and pitching their projects.

In the first stage we’re calling on authors with books suitable for adaptation to submit their proposals.

A panel of judges will select a shortlist of up to ten books suitable for adaptation. In the second stage, emerging screenwriters will pitch for the opportunity to collaborate with the shortlisted authors.

Three author and screenwriter teams will be mentored in an intensive clinic to develop book adaptation projects to a pitch-ready stage, and pitch them to a panel of television and film producers at Byron Bay Writers Festival 2016.

Following a record year at the box office for Australian films, this is the perfect time for an initiative that helps more Australian books make the transition to screen.

Authors don’t have to become screenwriters to participate – most of them don’t want to. This project

Byron Bay Writers Festival won the 2016 Community Event of the Year Award at Byron Shire’s Australia Day Awards. The Festival was recognised for its significant contribution to the cultural life of the region, the hard work of its staff, board and volunteers, and its positive economic impact. The Festival has grown from its inaugural event in 1997, which attracted two hundred locals, to attracting some 3000 people a day for three days across five huge marquees, plus more than 3000 school children at special events.

US publishing lacks diversity

A new study carried out in the United States has found that the publishing industry workforce is overwhelming white and female.

Publishers Lee & Low Books surveyed thirty-four American publishers and eight review journals and found that 79 percent of staff were white, and 78 percent of staff were female.

Publisher Jason Low wrote of the findings, “Does the lack of diverse books closely correlate to the lack of diverse staff? The percentages, while not exact, are proportional to how the majority of books look nowadays – predominately white. Cultural fit would seem to be relevant here. Or at least in publishing’s case, what is at work is the tendency – conscious or unconscious – for executives, editors, marketers, sales people and reviewers to work with, develop, and recommend books by and about people who are like them.” The study struck a nerve with Booker-winning Jamaican author Marlon James, who provoked controversy in November with his comment, “Writers of colour pander to white women”.

In the wake of the new research he wrote on Facebook, “Not to beat what many hoped would be a dead

>> NEWS

OBITUARIES PEGGY ANDERSON American author and journalist; July 14, 1938 – January 17, 2016 CHRIS BARNARD South African author; July 15, 1939 – December 28, 2015 CONSTANCE BERESFORD-HOWE Canadian novelist; November 10, 1922 – January 20, 2016 ALEŠ DEBELJAK Slovenian writer; December 25, 1951 – January 28, 2016 UMBERTO ECO Italian novelist; January 5, 1932 – February 19, 2016 MARGARET FORSTER English novelist; May 25, 1938 – February 8, 2016 ANDREW GLAZE American poet; April 21, 1920 – February 7, 2016 AIDAN HIGGINS Irish author; March 3, 1927 – December 27, 2015 VENIE HOLMGREN Australian poet; September 15, 1922 – January 27, 2016 INTIZAR HUSSAIN Pakistani writer; December 7, 1923 – February 2, 2016 HARPER LEE American novelist; April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016 STEPHEN LEVINE American poet; July 17, 1937 – January 17, 2016 JOHN MCLAREN Australian editor and writer; November 7, 1932 – December 4, 2015 MARJORIE PIZER Australian poet; 1920 – January 4, 2016

horse, but I still remember how I was near crucified in certain circles for saying this.”

MICHEL TOURNIER French writer; December 19, 1924 – January 18, 2016 CAROLYN D.WRIGHT American poet; January 6, 1949 – January 12, 2016

Landmark NORPA production secures funds

A unique collaborative theatre project from NORPA, Bundjalung Nghari – Three Brothers, will receive funding in the form of a Regional Partnerships Grant from Arts NSW. Through a mix of traditional and contemporary language, dance, song, visuals and movement, renowned Aboriginal theatre and dance practitioners are collaborating to develop the work, which will premiere in 2017.

“The Northern Rivers region has a strong Aboriginal community including nationally accomplished Bundjalung artists,” said NORPA artistic director and co-director of Three Brothers, Julian Louis. “The aim is to come together to tell a Bundjalung story with an Aboriginal voice, to devise a contemporary theatre work that speaks across generations and cultures, fusing the traditional with the contemporary, across dance, song and language.”

The project is a partnership between NORPA, Bundjalung Elders Council, Ngulingah Local Aboriginal Land Council, Northern Rivers Conservatorium, Playwriting Australia and Interrelate Family Centre. More information can be found at http://norpa.org.au/productions/threebrothers/

Donations needed

Friends of the Libraries Byron are currently collecting books for the Annual Book Fair to be held April 9-10 at Byron Surf Club. Anyone interested in donating some

books can call 0449 680 665 or 6685 3030 or email byronbayfol@gmail.com

New literary café for Gold Coast

A new licensed café and bookshop has opened its doors at the Paradise Island Resort on the Gold Coast. REaD (standing for Read, Eat and Drink) will host book launches and readings and offers a ‘fireside lounge area’, with owner Vicki Kersey saying she was “aiming for the aura of an eclectic vintage English drawing room complete with roaring fire, good books and games. I want it to be a creative hub for local authors and book clubs and local musos. It is a little hidden gem close to Surfers Paradise but away from the hustle and bustle.”

QUOTAT ION CORNER

“The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.”

— John Dos Passos northerly | 005

>> INTERVIEW

In the name of the rose: Lisa Brockwell and her earth girls For North Coast-based poet Lisa Brockwell, the publication of her first collection, Earth Girls, marks the culmination of several years of writing in response to her surroundings and establishing her voice amid Australia’s everwidening poetry spectrum. As she prepares for the book’s launch, Lisa allows northerly an insight into its path to publication and her sphere of ideas.

Can you describe the journey to your debut collection being published? How far back do these poems go and how smooth was the process of making your selection?

These poems have been written over the past seven years. I started the Angelina and Jennifer dramatic monologues in 2009 and those poems are a good example of slow poems. They were first published last year and I was working on them right up until that point, so they were six years in the making. Other poems came fast, but that is a rare, and lovely, experience. I’d like more of those! Choosing poems for the collection was a process – it could feel a bit like glaciers shifting. I’ve been moving poems around in a ‘collection’ since 2014. Some new ones have been added and some poems I liked and thought were good enough were left out because they didn’t fit, or were too similar in tone or form to other poems in the book.

Which poets have most influenced your work?

That’s a big question. There are many poets whose work I love and carry with me. Whether those I most admire have had any influence on me is for others to judge, I think. Since I was a teenager, the poets I have come back to again and again include Coleridge, Hopkins, Rilke, Ted Hughes and Elizabeth Bishop. Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Porter and Judith Beveridge are the Australian poets that formed my poetic frame of reference. Two UK poets working now whose poems I greatly respect and admire are Jo Shapcott and Don Paterson. Kei Miller and Fiona Benson are also wonderful and I’d thoroughly recommend their work. I’m also on a bit of an Edna St. Vincent Millay bender at the moment, too.

006 | northerly

>>INTERVIEW

How have your local surroundings in the Northern Rivers had an impact on your poetry?

A huge impact. I moved here with my husband eight years ago and soon afterwards we adopted our baby son from Taiwan. All of the poems in this collection were written since we moved here. It’s been an incredibly fertile time, and very challenging, too. Lots of the animal and landscape poems in the book are directly inspired by the country and the cows, swamphens, echidnas, snakes, cats, horses, mice and dogs we live with and near. But not always in the romantic way people might associate with poetry: one poem was inspired by my feelings of horror at a children’s birthday party at Macadamia Castle. There is a sequence of poems inspired by an exhibition of Philip Wolfhagen landscape paintings I saw at the wonderful Tweed Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah, and the actual gallery itself is just as important as the paintings to those poems. There are plenty of Sydney and London poems in the mix too because they are both cities I lived in prior to moving here. And the Angelina [Jolie] and Jennifer [Aniston] monologues are set in Venice and LA (of course!).

How important is how a poem looks on the page to you in terms of its form and spacing? And is accessibility a priority for you?

How a poem looks is important, but no way near as important as how it reads: poems are always composed in a particular form. For me, sound, metre and rhythm are much more important than how the poem looks on the page. I find most concrete poetry pretty ho-hum. That’s not to say I advocate performance over solitary reading.

I believe the primary relationship in poetry is between the words on the page and the reader. But those markings on the page denote sound and rhythm, like musical notation. The sound of a word, the metre of a line, the rhythm of a phrase, all carry meaning in a poem.

Accessibility is a priority for me, but not at the expense of intelligence, nuance or complexity. But I do abhor poems that are deliberately opaque, or ‘clever’ – that’s just a parlour game being played by an irrelevant coterie.

