Northerly - Spring 2019

northerly Byron Writers Festival Member Magazine | Spring 2019

SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM

HUNG LE

STORY CIRCLE

PRIZE-WINNING WRITING

Contents Spring 2019 Features

northerly

northerly is the quarterly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

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

LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1, 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: byronwritersfestival.com

006 Flash fiction winners Read the winner and runners-up from this year’s Flash Your Fiction competition

POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481

009 Susie Warrick Young Writers Award The winners of this year’s competition for the region’s best young writers

CONTRIBUTORS: Tiane Alexander, Ally Broome, Laurel Cohn, Raimond de Weerdt, Heather Ellemor-Collins, Sharon Fraser, Kathy Gibbings, Julie Gittus, Caroline Henning, Gabrielle Hill-Smith, Polly Jude, Niamh Montgomery, Rebecca Ryall, Paul Shields, Katinka Smit, CJ Vallis

012 Road to recovery Heather Ellemor-Collins introduces a ground-breaking project and book courtesy of the Story Circle initiative 016 Literary legwork Laurel Cohn previews her three-day workshop on structural editing 019 Gazing inland Paul Shields reflects on establishing the new literary journal, WOB 024 Susie Warrick Young Writers Award Read the runners-up from 2019

Regulars 002 Chair’s note 003 Festival wrap Indigenous authors enjoy Festival success 004 News and events New workshops announced, Enova deal for Festival members and more

EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com

BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Hilarie Dunn, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight.

LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER DESIGN & PRINT Kaboo Media Summit Press ADVERTISING We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior.

Email northerlyeditor@gmail.com

018 SCU Showcase Short fiction from Rebecca Ryall

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

020 Book review Kathy Gibbings on Growing Up Queer in Australia, edited by Benjamin Law

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

008 Notes from the Festival I Hung Le in conversation with Katinka Smit 014 Notes from the Festival II Katinka Smit interviews Sophie Cunningham

022 What YA Reading?

YA fiction reviews with Polly Jude

twitter.com/bbwritersfest facebook.com/byronwritersfestival

023 Book review Julie Gittus on Counting on Murwillumbah by Nola Firth 027 Workshops We acknowledge the Arakwal Bumberbin People of the Byron Shire as the traditional custodians of this land. northerly SPRING 2019 | 01

Chair’s note Welcome to this spring edition of northerly, published just a month after wrapping up our twenty-third Byron Writers Festival. The rain on Thursday and Friday did little to dampen spirits and we were privileged to have perfect weather for Saturday and Sunday.

And our marvellous Festival Director, Edwina Johnson, did it again with a fantastic line-up of risk-takers, story creators and ideas makers. Melissa Lucashenko cleverly won the 2019 Miles Franklin Award days before the Festival with Too Much Lip and led an impressive line-up of First Nations authors including Tara June Winch with her remarkable book The Yield; Uncle Jack Charles delighting the crowd; Bronwyn Bancroft; Melissa Lucashenko; Tony Birch; Daniel James; Karla Dickens; and of course Bruce Pascoe whose book Dark Emu continues to subvert the dominant publishing paradigms. And now with Young Dark Emu, he brings the formerly untold reality of indigenous culture and resource management at the time of white colonisation, to younger audiences.

Tim Costello showed us again what compassion and humanism really look like, and our great Festival friend, A.C. Grayling, managed to pack the entire history of philosophy into forty-five succinct, engaging and humorous minutes while delivering our annual Thea Astley Address. Mandy Nolan, Hung Le and Benjamin law continued our comedy thread at the Festival and once again some of our great commentators and journalists were in full flight including Kate McClymont, Peter Greste and Leigh Sales.

Many people have asked me about Festival highlights this year – always a difficult question with so many wonderful sessions and participants. After technical issues trying to live stream Behrouz Boochani from Manus in earlier sessions, it all came together on Sunday when more than 600 people packed in to hear Behrouz talk with Geordie Williamson, Alex Mankiewicz and Omid Tofighian about the plight of asylum seekers on Manus Island. The atmosphere was palpable with many people in tears, and I reflected on some of the reasons that we do what we do at the Festival. By ensuring that people like Behrouz have a platform, I hope that people keep talking about the injustices perpetrated on those fleeing persecution who have a legal right to our protection. The more people understand that successive governments use the politics of fear, the more people will reject those tactics and demand that our political leaders act with humanity and treat those who are suffering oppression with dignity and understanding.