And it happens a lot in the poetry world. I love poems that are genuine, that are striving to say something and to engage with the mysteries of life. If a poem is genuine and it’s a good poem then it can’t be paraphrased. It’s not about something, it is something. So I want my poems to be accessible, but by that I just mean that I want a reader to be able to engage with the poems, to find something there. That doesn’t mean the poem is easy, or able to be explained.

I think all good poems are accessible because they dip into the deep pool of language and meaning and cultural reference that humans share. When a poem dips into that place then all sorts of connotations and associations reverberate for a reader, way beyond anything the writer consciously had in mind when they were composing the poem.

For example, I wrote some poems last year about roses. I knew the roses were important, symbolically, to the poems, but I was also acutely aware that they’ve been done to death in English-language poetry. I was really careful as I was writing, trying to avoid falling into cliché and also trying to avoid what I thought I should be saying. Writing a poem is a process of discovery. For me, I can pretty much guarantee that if a finished poem in any way resembles my initial idea for the poem then it

will be a failure – it’s vital to allow the poem to open up and take me somewhere unexpected.

Some time after I finished writing I found myself reading T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets for the first time.

I probably shouldn’t admit that, but although I love Prufrock I’d been burned by The Waste Land and so had steered clear of Four Quartets in reaction. Needless to say, it was a very humbling experience. Everything I had been exploring and straining to say in my poems about and through roses had already been said by Eliot much more skilfully and beautifully, a hundred years ago. What I’m trying, clumsily, to illustrate is the deep tradition and lineage that every poem ever written taps into. Roses have many cultural meanings. And that’s why good poems that are written in good faith, poems that are genuine and wanting to communicate with a reader, are accessible, even if they are difficult. This is not to discount the big and real questions about dominant discourses and there being a real need to subvert the cultural meanings that exclude or subjugate particular groups in society; as a woman I am very cognizant of that – of the political and economic and gender and racial realities behind the cultural meaning of roses.

Who shovels the shit and who gets to smell the roses, for example? Who gets to write the poem about the rose and who is the object, being compared with a rose?

But the great thing about poetry is that those dominant discourses can be engaged with and subverted too, within the poem.

What was your intention with the book’s title, Earth Girls?

And that’s one of the things I wanted to do with the title: signal that this is a book of poems written by a woman, but I hope the themes and subjects are universal – I’m writing for earth boys as well as earth girls.

I decided to call the collection Earth Girls as an idiomatic response to the Martian school of defamiliarisation that I have always found disrespectful and awfully pleased with itself. I don’t think Anglophone poetry needed a Martian perspective to freshen up its stale and pompous tendencies, it just needed to give more space to good poets writing excellent poems with a perspective much more from the margins. I think the perspective of an earth girl is more strange and ‘slant’ than the perspective of a straight white guy in Oxford masquerading as a Martian.

The title comes from one of the poems in the book – a dramatic monologue in the voice of an alien, lamenting that, in his experience, earth girls are definitely not easy.

Finally, given the relatively small audience there is for poetry, what are the key ways you anticipate promoting the book in the coming months?

I am willing to promote the book in any way I can! I might do a sponsored ‘roll around Australia’ just like one of Chris Lilley’s characters in We Can Be Heroes.

But seriously, I would love to read or speak at festivals and events both here in the Northern Rivers or further afield.

Earth Girls is published by Pitt Street Poetry.

northerly | 007

>>EXTRACT

Extract: Stumbling Stones

by Airdre Grant

Local author Airdre Grant recently published her book Stumbling Stones: A Path Through Grief, Love and Loss, a collection of stories, case studies and strategies designed to help people traverse the landscape of loss and grief and to provide support through painful transitions. Here northerly offers a taste of Stumbling Stones in the form of an edited extract.

CHAPTER EIGHT Remember to indicate I was in the car with my old friend Cara. In the last year, by slow and painful degrees, her mother had succumbed to illness and passed away. Cara is a robust, practical type. A no-nonsense woman. She had had to deal with practicalities within her family as they wrestled over wills, ashes and the leftover business of their mother’s life. Cara was well equipped for that, but less equipped for the sibling tug of war and argument about money and possessions.

After the funeral – the tea, sandwiches and brandies with relatives and friends – one of the most challenging tasks of dealing with a death is the clean-up. The disposal of stuff that mattered to someone and now looks like so much, well, stuff. This is what is left behind, what Margaret Gibson, in her book Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life, refers to as ‘objects of death’. They can cause so much trouble, confusion and angst.

While Cara was sentimental over some of her mother’s belongings, her sister wanted to dump the lot. Another family member swept in, retrieved the only objects of monetary value and took them away, asserting that no one really wanted them. Ugly, harsh words were spoken and love was lost at a time when love was needed.

Another friend of mine, well acquainted with the mysteries and passions of death, said, ‘You know, it’s not greed that makes people behave so strongly and strangely around possessions. It’s grief.’ I realised it’s little surprise that large helpings of wisdom are needed to fully understand that, when I considered the havoc and emotional chaos that can occur after a death.

Cara and I were chatting about our children, the way old friends do, as I drove her to the airport. Suddenly she began to weep for her mother. I drove, she wept.

Eventually, her tears subsided and she got ready to negotiate the numerous gates that are part of airport travel. She was fine to do it. That is how it is – one moment you’re fine and then a wave catches you and knocks you sideways. Your heart clenches in pain. You stagger a little, you weep. Then you go and deal with the practicalities of travel, of shopping centre car parks, electricity bills.

In Wellington, New Zealand, there is a tunnel that leads through a hill on the way to the airport. At the airport end, the road immediately divides and drivers need to make a swift decision to choose left or right. To assist, the roads authority has thoughtfully posted a sign 008 | northerly

for drivers, saying Remember to indicate. This is good advice. Just think how much clearer to negotiate life would be if people indicated their intentions.

In our death-denying society, it is wise to put your house in order while you still have the wit and wherewithal to do so. Others have to clean up after you are gone and often at a time when they are feeling distressed and emotional. So, friends, remember to indicate. Make a will. Get your end-of-life instructions sorted out. There are people who can help you organise and specify your end-of-life preferences, but if you don’t prepare, at the end of your life you might find yourself in a position where you cannot express how you want to be cared for and what level of medical intervention you might or might not want.

Fresh from the death of my father and brother, and the harsh reality of packing up their homes, I went to a workshop specialising in Death Directives. It was undoubtedly confronting and yet somehow empowering.

We were given questions to consider – all of which were decisions that someone would have to make. For example: what sort of funeral would we want? There are many things to consider, such as cremation or burial, music, prayers, poems, readings, ceremony style, viewing (or not) of remains, washing of the body, vigil, wake, type of coffin and so on.

Some religions make those decisions for you, so this may not be relevant. But there may also be a moment before death to consider. Do you want to have lifeprolonging treatment? If so, what sort and for how long?

What do you consider a reasonable quality of life? Over the course of the workshop I thought about it and, for me, not being able to read or hear stories would make my life very small.

These are all life-altering decisions you can make, or at least have influence on, that ease the burden of grief for others in a difficult time. Without trying to control from beyond the veil, it is helpful for those left behind if you have remembered to indicate.

For the grieving, loss can be marked by clothing. The manner of our dress offers signals to help us negotiate the exigencies of daily exchange. Surf shorts, tattoos and T-shirts with political slogans all signal the attitude of the wearer. In mourning – and this can and will go on for an unknown length of time – a mourning brooch or a black armband indicates loss and that the carapace of daily life is fractured.

>> EXTRACT

Mourning clothes used to be much more common, even required. In many European and Europeaninfluenced countries there was a time around the eighteenth century when there were shops that sold mourning clothes, complete with hushed atmosphere and discreet assistants.

Such garb tells us that someone is in the fragile space of loss and grief. The colours of the clothing are an outward display of inner feelings. Here, say the clothes, I am sad: please understand that I have suffered a loss and am treading a delicate path in the world, and if I look remote, it’s not about you; it’s because I am in mourning and need time.

The business of mourning in Victorian England was prescribed. When Queen Victoria of England was widowed in 1861, at the age of forty-five, she mourned the loss of her beloved royal consort, Prince Albert, and wore black mourning dress for forty years. She refused to appear in public for three years. Eventually, her subjects became exasperated and hung a sign on the gates of Buckingham Palace, saying: These commanding premises to be let or sold in consequence of the late occupants’ declining business.

Queen Victoria’s obsession with mourning the loss of her husband had a strong influence on the industry of grief and mourning. At that time, women would wear black, usually crepe (nothing shiny), for a year, moving down to black with a white trim and then, perhaps, to purple as a transition back into the busy world. Jewellery was discreet: a brooch inlaid with the hair of a lost loved one, jet (black) earrings. Men would have black-bordered handkerchiefs and would wear a black armband. Women might wear veils to hide a face saddened with tears.

In some countries the colour of mourning is white. In other cultures people daub themselves with ashes; some observe elaborate rituals of fire and smoke. The main thing is that by wearing mourning clothes or features of mourning dress, we indicate our state. Grief and mourning have no timetable. You may think you are okay and then, suddenly, you know you are not.

After my twin died I tried to go out with friends, but found I offered poor company. I should have known better and stayed home. Then when I felt ready, it would have been good to wear something that indicated I had a tender heart and wasn’t quite ready to laugh and carry on with the group. This would have told the world that my quietness didn’t need explaining away or oversensitive

understanding, just acceptance that I was making my way back into the daily world. Let me sit, my black armband or my jet brooch would say, I am here yet not quite here.

A few months later I met up with Cara in a cafe in inner-city Sydney. A male staffer with a carefully styled beard, tattoos and glowing white teeth was talking behind the counter to a blonde-headed young woman with her back to us. We waited. Cara looked around at the cafe. The tables needed cleaning.

Cara cleared her throat loudly. The waiter stopped the conversation after winking at his companion.

Cara placed our order, adding coolly, ‘Could we possibly have a clean table?’

At a signal from the man the woman went and cleaned up a place for us.

‘Really,’ muttered Cara crossly as we sat down, ‘I have had enough of being ignored, overlooked, bullied or trampled on. After all the kerfuffle over Mum’s death and the will, I know this for sure. I will make my wishes abundantly clear to all about what I want to happen when I die. I am not going to rely on any assumptions of good manners or reasonable behaviour.’

The blonde girl placed our coffee carefully in front of us. When I looked up I could see she had Down’s syndrome. She beamed at us. ‘That’s my big brother who made your coffee,’ she offered. ‘He lets me help out sometimes.’ She smiled as she moved away.

‘Oh,’ said Cara. ‘See what I mean? Assumptions will get you every time.’

I looked at my friend’s tired, ageing, beautiful face.

Pinned to her crumpled linen shirt was a beautiful silver brooch with jet inlay. She smiled and touched it.

‘This was Mum’s,’ she said. ‘She wore it when Nan died and now I do. I don’t know if anyone can read the signal, but it’s there, just the same.’ As we left the cafe she put twenty dollars in the tip jar.

Stumbling Stones: A Path Through Grief, Love and Loss is published by Hardie Grant Books.

Airdre Grant, a Kiwi by birth, lives in northern NSW. She works as an academic at Southern Cross University, where she competed a PhD on the relationship between spirituality and health. Her life has been instinctual rather than carefully planned, less a tale of remarkable tale of success and more of a muddling through. She can often be found sitting on her verandah above the township of Lismore, contemplating her next move. Since her daughters left home, she finds herself engaged in a subtle, ongoing power struggle with her large ginger cat, Gordon.

northerly | 009

>>INTERVIEW

Voice of a people that you can’t read anywhere else, and that the mainstream just doesn’t cover. I thought it was a good newspaper back then, and I was really lucky to get a job there.

What proportion of the paper’s readership is based in remote communities?

We go everywhere, from Tasmania up to Torres Strait and Western Australia, and we also go to every single Aboriginal medical service. It’s a mixture of urban and regional. We get a lot of readers, for example, in APY Lands [Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara], in the northwest corner of South Australia.

Twenty-five years on from its inception, the Koori Mail now stands proudly as one of Australia’s most important and successful sources of coverage for Indigenous affairs and culture. The Lismore-based newspaper, published fortnightly, is owned jointly by five small Bundjalung Country organisations, with all profits invested back into the Indigenous community across the nation.

The Koori Mail averages a fortnightly readership of more than 100,000, and is the only ABC-audited Indigenous newspaper. The paper is home to a number of leading Indigenous voices as columnists and contributors, and publishes poems and stories along with its reportage of social and political affairs, community news and sport.

With several publications catering to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community going out of business in recent times, such as Tracker magazine and the National Indigenous Times, the Koori Mail plays an increasingly vital role in a turbulent print media climate.

Here, former editor Rudi Maxwell speaks to northerly about the paper’s mission and its place in Australia’s wider media landscape. Interview by Barnaby Smith.

What was your awareness of the Koori Mail prior to your becoming involved with it?

I’m a local girl so I was a reader and a subscriber. I found it extremely interesting because it was journalism and stories 010 | northerly

Is it a challenge to get the balance of coverage right between the states and territories, and between the country and city?

That is a real challenge. We’ve got a really active readership and people contact us when they’ve got a story, and at the moment more people are contacting us than we can get to. It’s difficult to ensure the right mix of every state and territory for every edition. If you look at the general population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the majority lives on the Eastern Seaboard. If you apply that to our readers – and you probably can – then they are in New South Wales and Queensland, and then Western Australia.

We’re popular in certain areas because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders don’t get to share their stories through other means. So we get some really good stories from remote regions. For instance, the ABY Lands sent us a beautiful story about the first all-female Aboriginal fire crew. They sent some wonderful photos of their training day. There is a responsibility to make sure all those voices get heard, and it’s not always easy.

You spoke on ABC radio on Adam Goodes and racism last year. Does it often occur that mainstream media approaches you for comment on such issues?

They do, and I think the more information that gets out there the better. On big issues like that, the ABC will call and ask me for comment or ask if we’ve got someone in a particular state who can comment. I think that’s useful.

I do think it’s frustrating that on the whole, mainstream coverage of Indigenous affairs is surface. It’s not always though: the ABC is doing more and more, which is good, and NITV is brilliant.

How important is social media in reaching and expanding your readership?

Aboriginal people are massive users of Facebook, so we get contacted with story ideas all the time through that.

That’s really useful for us. But we don’t tend to promote our stories very often through social media, mainly

>>INTERVIEW

because it can detract from our business model. We try and keep everything we can in the paper.

Do you have a lot of Indigenous people wanting to write for you or do you have to seek out new contributors?

It’s a bit of both. We’ve had a couple of wonderful Aboriginal journalism students in the last couple of years, and they’ve since moved on to work for NITV and the ABC. It’s always wonderful when you get young kids coming through, because I find that mainstream media organisations aren’t very good at encouraging Aboriginal people to go into journalism. In my generation – people in their forties – there’s not a lot of Aboriginal journalists around. There’s Stan Grant and Karla Grant, and a couple of other people coming through NITV now.

Younger people are more involved and so talented.

We’ve got contributors and columnists in every state and territory, and I do find that people want to write for us.

We’ve been around for twenty-five years, and over that time the Koori Mail has built up a reputation for being the fair and proper voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, so we do get approached a lot.

I find that mainstream media organisations aren’t very good at encouraging Aboriginal people to go into journalism

With the shutting down of Tracker magazine and National Indigenous Times, do you feel an extra responsibility to be a strong voice for the Indigenous population?

I do feel a lot more responsibility. We are now the only generalist Aboriginal newspaper, and I feel sad for journalism and though this may sound a bit pompous, democracy, in a way. A smaller and smaller pool of journalists means less and less information and less holding people in power to scrutiny; I think at the moment there are fewer and fewer people asking the people in power the questions that need to be asked. I am glad that Guardian Australia came along when it did, because I think it’s made at least some difference. But we’re seeing fewer journalists everywhere, and in regional areas it’s pretty stark.

What hope do you hold for Indigenous issues gaining greater traction in mainstream media in the future?

I think we have seen some improvements in the reporting of Indigenous affairs, but there’s still a hell of a lot of stuff that gets missed. Big issues too, like the stolen wages, which I hadn’t even heard of prior to working at the Koori Mail, to my shame. I don’t

think the mainstream is necessarily lazy, it’s more that Indigenous issues don’t come across people’s desks unless you go looking for them. And because of racism and lazy stereotypes that we still see in the mainstream, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people mistrust the mainstream media, so they don’t go there. www.koorimail.com * This interview was conducted in November 2015, when Rudi Maxwell was editor of the Koori Mail. She no longer holds this position.

northerly | 011

>> FEATURE

A commonplace vibrancy: Craig McGregor’s motel life

With the publication of a new collection of short stories, Craig McGregor has returned to fiction to explore the intricacies of personal relationships with typical subtlety and compassion.

A man of many literary guises, McGregor stands as one of the nation’s foremost political and cultural commentators, always driven by his radar for injustice, an enduring subversiveness and the “sacredness of the ordinary” as he puts it in his new book, the twenty-fifth of this career.

Barnaby Smith meets him.

I

n Craig McGregor’s open-plan living area at his home in Byron Bay, a very fine Maton guitar sits upright in its stand. There is a piece of paper stuck to it, on which are written the names of a dozen or so old folk songs. He was quite the protest singer in his time, performing anti-nuclear songs at demonstrations and proving himself a deft finger-picker.