I could keep talking about the Festival, but I’d fill all of the pages of northerly doing so. Heartfelt thanks to Edwina and our wonderful team of workers, contractors and volunteers and thanks also to the Board members for their part in another wonderful festival. Warm thanks to you as well – our members and supporters without whom the Festival would not exist.

I’m already looking forward to 2020!

Adam van Kempen

Chair, Byron Writers Festival

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Indigenous authors shine at Byron Writers Festival Byron Writers Festival 2019 saw ticket sales go through the roof as readers embraced Indigenous authors.

This year’s Byron Writers Writers Festival saw a number of Indigenous authors dominate the list of best-selling books sold at the event. Top-selling books by Festival authors at the Bookroom Collective bookstore on site were No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani, Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe (top left), The Yield by Tara June Winch (second from right), Young Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, and Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (second from left).

‘People are aching to love their land… but how do we love Australia?’ Bruce Pascoe asked at one of his sessions at the Festival. His books Dark Emu and the version for younger readers Young Dark Emu detail the complex agricultural systems that sustained Aboriginal people for thousands of years. Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko’s session with

Wiradjuri woman Tara June Winch also attracted capacity crowds, while the legendary Uncle Jack Charles (top right, photo: James Henry), whose memoir Born-again Blakfella is set to be published later this month, inspired a standing ovation.

‘Stories help us make sense of the complexity of our world,’ said Festival Director Edwina Johnson. ‘Byron Writers Festival provides a space to find meaning and connection, to reflect on the importance of stories and their telling and to engage our hearts and minds.’

Byron Writers Festival featured more than 140 writers, thinkers and commentators who came from across Australia and around the world to Byron Bay for a packed program of inspiring, engaging and enlightening storytelling and discussion.

The Festival attracted the highest box office sales in its twenty-threeyear history, with more than 12,000 patrons attending over the entire Festival period that included 121 sessions on Festival grounds, fifteen workshops, seventeen satellite events, the Schools Program (primary and secondary) and the Byron Writers Festival Road Trip to regional towns.

Boochani appeared via live stream from Manus Island to a full house, and said ‘I wrote No Friend But the Mountains to take the reader into the prison camp to live with us.’ His powerful message to ‘read the book and ask other people to read it’ resonated loud and clear, with a standing ovation ending the sombre and powerful session.

For more Festival highlights visit the Byron Writers Festival blog: byronwritersfestival.com/blog

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NEWS & EVENTS

Margin Notes News, events and announcements from Byron Writers Festival Workshops galore As the afterglow from this year’s Byron Writers Festival subsides, local writers can look forward to a number of thought-provoking and practical workshops over the coming months.

Chief among these is Laurel Cohn’s three-part workshop on structural editing – see page 16 for Laurel’s full preview of this immersive guide to the all-important manuscript editing process. Another workshop is Jenni Cargill’s Storytelling for Changemakers, which offers participants the chance to learn how to create narratives with the ultimate goal of social change.

Writers of all levels might be attracted by Zacharey Jane’s workshop Approaching the Page, designed to help authors overcome the fear of that daunting blank page. In other workshops, Festival Board Member Anneli Knight shares her considerable wisdom regarding the business of writing and Graeme Gibson explores the art of writing from life.

For more information on all workshops, including dates and how to book, turn to page 27 or visit www.byronwritersfestival. com/whats-on

Free mentorship opportunity coming soon In late 2019, Byron Writers Festival will once again offer the chance for four members to access our Block Mentorship and Firsthand Feedback services for free through 04 | SPRING 2019 northerly

our Mentoring Scholarships program. These opportunities are for early stage writers working on a manuscript, who are seeking an initial appraisal of their work from an industry professional.

Successful applicants will be awarded the mentorships based on a small sample of their work.

Applications will open in midOctober through to mid-November.

Successful applicants will be notified by early December and mentorships may take place in late 2019 or early 2020. Information will be sent out in an email newsletter before applications open. The Mentoring Scholarships program is proudly supported by Enova Energy, Australia’s first community-owned electricity provider. enovaenergy. com.au.

$50 Enova credit for Festival members Local community-owned social enterprise, Enova, is doing renewable energy differently.

Part of their mission is to educate households and businesses on how to reduce energy usage, which will not only save money, but reduce carbon emissions. They reinvest into their not-for-profit arm Enova Community to help communities reduce their energy use and work toward becoming energy self-sufficient. Byron Writers Festival members who switch to Enova will receive $50 credit on their first electricity bill – just quote BWF19. Call 02 5622 1700 or switch online: enovaenergy.com.au.