Even if he doesn’t pick up the guitar regularly today, it’s still an appropriate ornament: now aged 82, McGregor has an air of the late American folk singer Pete Seeger about him. It’s the soft voice, the neat grey beard and a general and unwavering benevolence of spirit summed up by his frequent exclamation of “Very good!” when discussing things he approves of, like music (his beloved Bob Dylan in particular), poetry, travel, painting, the Australian landscape and his friends and family.

012 | northerly

It’s a comparison McGregor would probably appreciate. Like Seeger, McGregor is a veteran of the left, who has held steadfast to his progressive, pluralist convictions throughout what has been a tumultuous but rich life in which he has observed and written about wholesale changes in Australian society as the generations have passed. His books of political and social commentary, from Profile of Australia (1966) to Class in Australia (1997), stand as seminal and still-influential texts, while he received Walkley Awards for profiles of Bob Hawke and Jill Wran.

“I would have liked to go into politics,” he says.

“I decided that I had the passion for it because of, I suppose, my left-wing views on Australia and what’s going wrong with this country, but I didn’t have the resilience. I didn’t have the character. So I’ve kept on writing about politics.”

Most recently, McGregor’s priorities have lain not with political writing, but with a new collection of short stories. Launched in December, Motel is a series of pieces composed largely within the last ten years, which he enigmatically describes as a “deconstructed novella”. In keeping with his previous works of fiction, including novels Don’t Talk To Me About Love (1971) and The See-Through Revolver (1977), Motel features its share of stylistic experimentation. On one hand, the book employs internal monologue (a device he says was initially inspired by his reading of Virginia Woolf as a young man); in other stories, such as opener ‘A Fictional Character’, there is a certain clipped rhythm to dialogue between educated characters that sometimes reads like a strange, Australian version of Jean-Paul Sartre’s plays, or even French New Wave cinema. Some of the more freewheeling passages, with their elastic interpretation of punctuation, read almost like prose poems.

The “deconstructed novella” description, he says, stems from a certain blurring of the lines between these fifteen stories. “Most of the stories are about the same characters, and they haven’t got names.”

Many of the stories are set on the New South Wales North Coast, where he has lived with his family since 2000 (having previously lived in the area in the early 1980s). Motel is therefore infused with the moods and shades of this atmospheric, everchanging region, McGregor attempting to pick up on a complex relationship between community – a

>> FEATURE

was a fundamentally unfair transient community at society due to class divisions that – and land.

I hear blokes talking, and they’re (that many still believe to be “I’ve tried to capture bloody .

I often non-existent), and that culture something of the landscape was becoming hegemonised by don’t like what they’re saying but as a symbol for the lives the proliferation of the middle of white and Aboriginal class. An obvious question for people,” he says. “A metaphor McGregor must be whether, for what they’re feeling as nearly twenty years on from that argument, anything has they’re travelling through. They’re sexual travellers, changed. contemporary travellers.

“The middle class has become even more dominant “It looks as though I’m becoming a regional or in Australian culture, and the working class more provincial writer because most of the stories are set on diminished.

And because of that, Australian politics the North Coast,” he adds half-jokingly. “But there’s reflects this middle classing of Australia. So if you look nothing wrong with that, look at William Faulkner, at, for instance, Turnbull and Shorten, they represent the Tennessee Williams, Cormac McCarthy, Tim Winton… same middle-class attitudes, which is a great shame.

There’s nothing wrong with being regional.”

“It’s made Australian society much more affluent, Motel is the follow-up to 2013’s Left Hand Drive. much more comfortable, much less egalitarian, much Subtitled ‘A Social and Political Memoir’, this was an less concerned with the plight of minorities, including expansive autobiographical journey through McGregor’s Aboriginals and migrants. It’s become a place where I’m life to date, addressing his personal experiences and not as comfortable as I used to be.” challenges as well as offering analysis of national and This bleak outlook is tempered by his hopes for international affairs. In stark terms he describes domestic multiculturalism, or, as he has frequently put it down the violence at the hands of his father, and being the victim years, ‘pluralism’. That is, “the sense that society is made of bullying at the elite Cranbrook School in Sydney. After up of many different and sometimes conflicting cultures working as a journalist with Fairfax as a teenager and and initiatives, and that it’s important to realise that that then studying for an Arts degree, he undertook the wellgives strength to our democratic structure.” trodden pilgrimage to London in the early 1960s, the first of two stints overseas that were to shape him as a writer As impassioned as ever on the moral life of the nation, and a person. In the United Kingdom he met his wife one wonders why politics has never made its way into his Jane (what he describes as his “hyper-desiring sexuality” creative works in any overt way. McGregor’s stories and towards her being one source of mirth in Left Hand novels are largely concerned with love, the dynamics of Drive), and, impressively, befriended such significant folk personal relationships and the domestic. “I’ve never tried musicians as Long John Baldry and particularly Davey to import politics into fiction – maybe I should have,” Graham. It was in London that Profile of Australia took McGregor concedes. shape, and his life as a serious writer began.

“Political consciousness has spilled over into Motel’s However, it was two years in the United States that stories, but it’s not dominant. The main characters will consolidated McGregor’s ideological and social priorities. talk and dispute about politics, but its personalised, and Living in Harlem, New York as a result of a Harkness always subsumed within a relationship.”

Fellowship between 1969 and 1971, he was exposed to Another way a certain kind of social commentary the volatile political upheaval of the time, including the creeps into McGregor’s fiction is his use of Australia’s Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the rise own unique spoken vernacular. Motel is rich with (and splintering) of the American New Left. Woodstock, the coarseness of Australian idioms and slang, much Altamont and the Manson murders all occurred while of it profane. It is not so much a glorification as it is McGregor lived in America with his young family; whilst a fascination and admiration, echoing a significant there, he wrote long-form journalism for the New York influence, D.H. Lawrence. In this way, perhaps depictions Times and others. Mind appropriately expanded, he of class do make their way into his stories after all. returned to Australia with a new sense of energy for his “Sometimes I walk around Byron Bay and I hear own writing and his role as an advocate for change. blokes talking, and they’re bloody rough speakers. I often “I came back full of fire and determined to change don’t like what they’re saying but it’s got such energy and things in Australia,” he says. “Some of my books since vernacular enthusiasm to it that it brings me up short. I’d then, including Class In Australia, are really attempts, and love to write a book using that language. It has a rough I don’t want to overstate it, to express what I felt about sort of commonplace vibrancy to it.”

America and the idealism of its young people. I was so He cites Australian Frank Moorhouse as among his het up by America.” most important influences in terms of writing such A book about his experiences, Up Against The Wall dialogue. The economy of Ernest Hemingway was – America, America, was published in 1973. Indeed, another general stylistic touchstone. Interestingly, he puts perhaps driven by his time in New York, McGregor was Hemingway on a pedestal with Henry Lawson. particularly prolific during this decade, with non-fiction “His laconic, understated style reminded me very books, novels, journalistic profiles, television and film much of Lawson. I often wondered if Lawson had read scripts and essays coming thick and fast. Admittedly, Hemingway or Hemingway had read Lawson, because there was plenty to write about, Gough Whitlam and all. the similarities between their approaches were amazing.”

Of his own books, it is Class In Australia that The other major cultural figure that has loomed McGregor refers to most frequently during conversation. large over McGregor’s career is of course Bob Dylan.

Indeed, this sociological treatise had a wide impact and His relationship with Dylan’s music has been wellbecame a set-text in schools and universities. To put it documented elsewhere, including Left Hand Drive, in summary terms, it made the argument that Australia

rough speakers

it’s got such energy

northerly | 013

>> FEATURE

suffice to say he first encountered the singer in a Sydney hotel room in 1966, went on to interview him several times over the ensuing decades, and in 1978 edited the volume Bob Dylan: A Retrospective. Today, he strongly refutes any suggestion of ‘Dylan fatigue’ and still sticks to his oft-repeated line that Dylan is “The greatest song-poet since Homer… I’m prepared to argue the case for hours.”

You don’t doubt it. In fact, McGregor is most enthusiastic and eloquent when talking about subjects, ideas and writers outside of himself. I’m put in mind of a famous Paris Review interview with Jorge Luis Borges where, with the utmost charm, he consistently bats away questions regarding his own work by manoeuvring conversation toward other writers, to the mild frustration of the awed interviewer. It’s not quite like that with McGregor, yet he does exhibit a humility that is rare among writers and artists, summed up by comments such as, “I feel blessed because I’ve had such a remarkably happy life. I doubt whether I’ve ever deserved it, but it’s kept me quite light-hearted.”

This modesty is at least in part down to a decision to put the world, rather than himself, first in his writing.

The result is an eclectic career that has seen him as both a chronicler of Australia’s often-eccentric public life, and a modernism-inflected innovator in his creative works.

“Years and years ago I decided to stop trying to work out who I was. I’d had a tumultuous childhood and was quite hurt by the break-up of our family, so I was very self-protective for a long time, in terms of personal relationships. But I realised that if I went on being selfprotective, I’d miss out on almost everything worthwhile in life, so I decided to open myself up to hurt and experience and disappointment.

014 | northerly

“As part of that, I decided I was sick of myself as a subject. Identity, self-discovery, who cares? I decided to just write about things: ideas, people, music, experiences.

I wasn’t just going to project myself.”

Motel is published by Arcadia, an imprint of Australian Scholarly Publishing.

>> POEM

The Nightly Trip Peter Mitchell

Here’s the nightly trip again as you drive along the serpentine Bangalow to Lismore Road.

Another session of flak from bitumen: python bends reproaching carelessness, the antithesis of a freeway.

Headlights startle around a right-hand curve, another pair follow, appear fade, appear fade, appear fade.

Is this where it happened? Two lights like snakes’ eyes appear in the darkness behind and rise as if ready to strike. Just as quickly, they turn off and disappear.

Suddenly, blue lights slash the fold of night, scream past.

Was that the sound she heard while lying on broken glass?

The wind soughs the reptile scrub as the road slithers over hill, through valley. No matter how often you drive this road, you never get used to it. Highbeams knife around a right-hander, pixelate eyes, push strain. The steering wheel falters as the tyres cross the double lines. Was that how it happened? Eyes now alert, the heart yearns for the meditation of straight blue metal.

Lismore’s lights wink as the car wheels the final curve.

Blinkers tick-tock the last intersection, tyres hiss to a halt.

Ahead the lighted hospital calms the injured night.

Peter Mitchell is the author of the poetry chapbook, The Scarlet Moment (Picaro Press, 2009). Living in Bundjalung Country, he writes poetry, short fiction, memoir and literary criticism. His writing has been published in international and national print and online journals, magazines and anthologies. In 2014, he was awarded the Dorothy Hewett Flagship Fellowship for Poetry (Varuna, The Writers’ House) and, at present, is writing his memoir, Fragments of the Lurgi: A Mosaic on an Artist With Disability Grant (Australia Council). Copies of The Scarlet Moment are available from the author for $5.

northerly | 015

>> ARTS

Riding the Rails

Arts round-up...

Stars align for Bluesfest

It’s hardly an event that needs any more publicity, yet it must be said that this year’s Bluesfest offers a particularly impressive line-up across its five days over the Easter weekend. Like any modern music festival aiming for an all-round cultural experience, Bluesfest offers plenty of ‘literary’ content in the shape of talks organised for the Boomerang Precinct, a partnership between Bluesfest and revered Indigenous arts curator Rhoda Roberts. On the bill are George Negus, Archie Roach, Tony Burke, Amelia Telford and Clayton Donovan. northerly’s music picks, meanwhile, are: D’Angelo, Brian Wilson, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne and Songhoy Blues.

Bluesfest takes place March 24-28. Full line-up and ticket information can be found at www.bluesfest.com.au

Angus McDonald at Tweed Regional Gallery

Life is very like a railway An illustrated lecture by Robert Ketton, Monday April 11.

The April ADFAS lecture will see Robert Ketton look at the many ways in which railways have changed the world.

From the introduction of standard time to their impact on the national diet and the redistribution of population, railways continue to have a huge influence on everyday life everywhere – except perhaps in regional Australia.

From fine art to architecture, from film and theatre to literature, Robert will look at the social impact of the railways, which have been the source of both national unity and national disgrace.

Robert Ketton was educated at King’s School Tynemouth, Newcastle University and Burton School of Speech and Drama. He migrated to Australia in 1974 to help establish theatre in Queensland secondary schools. In 1976 he was appointed as a lecturer in theatre at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. Over the next thirty-three years Robert taught acting and directed dozens of plays for the university’s Performance Centre, retiring in 2009. He now works as a communication consultant, and is in demand as an MC and public speaker. Robert has published a number of books and plays and is currently working on an illustrated children’s book with his artist wife, Catherine.

The lecture will take place on April 11 at the A&I Hall, Bangalow.

Members and guests are invited to drinks at 6pm prior to the lecture at 6:30pm, followed by a light supper afterwards. Guests are welcome at $25 per person.

016 | northerly

The Northern Rivers’ own Angus McDonald will present White Noise, a series of still lifes in oil and gouache, at the Tweed Regional Gallery.

Lennox Head-based McDonald has exhibited internationally over the last twenty years. He says of his new exhibition, “If I had to identify one element that binds my practice together, it would be light. In almost every picture, I’m chasing after light as it passes over surfaces and planes, bodies, objects, and empty space. In doing so, I’m attempting to articulate simple statements about beauty which have a tranquil potency and are truthful.”

White Noise runs March 4 – May 1 at Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah. www.artgallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au

Ocean on film at Byron Theatre The Ocean Film Festival Australia will showcase more than two hours of footage shot above and below the water’s surface. This selection of short films celebrates divers, surfers, swimmers and oceanographers and features startling cinematography across film of coral gardens, jellyfish blooms and schools of fish, along with up-close footage of seals, dolphins, turtles and sharks. The imagery is complemented by interviews and narration, with the screening at Byron Theatre a stop on a world tour.

Ocean Film Festival 2016 will be screened at Byron Theatre on April 6. For more information visit www.byroncentre.com.au

Behind the screen

>> FEATURE

Aspiring screenwriter and NRWC member Carly Lorente was recently selected for Screenworks Northern Rivers’ Inside the Writers’ Room program, an initiative designed to help regionally-based emerging writers gain understanding of professional writers’ rooms and create connections between local content creators and established production houses. Carly made the trip to Sydney to sit in on a writers’ room full of some of Australia’s leading television professionals as they develop a story into a script. Here she offers an account of her experience observing the coalface of Australian small-screen production.

I was at O-Sushi when I received the call from Ken at Northern Rivers Screenworks telling me I was one of five local writers selected for the Inside the Writers’ Room placement program. As he talked, I shoved roll after roll into each of my two children’s mouths, cradling the phone with my neck, and when he mentioned that I was to leave for Sydney in four days time, I jumped in excitement, nearly bringing the whole operation down.

The kids looked at me with wide eyes as I hung up the phone, but it wasn’t until I ordered green tea ice cream that they clapped.

Once a full-time writer at various magazines in faraway countries, and then a dedicated freelancer, my writing life of late has consisted of forty-five-minute bursts during baby nap time and lots of notes on my iPhone in between. I’ve been ploughing away at my desk at home in Newrybar, which of course isn’t a desk but a tiny section of the lounge, crusted in old biscuit crumbs and squashed avocado. I always need to swipe away the toy clutter first, and as I work, laptop on lap, I do get the occasional whiff of an old urine ‘accident’ that tries to pull me away from my scenes, but I don’t let it. I type furiously. Occasional freelance articles, the first draft of my novel, and recently, scripts.

I was happy to be chosen to visit CJZ, as they produce some amazing factual television, Go Back To Where You Came From being one of my favourites. I was sent a brief for the scheduled three-day brainstorming session for a primetime series, which you’ll have to kill me to find out more about. Otherwise they will.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had a case of the stomach flurries when I walked into the writers’ room on the Monday morning. I needn’t have worried. Present were a bunch of generous, talented people including three writers, the producer, the network commissioning the series and creators of the original idea, a note taker and me – the observer. I was happily surprised to find not only that the women outnumbered the men but that local scriptwriter Belinda Chayko was there, as well as another very talented working mama.

There was no formal structure to the brainstorming.

A long oblong table where the writers shared their ideas

set the scene, with lots of sporadic caffeine deliveries.

The writers were free to pitch, suggest and argue (which they did amicably) allowing everyone to get to know the characters better. If the writers reached a particular block they would have a tea break or move onto something else, and it was amazing to see the initial idea resolved at a later time as a result of something else. At first it may have seemed a little all over the place as the writers ‘aired their laundry’, so to speak, but the more and more discussion that occurred the stronger the characters and ideas became.

Most ideas put forth served as a starting point that the group ran with and built upon. With some ideas there was a difference of opinion that was eventually resolved through debate; for some ideas though, the writers agreed to disagree, noting that it would be the network that had final say.