More accolades for Boochani Fresh from his moving appearance via video link at Byron Writers Festival, Behrouz Boochani has earned more acclaim for No Friend But the Mountains, with the book named by the State Library of NSW as the winner of this year’s National Biography Award, worth $25,000.

The book was praised by judges for its ‘poetic and epic writing’, describing it as ‘profoundly important, an astonishing act of witness and testament to the lifesaving power of writing as resistance.’

Boochani won the prize from a shortlist of six books, which included Rick Morton’s One Hundred Years of Dirt – Morton also appeared at Byron Writers Festival this year. The other shortlisted authors were Danielle Clode, Sarah Krasnostein, Rozanna Lilley and Sofija Stefanovic. Stefanovic won the inaugural $5000 Michael Crouch Award for a debut work for Miss Ex-Yugoslavia.

No Friend But the Mountains has also been longlisted for

NEWS & EVENTS

Cover story

This issue’s cover image is Model and Machine (2017) by Raimond de Weerdt. Raimond is a visual artist living in Lismore.

His art practice consists of combining 21st century digital technologies with 19th century photographic printing processes. He produces images that are both contemporary and timeless. His work can be found in institutional and private collections both in Australia and internationally.

the 2019 Mark and Evette Moran Literary Award, known as ‘the Nib’, for which two other 2019 Byron Writers Festival authors have also been listed: Ginger Gorman for Troll Hunting and Chloe Hooper for The Arsonist.

The Horne Prize: celebrating narrative non-fiction If you intend to enter The Horne Prize, delay no longer – entries close at midnight on Monday 16 September.

This $15,000 essay award is presented annually by Aesop and The Saturday Paper for an original work of up to 3,000 words that addresses a significant aspect of contemporary Australian life. To learn more and submit your essay, visit www.thehorneprize.com.au

Ubud announces 2019 program The 2019 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival has announced its line-up, with the usual strong Australian presence among the named authors.

The festival takes place on 2327 October in Ubud, Indonesia.

Among the writers attending are Australians Tony Wheeler,

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

A manuscript assessment provides an independent, professional appraisal of your work. You could think of it as a health check, or a reality check.

An assessment, whether of a full manuscript or an excerpt, provides guidance on how to take your work to the next level of development.

“Thank you so much, Laurel.

Your work is helpful and thorough. I don’t know quite what I expected of a manuscript assessment but you have given me a solid plan of attack, a great deal to think about and enough positivity to keep my spirits up as I sally forth!”

Michelle Tom Assessment of synopsis, chapter outline and sample chapters

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

Toni Jordan, Mark Brandi, Carla Findlay, Clementine Ford, Bri Lee, Krissy Kneen and Kate Richards.

Authors already announced include Behrouz Boochani, Tara June Winch and Richard Fidler.

International authors appearing include Irvine Welsh, Lindy West, Megan K. Stack and Lemn Sissay.

‘For 16 years UWRF has prided itself on sharing these stories, and now we feel like the global literary community is finally catching up. I think the fact that a relatively small and intimate event in Indonesia, which is delivered by a not-for-profit foundation, is now listed among the world’s best literary festivals is nothing short of extraordinary,’ said festival founder and director Janet DeNeefe.

For more information and the full line-up, go to www.ubudwritersfestival.com

New commercial fiction prize from ASA, HQ A new commercial prize for an unpublished manuscript has been announced by the Australian

Society of Authors (ASA) in partnership with Harper Collins imprint HQ. The winner of the ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize will receive a book contract with HQ and a $10,000 advance against royalties. A runner-up will receive twenty hours of consultation towards a new website and online presence audit from Leading Hand Design, worth $3000.

The award is open to unpublished book-length works of commercial fiction by Australian and New Zealand authors. A shortlist will be announced in early 2020 ahead of an announcement ceremony for the winner in Sydney in March.

For more information visit the ASA website at www.asauthors.org

SAVE THE DATE! Members’ Christmas Party 5 - 7pm, Wednesday 4 December at Byron Writers Festival Office

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Flash Your Fiction 2019: The winners The second annual Byron Writers Festival Flash Your Fiction competition attracted a highly competitive field of more than 170 entries from all over Australia.

Entrants had a word limit of two hundred and had to use the word ‘sunlight’ in their story.

Congratulations to Sharon Fraser, whose story ‘Underwater Lily’ won first place. The first runner-up was CJ Vallis with ‘How Hard Could It Be?’, and the second runner-up Caroline Henning with ‘The Note’.