There was actually no writing done or final scene breakdowns. Mostly, talk was of backstory and figuring out who the characters were, as well as getting a sense of the world the characters would inhabit. Research was used as a starting point and to establish the physical setting. By the end of the three days there were some vague ideas of the beats of the first episode and the potential opening scene.

To be able to see the magic unfold from screenwriters with such experience was an absolute privilege. Rather than observing the more well-oiled machine that is the writers’ rooms of a longstanding series, I was able to have insight into the process of creating a new series completing off the bat, which was helpful when thinking of my own projects. The vibe really was one of solving a puzzle, or actually the reverse is probably truer – completing a puzzle before designing the pieces.

My time with the Inside the Writer’s Room program rather felt like writing a novel with someone holding your hand through the tricky bits. A bit like sitting back on my crusty, old, stinky lounge. With other people.

For more information about the Inside The Writers’ Room program, visit www.screenworks.com.au

northerly | 017

>> SCU

A showcase of SCU student work, compiled by Dr Lynda Hawryluk

Skeletons lurk Sara Khamkoed

in the shadows of sleep.

Their cracking bones claw, creaking, creeping, closer, closer.

Crawling corpses clutch at covers, entwined between dreams and reality in a tangle of sheets.

Exposed skin flinches beneath a caustic chill.

My bare feet touch cold tiles and run to the safety of your bed, your warm skin, your steady breath.

I close my eyes and rest.

Sara Khamkoed is an artist, writer and New Colombo Plan scholar based in the Northern Rivers. She has had three short stories published in Indo-Australian Anthology of Short Fiction (2014) published by Authorspress, New Delhi, as well as articles in online journal Rochford Street Review and poetry in online journal Episteme.

018 | northerly

Setting up a free WordPress blog

>> LEARNING CURVE

With an online presence increasingly vital for writers wishing to promote a book or engage with their readership, many authors are taking up the challenge of publishing a blog on their own. So ahead of a NRWC workshop on the subject, here Finola Wennekes offers advice on how to establish a successful WordPress blog – whether you want to engage with readers and sell books or simply have an outlet for your writing.

WordPress.com is a well-established and highly popular blogging and website hosting platform that is great for personal blogs and for those wanting to test the blogging waters. You don’t have to worry about technical and coding know-how, managing spam and updates, or creating regular backups of settings and content.

WordPress.com looks after those areas for you. Better still, WordPress.com is totally free and signing up is quick and easy.

Compared to its bigger, more powerful sister, WordPress. org, WordPress.com has some limitations that include adverts displaying on your blog (unless you pay an annual fee for them to be removed). The ability to make money through your blog is also diminished, but if your key motivation is to use your blog as a platform to share writing and images and quickly connect with a community of other bloggers, WordPress.com is ideal.

Choose a niche so that readers know to choose you A small step, but an important one: decide whom you are trying to target and what it is you want to say. Being too broad – say, talking about motherhood per se – makes it difficult for readers to predict whether what you’re likely to publish in the future is of any relevance to them and their experience, and so they will be less likely to sign up to your blog. Writing about new motherhood in an isolated, rural town or photo-journaling your RV adventures as a retiree, for example, serve a niche readership and will make it easier for people to find out about your musings.

That said, if you’re not interested in connecting with an audience and just want an outlet to express thoughts, stories and ideas, then go ahead and ignore this advice.

Design, define, style The next step is to style your site to suit your personality and blog topic. Start by choosing a theme. If you’re a serious writer then maybe a predominantly textbased layout will work best; if you’re a visual artist or photographer then a grid theme could better suit your presentation needs.

Next, define your blog with a title and tagline to help people easily find your site, and change colours, backgrounds, header images and fonts to give your blog some personality.

Want your blog to be part of a larger site? Create pages and add them to a navigational menu, and decide which

page you want your visitors to arrive at. Will it be a static page with some links to key areas, or a feed of your latest blog posts?

And then add some widgets. Widgets are little snippets of information added to footers and sidebars and can pretty much be whatever you want them to be. This includes images, copyright notices, social media feeds, top posts, blog roll, author information, archives and category clouds.

Create content that is uniquely you The bit you’ve been waiting for: creating and publishing content. This part is so uniquely up to you that it’s unwise to make too many recommendations.

General rules are that images help to engage audiences and that shorter paragraphs written in a conversational rhythm help with readability (see the Flesch Reading Ease Test for further details), but if your writing is academic or your intention is to be purely text-based, go with that.

Ultimately, you define how you want your posts and pages to present. Be you. There will always be an audience for authentic content.

Publicise, connect and grow your blog One of the real benefits of creating a blog on WordPress.com is that it gives you immediate access to a large network of bloggers, accessed through topic filters and via ‘Recommendations’ and ‘Discover’. By reading, following and commenting on other people’s blogs, you can quickly find yourself connected with likeminded people and feeling inspired to write future posts for your own blog.

And if you want to encourage readers to spread the word about your blog, one final consideration is to encourage sharing via social media sharing buttons and in-text Call To Action (CTA).

Finola will be presenting a NRWC workshop on setting up a WordPress blog on April 2. For further details see page 21.

Working (and teaching) in media, marketing and communications for over a decade, Finola has been blogging for pleasure and business since 2010. She ghost writes for various company blogs and also publishes occasional travel stories at travelola.org. Connect with her on Twitter @finolatravelola or at www.kaboomedia.com.au

northerly | 019

>>BOOK REVIEW

False security WOLF, WOLF

By EBEN VENTER Review by Kathleen Steele

Wolf, Wolf introduces the reader to the rarefied world of a wealthy, young Afrikaans man in South Africa at a time when being rich and white was beginning to mean one was not necessarily unquestionably superior. Mattie Duiker’s life on 9 Poinsettia Drive is lavish and relatively easy compared to the poverty that surrounds the security-conscious gated suburb that he has lived in since childhood. Nevertheless, Mattie is suffering from an existential emptiness and deep anxiety that often overwhelms his ability to function. The root cause is his relationship with his father, so at first glance Mattie’s plight appears to be one of shallow first-world problems brought on by too much money and self-absorption, but his problems are real and so is his suffering.

Mattie is locked in a silent battle for his father’s love. Everything that happens (or does not) in his day is coloured by the influence his father wields, but as his father ails, Mattie’s love for his father takes on a force of its own and his emotional depth and humanity are revealed.

So much of Mattie’s life and future dreams are connected to 9 Poinsettia Drive. The house is an important character in the book because it represents security and privacy and future hope for Mattie and his lover Jack, but the danger on the streets, the poverty of the masses, and the changing balance of power is slowly permeating Mattie’s reality at 9 Poinsettia Drive. The cocooned Mercedes-Benz and security-gated lifestyle his family has always enjoyed continues to reinforce their belief that they are untouchable, but in the end, their wealth proves to be a nebulous protection at best.

Mattie’s lover Jack is a contradiction: party guy and dedicated teacher. Jack’s need for Mattie is such that he becomes both beautiful lover and the wolf at the door. He arrives one night with a wolf mask and nowhere to stay and asks to move in. Despite

020 | northerly

Mattie’s misgivings, he cannot turn him away. Jack plays the big, bad wolf with Mattie’s sister’s children in the garden while the father’s Will is read inside the house, and he sends photos to Mattie of himself in the wolf mask outside the gates of 9 Poinsettia Drive.

Mattie is a young man ill equipped to live in the real world. As his father’s illness progresses, he begins to come into himself. New beginnings and real ambitions burn in him, and he is energised into action, but when he is offered the chance to strike out alone, there is a slow burn of foreboding, as though he has been given just enough rope to put all hope out of reach.

I found Wolf, Wolf an uncomfortable read at times, but I am, no doubt, not Venter’s ideal reader.

Nonetheless, he captures the unerring humanity of Mattie with his depiction of a man who is fighting an addiction to pornography while trying to maintain a relationship with a man he loves, and suffering from the daily stress of watching his father die a slow and agonising death. The humanity both Mattie and Jack display often overpowers any other defining traits and is so beautifully realised that it forced me to consider my impulse reactions to both characters. For example, I was initially uncomfortable with the idea of Jack working at an all-boys school, but his respect and regard for his students made me question whether I would have reacted the same way if Jack had been a female teacher with the same social life and a penchant for difficult partners. Probably not.

The novel suggests that maintaining your humanity is all one can do, and yet it may not be enough. This makes the story depressing at times, but overall, Wolf, Wolf is a subtle, beautifully written narrative from a sensitive, insightful author.

Scribe / 272pp / RRP $29.99

>> WORKSHOPS

Workshops Start your free WordPress blog today In this practical workshop we will show you how to set up a FREE blog from scratch on the WordPress.com platform. You will learn everything you need to get started in the world of blogging, including how to: • Discover your own blogging niche/expertise/focus • Set up your account on WordPress.com • Style your blogs with themes and widgets • Create and edit blog entries • Select and add videos, images and links • Organise your blog with tabs and categories • Carry out advanced keyword research • Write great posts with tried and tested headlines • Create content that’s search engine-friendly • Publicise your blog, including social media • Schedule posts to publish at the most effective times

Presenter: Finola Wennekes When: Saturday, April 2, 10am-4pm Where: Byron Community College, 107 Jonson St, Byron Bay (Across the road from Woolworths carpark) Cost: $100 NRWC Members or $120 non-members * For a full preview of Finola’s workshop see page 19

Travelling the world and getting paid to write about it It’s a dream job, right? Travelling the world and getting paid to write about it. But there’s more to writing a great travel story than shooting off a witty email to your friends or posting on social media. In this workshop, award-winning travel writer Louise Southerden demystifies travel writing and shares key tips and techniques for turning your travel journal entries into must-read travel stories. No writing experience necessary, just bring your questions!

Southerden has travelled the globe as a professional travel writer for twenty years and has won numerous awards, including the Australian Society of Travel Writers’ prestigious Travel Writer of the Year award four times. She writes regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald and is the author of three books. Her latest is Adventures on Earth, an e-book collection of adventure travel stories. Originally from Sydney, Louise moved to the Northern Rivers a year ago and now lives in Lennox Head when she’s not travelling.

Follow her travels on her blog, No Impact Girl (www. noimpactgirl.com).

Presenter: Louise Southerden When: Saturday March 5, 10am-4pm Where: Club Lennox, 10 Stewart Street, Lennox Head Cost: $85 NRWC Members or $105 non-members

Writing Safari Workshop with Tristan Bancks (ages 9-13) Looking for ways to keep the kids entertained at the tail end of the Easter school holidays? How about a workshop with popular children’s and YA author, Tristan Bancks?

With Writing Safari, Tristan has designed a fun and active full-day writing adventure where young participants will be encouraged to use nature, their own lives, and the world around them for inspiration. The day will involve fully supervised walks along the beach, tracing Tristan’s own regular writing paths and teaching kids how they can use the world around them to inspire ideas and spin them into stories.

Tristan writes the My Life series of weird and funny short story books as well as Two Wolves, which won Honour Book at the 2015 Children’s Book Council Awards and was nominated for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. His new book is My Life & Other Exploding Chickens, a fourth collection of weird-funny-gross, semi-autobiographical short stories. Kids love Tristan’s workshops because of his enthusiastic approach to writing and his use of a range of media to tell stories; parents and teachers love him because of his encouraging and inclusive manner, and the way he inspires kids to have fun with their imagination.

Presenter: Tristan Bancks When: Wednesday April 20th, 10am-1pm Where: Byron Community College, 107 Jonson St, Byron Bay (Across the road from Woolworths carpark) Cost: $45 NRWC Members or $55 non-members What to bring: Hat and sunscreen, jacket, lunch and water bottle, writing book and pen

How to get yourself on the front page of the SMH Build a dynamic author platform before and after you publish your book. Stand out amid the noise and grow your reader base. Hear how Susanna came to be featured on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald (with her clothes on) and how she maximised the reach of her book through writing, social media and unusual publicity routes. Learn how to: • Use your words to promote your book • Write blogs, articles and columns that tie in with your book • Be a go-to person for interviews • Be out there online and bring readers to your work • Use social media to your advantage before and after you publish your book

This workshop is for: • Writers already published but wanting to broaden the reach of their book • Self-published authors who need to know and do more to publicise their books

northerly | 021

Workshops & Competitions

• Writers with a work-in-progress who can build an audience before they publish

Susanna Freymark published Losing February in 2013. Her second book Drowning on the Way Home is currently under offer and she is working on her third book, Not Your Home. She is a journalist and social media consultant. More info at www.susannafreymark.com Presenter: Susanna Freymark When: Saturday May 28, 10am-1pm Where: Byron Community College, 107 Jonson St, Byron Bay (Across the road from Woolworths carpark) Cost: $45 NRWC Members or $55 non-members

WB YEATS POETRY PRIZE The WB Yeats Poetry Prize is open to residents of Australia for previously unpublished poems. There is a limit of fifty lines for each poem and an initial entry fee of $8.50. First prize is $500, and deadline for entries is March 31. Go to www.wbyeatspoetryprize.com for more information.

GRIFFITH REVIEW 54: THE NOVELLA PROJECT IV COMPETITION Submissions are now open for Griffith Review’s The Novella Project IV competition.

Winning novellas will share in a $25,000 prize pool and will be published in Griffith Review 54: The Novella Project IV (October 2016). Submissions close on May 13, with a maximum word-count of 35,000. There is a $50 entry fee for Griffith Review nonsubscribers, and $35 for subscribers. For full

022 | northerly

details visit www.griffithreview.submittable. com/submit/48310

ABR ELIZABETH JOLLEY SHORT STORY PRIZE Entries are open for the 2016 Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. The 2016 Jolley Prize is worth a total of $12,500, with a first prize of $7,000 and supplementary prizes of $2,000 and $1,000. The judges will also commend three additional stories, the authors of which will each receive $850. Entries must be a singleauthored short story of between 2,000 and 5,000 words, written in English. Stories must not have been previously published or be on offer to other prizes or publications for the duration of the Jolley Prize. Entries close on April 11. Entry is $15 for ABR subscribers and $15 for non-subscribers. More details at www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes/ elizabeth-jolley-story-prize/current-jolley

FOREST FELLOWSHIP OF AUSTRALIAN WRITERS SHORT STORY COMPETITION Entries to this short story competition should be original, unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Theme is open, with a maximum word-count of 2,000.

First prize is $200, second prize $100. Entry fee is $5, and submissions should be posted.

Deadline is April 30. See http://fawnsw.org. au/forest-fellowship-of-australian-writersshort-story-competition/

QUESTIONS WRITING PRIZE 2016 The Questions Writing Prize 2016 recognises and rewards talented writers aged between eighteen and thirty. Submissions can be fiction or non-fiction and be on any topic, and should be between 1,500 and 2,000 words. Prize money of $2,000 is available with the winning entry published in a book and in Questions journal. Deadline is May 1.

For more information visit www.questions. com.au/writing-prize/index.php

AICON 2016 FAN FICTION COMPETITION This competition for fan fiction will award prizes in three categories: Best Overall, Most Creative and Most Innovative. Up to two submissions are allowed per person, with each entry up to eight pages long.

Works must be centred around a fandom, but original characters are allowed, as are crossovers between fandoms. Multiple forms and styles are permitted, with a closing date for submissions of March 15. For guidelines and requirements visit www.aicon.org.au/ fan-fiction-competition

BUNDABERG WRITERS’ CLUB INC. SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2016 This competition from Bundaberg Writers’ Club Inc. welcomes the submission of short stories on an open theme (though stories written for children are not accepted) of up to 2,500 words. First prize wins $300, with second prize taking $100. Submission fee is $5 per entry, with a deadline of March 19.

For full details visit www.bundywriters.com/ short-story-competition-2016/

CASTAWAYS POETRY PRIZE All poems entered in this Western Australiabased competition must be inspired by, draw upon or use as a theme an image from the Castaways Web Gallery. Entry is free and open to all ages, with a maximum length of twenty-four lines; first prize wins $200. Deadline for entries is March 13. The Castaways Web Gallery (drawn from the Castaways Sculpture Award), and more information on the competition, can be found at www.rockingham.wa.gov.au

ALAN MARSHALL SHORT STORY AWARD Nillumbik Shire Council invites writers living in Australia to enter the thirty-first Alan Marshall Short Story Award which

>> COMPETITIONS

celebrates the art of writing and honours the life and work of Australian literary icon, Alan Marshall. Stories should be up to 2,500 words in length, with a deadline for entries of March 31. There is an entry fee of $20, with prize money on offer of $2,000 plus travel and accommodation for a writers’ retreat with the judge, Myfanwy Jones. For more information visit www.nillumbik.vic. gov.au/Living-in/Arts-and-culture/AlanMarshall-Short-Story-Award

THE ETHEL WEBB LITERARY AWARDS Organised by the Society of Women Writers, WA, the Ethel Webb Literary Awards feature poetry and short story categories. Open to all, poems should not exceed 100 lines and short stories 4,000 words. Submission fees start at $8 for one entry, with first prize in each category winning $500. For further details and entry criteria visit www. swwofwa.com/ewb-literary-awards.html

BEST OF TIMES SHORT STORY COMPETITION For this competition, humorous short stories on any subject are invited of up to 2,500 words. Entry fee is $10 with unlimited entries allowed. First prize will range between $300 and $500 depending on number of entries, with second prize receiving $100. The deadline is April 30, with more information available at http://wildthoughts.com.au/comp21.html

BOREE LOG AWARD FOR BUSH VERSE The Boree Log Award invites entries of bush verse that are in perfect rhyme and metre, at a maximum of eighty lines and have an Australian bush theme. Entry is $5 per poem, with first prize receiving $100 plus a trophy and certificate. For full details go to www.hillsfaw.wordpress.com/competitions/ eastwoodhills-annual-literary-competition/

FUTURE LEADERS WRITING PRIZE The Future Leaders Writing Prize is designed to recognise and reward talented young writers and aims 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 award winner will receive $1,000. Where there is more than one winner the prize money will be shared. The winners of the Future Leaders Writing Prize will also have their work published. Entry is free, the deadline for entries is June 1 and more information can be found at www.futureleaders.com.au/ awards/index.php

THE JOYCE PARKES WOMEN’S WRITERS’ PRIZE Sponsored by the Australian Irish Heritage Association, this competition honours the Western Australian poet Joyce Parkes. As patron of the prize, she aims to promote and encourage women writers in Australia.