We are pleased to publish the three stories here.

Of this year’s competition, judges said, ‘Along with the sheer volume of entries this year, judges were impressed by the skill shown in crafting these mininarratives, as well as the diversity of subject matter – although, as in 2018, many stories dealt with trauma or loss. All shortlisted entries are first-class examples of flash fiction, with the winning entry a testament to the power of ambiguity as well as pacing, rhythm and original use of language.’

The other shortlisted writers and stories are: Christine Johnson: ‘Trolley Trance’ Denise Marshall: ‘The Beast’ Suzanne Novak: ‘My Act of Remembrance’ Beth Gibbings: ‘Two Truths’ Tracey Lloyd: ‘Escaping the Vortex’ Madeleine Ackerman: ‘We First Met as a Metaphor’ Dettra Rose: ‘Alesandro Goes Home’

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Underwater Lily Sharon Fraser

Lucy woke in the dark to a watery dance of shadow and light on her ceiling. Someone had left the pool lights on.

She scanned the bedroom, still monotone in the predawn light. She liked this colourless time. She wasn’t ready for colour. Lily’s bed was empty and perfectly made. A bear, just like hers, slumped miserably against the wall.

Lucy and Lily were identical, except that Lily was profoundly deaf. Most people addressed both of them through Lucy, mistaking Lily’s deafness for absence.

Most people were stupid. But now, she really was . . . absent.

They used to feel like one person. The same person.

Only Lily’s deafness reminded them that they were different. Except when they were underwater. Then, submerged in the weightless, transparent volume, they were absolutely one. Together again, identical, in the silence. Just as they had been in the womb.

Lucy got up and crept out of her room, their room. She padded through the house and outside to the pool.

The first rays of sunlight were creeping over the edge where she stood at the deep end, making their way slowly across the surface. She dived in, once again, looking for Lily.

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How Hard Could It Be?

The Note

CJ Vallis

Caroline Henning

Three unopened boxes, dark summer sky and chilled beer.

When Ally finds the note in a bottle washed up on Laverty’s Beach, she almost walks straight past it. The frosted glass, worn smooth by years at sea, doesn’t give itself up easily in the morning sunlight. At home she cracks it open, carefully removes a square of folded paper from the broken shards. She traces her finger along foreign words, admiring the writer’s hand – precise and steady. Ally loves the swirling gs and ys and js the best, imagines a young man with dark, tussled hair sitting at a wooden bureau writing to his lover. She understands odd words and phrases. 21 janvier 2009. Ma belle fille. Je l’aimais. She cannot get the gist though. When she shows the note to Corrine two weeks later, she watches, appalled, as her friend brings her hand to her mouth and gasps.

‘Should we wait until after Christmas? Hire someone?’

She sounds scared, eyes flicking to the back room where her kid is tucked into bed.

He slides a Stanley knife down the cardboard joins and opens the flaps. Inside, instructions and diagrams dare him to fail. He pauses. Blusters through, ‘I figure I can handle it.’

But by her reckoning they’re in trouble.

Why does he insist?

Not to be outdone by poles and frames, a jumping mat, safety net. ‘I’ll help.’

‘You?’ ‘Yeah me.’

On her phone she plays a YouTube of a white middleaged man in Minnesota assembling a trampoline on time-lapse.

* Beneath a slender birch tree by a bend in the river a woman stands flanked by two policiers. She clutches a photo of a smiling girl reclining on a couch. The woman stoops, taking a handful of cool earth between her fingers. Her daughter in the palm of her hand. For a moment there, then gone again.

Too easy.

By an outdoor lamp, they sweat in shadows and snap the ring into place, ram metal together. His skin pinches between steel springs; he bleeds and swears.

She fetches Band-Aids, a screwdriver.

Somehow the anchors have been lost. The whole wobbles. More drinks.

Hours later, they test-jump the trampoline. For now, the mat holds. Giddy, she wishes out loud, ‘Santa, fly down and fix the world.’

Let’s decorate the trampoline in tinsel.’

It will shimmer in sunlight. Hide any unused hooks. northerly SPRING 2019 | 07

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Hung Le Hung Le sprung to fame in 1987 on Hey Hey It’s Saturday as a parodying violinist in the Como String Quartet. A regular on Australian screens, the actor and comedian performs internationally at festivals such as Edinburgh Festival and Montreal Comedy Festival. Career highlights include a much-coveted gig on The Muppets and watching ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s manager work a room. His latest book, The Crappiest Refugee, began life as a novel until he realised the story was about a guy who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Katinka Smit spoke with him at Byron Writers Festival 2019.