Fiction or non-fiction prose pieces of between 1,000 and 2,000 words are invited on the topic of ‘reflection’. Entrance fee is $10, with prize money of $500 available.

Entries close on June 30. For full entry details visit http://www.irishheritage.net/ prizewinners.html

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA VICE-CHANCELLOR’S INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE This prize celebrates the enduring significance of poetry to cultures everywhere in the world, and its ongoing and often seminal importance to world literatures. As one of Australia’s most prestigious poetry awards, the winner will receive $15,000 with the runner-up receiving $5,000.

Poems should have a maximum length of fifty lines, with an entry fee for each poem of $20. Closing date is June 30. Full entry requirements can be found at www.canberra.

edu.au/about-uc/competitions-and-awards/ vcpoetryprize

THE HEYWIRE COMPETITION The Heywire Competition is open to those aged between sixteen and twenty-two who live outside of the big cities. Stories should be inspired by the area the author lives in, with a deadline for entries of September 16. Prize-winners will have the chance to have their story developed for ABC Radio and will enjoy an all-expenses-paid trip to Canberra to attend the Heywire Summit, to develop ideas to make regional Australia a better place for young people. Further details are available at www.abc.net.au/heywire/ competition/

FAWQ LITERARY AWARDS 2016 The Fellowship of Australian Writers (Queensland) invites writers to submit a maximum of three entries across categories including poetry, haiku, short story and flash fiction. First prize in each category takes $200, with each runner-up awarded $50.

Entries are $5 each or $12 for three. Closing date is March 31. For more information, including word limits, visit http://www.fawq.net/

NSW WRITER’S FELLOWSHIP (EARLY CAREER) The NSW Writer’s Fellowship (Early Career) is offered by the NSW State Government to enable a professional writer in the early stages of his/her career to undertake a self-directed program of professional development. As part of the Fellowship there is an additional, optional opportunity for a residency at Varuna, the Writers House.

Funds available amount to $30,000, with a deadline for submissions of March 14. For full details visit http://www.arts.nsw.gov.au/ index.php/funding-and-support/types-offunding/2016-nsw-writers-fellowship-earlycareer/

northerly | 023

>> WRITERS’ GROUPS

>> Alstonville Plateau Writers Group

Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on 66285662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com

>> Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing

Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Jan on 0404007586 or janmulcahy@ bigpond.com

>> Bangalow Writers Group

Meets Thursdays at 9:15am at Bangalow Scout Hall.

Contact Simone on 0407749288

>> Bellingen Writers Group

Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2pm. All welcome, contact Joanne on 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@restnet.com.au

>> Byron Bay Fiction Writing Group

Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 0420282938 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 66533256 or email quendrythyoung@ bigpond.com

>> Coffs Harbour Writers Group

Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Lorraine Penn on 66533256 or 0404163136, email: lmproject@bigpond.com. www. coffsharbourwriters.com

>> Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group

Share your memoir writing for critique. Monthly meetings, contact 0409824803 or email costalmermaid@ gmail.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 of 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.

024 | northerly

Contact Helga on 66202994 (W), 0401405178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com

>> Federal Writers’ Group

Meets first Saturday of each month at 1.30pm at Federal. Contact Susanna Freymark on 6688 4457 or susannafreymark@gmail.com

>> FAW Port Macquarie-Hastings Regional

Meets 1pm on last Saturday of each month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on 65843520 or email Bessie on befrank@tsn.cc

>> Gold Coast Writers Association

Meets third Saturday of each month, 1:30pm for 2pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads. Contact 0431443385 or email info@goldcoast-writers.org.au

>> Kyogle Writers

Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on 66242636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

>> Memoir Writing Group

Meets each month at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 66855387 or 0420282938 or email diana. burstall@gmail.com

>> Nambucca Valley Writers Group

Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca. Contact 65689648 or nambuccawriters@ gmail.com

>> Poets and Writers on the Tweed

Meets weekly at Tweed Heads Library, Tuesdays 1:30pm – 3pm. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers all welcome. Fun group meets for discussion, support and constructive criticism. Free membership. Phone Lorraine 0755909395

>> 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

>> WordsFlow Writing

Group meets Fridays during school term, 12:30pm-3pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412455707 or visit www.wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com

>> Writing for Wellbeing

Writing for Wellbeing workshops meet monthly on a Thursday from 10:30am to 1pm at Richmond Hill.

Focus is on expressive writing, support and feedback from facilitators Jan Mulcahy and Sally Archer. Phone 0404 007 586 or email janmulcahy@bigpond.com or visit the Facebook page

Support northerly in 2016 northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre.

Published in January, March, May, July, September and November, it is distributed to members, community organisations, libraries, universities, schools, festivals, publishers and bookshops and has a readership in excess of 3,500. Each issue features interviews, reviews, essays and national and international news.

An array of discounts and deals are available for organisations and individuals interested in advertising.

To discuss your advertising needs in northerly, contact us on
02 6685 5115 or via email at northerly@nrwc.org.au

The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre offers a wide and varied range of literary activities, special interest workshops and reading programs on all aspects of writing as well as the annual Byron Bay Writers Festival. Membership of the Northern Rivers Writers Centre is open to all individuals, non-profit organisations and corporations whose interests are in accordance with the objectives of the Centre.

Most of our members reside in the NSW Northern Rivers, but membership is open to all.

BECOME A MEMBER TODAY INDIVIDUAL

For individual writers, readers and anyone interested in literature and the arts.

Concession rates are available for concession cardholders and students with valid ID. $60 adult $50 pensioner concession $40 student concession

FAMILY

Family membership represents extraordinary value and is available for two adults and up to three children under 18 years from the same family.

The family receives one issue of northerly per edition and multiple discounts for workshops and festival tickets.

Postal Address _________________________________________________________ Male Female 7-16 17-30 31-45 46-64 65+ I identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander I am from a non-English speaking background I do not want my details passed onto other arts organisations I am interested in volunteering at Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre I am interested in volunteering at Byron Bay Writers Festival

MEMBERSHIP CHOICE $60 Individual $50 Concession (Govt Pension cards only) CRN# $40 Student (requires ID) $90 Family $120 Organisation Eco Option: Enjoy all the usual NRWC benefits, but opt to receive your copy of northerly electronically (rather than a print copy), help care for the planet AND receive a $10 membership discount.

PAYMENT DETAILS Total Amount Payable $_______ Payment Method Cheque* Cash Mastercard Visa Card no. __________________________________ Expiry date ________/_________ Name on card _________________________ Signature ________________________ Send completed form and payment to: PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481 *Please make cheques payable to Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre

For businesses, writers groups and arts organisations.

Each organisation receives five issues of northerly and reduced admission prices for five members per project or workshop. $120

$90

Organisation Name (if applicable) __________________________________________ First Name ______________________ Surname ______________________________ Phone ____________________________ Mobile _____________________________

Are you: Age:

ORGANISATION

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS • northerly magazine posted every two months

• Access to resources and services from the Centre and guidance from Centre staff • Discounts on workshops, seminars, and Byron Bay Writers Festival tickets, as well as priority copy of Festival program and invitation to program launch • Access to a year-round mentorship program with industry professionals and the opportunity to apply to the annual Residential Membership • Borrowing rights to the Centre library and access to reference materials, wi-fi and reading area • Voting rights at AGM • Discounts at nominated local businesses and subscriber rates to NORPA shows All memberships are valid from date of payment through to February of the following year.

JOIN ONLINE AT WWW.NRWC.ORG.AU OR CALL 02 6685 5115 FOR MORE INFORMATION