What drove you to laugh at everything? Is this innate in your disposition?

I think it started when I was at school in Australia. I don’t think I was a funny kid in Vietnam. It was just for survival at primary school, being the smartarse in the back of the class. I always had to have the last word, even after the teacher.

You mentioned writing the ‘feeling stuff’ in your memoir was a very difficult task. How did you approach the writing?

I’d never written about how I felt about things, just stand-up comedy. I make people laugh.

When I wrote it, every third line had a punch line. So I had to go back and rejig the whole thing. You have to have a timeline and after every story you have to tell people how you felt. I went back and delved into my brain, to when I was young and how I felt about things. I was crying over the laptop. And it worked. People really do want to know how you felt. I didn’t know that, but now I do.

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Did that leak into your comedy?

No. There’s no feelings in comedy, people want to laugh. But if I ever make this book into a theatre show I could bring that out, tell people how I felt and make them cry. It’s easy to make people cry; much easier than making people laugh because laughing is a reflex action.

Making 600 people in a room go ‘ha!’ at exactly the same time, that’s very difficult to do.

Is that part of why you do it?

We’re needy people, comedians.

There’s not enough love in your life with your wife and your kids.

You have to go and get love from 600 strangers. If you do a full room and make everyone laugh it’s this massive high. That’s why we do it, why so many people want to do it. A lot of people do it because they’re very shy or depressed, or sad people. But I’m not, I’m just a happy person. I want to share that happiness, the Australian way of doing comedy, taking the piss out of anything that you see. I love it.

The Australian way of taking the piss is so brutal.

Has the PC generational shift affected the way you make comedy?

You have to be pretty smart about it now. When I started stand-up, people weren’t so sensitive. People went to see stand-up comedy to be shocked, to hear things that they weren’t allowed to talk about at work. I don’t go specifically to talk about racism. I don’t even say the word racism in my show. I just tell stories about my life. People make up their own mind what they think it is. I’m not going to say things that are so offensive that I don’t get any work from it. You can say whatever you like, just don’t be a dick about it. But that’s why we left Vietnam, to be able to express ourselves.

That’s why my dad took us here, so that people can’t tell me what I can and cannot say. But I think people are starting to get tired of being told what they can and cannot say, and can and cannot hear.

The Crappiest Refugee is published

by Affirm Press.

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Susie Warrick Young Writers Award: The winners Byron Writers Festival’s annual Susie Warrick Young Writers Award aims to celebrate and encourage young writers in the Northern Rivers. This year, the competition was split into two categories: Category 1 for year 7-9 students and Category 2 for year 10-12 students.

Congratulations to Niamh Montgomery, winner of Category 1, and Gabrielle HillSmith, winner of Category 2. We are pleased to publish the winning stories here.

Turn to page 24 to read stories from the first runners-up from each section, Ally Broome and Tiane Alexander.

Crayons Niamh Montgomery

Colours skittered across the paper, waxy lines creating a world.

She hummed as she worked, tiny hands switching colours as need be. She was in her own world entirely – a world she could fashion to her liking, and she was doing exactly that.

As she drew she ignored the shouts from the room next door – they weren’t unusual and they would be gone soon anyway. On the page she drew smiling faces, the sun shining down kindly and grass drifting gently in the breeze.

She smiled at her work. It was good, better than anything she had done before.

She counted the figures – one, two, three, four. Smiling parents, a happy brother and her. This time, she frowned at it. Something was missing. Picking up a black crayon, she drew ears, a wet nose, a happily wagging tail. Now it was perfect.

Her mother bustled into the room, breaking the serenity as effectively as a brick through a window. Washing basket balanced on her hip, she scowled down at her, hair tumbling out of a messy bun and creases between her eyebrows more pronounced than ever.

‘What’re you drawing a dog for?’ she said, moving the crayons aside to make way for the basket. ‘It’s never going to happen.’

The girl frowned at the paper, picking up the red crayon and hurriedly widening the smile on her mother’s face. Her mother sighed, a small one sneaking onto her real features.

‘Just don’t make a mess, alright?’

She nodded, returning the red crayon to the floor. Its work was done. As she did so she heard a quiet yapping from the doorway, and a puppy bounded into the room, shaking with excitement as its tail wagged and tongue flopped out of its mouth. She smiled at it,

extending her arms towards it as it reached her. It licked her face and she giggled quietly.

‘What’s a dog doing here?’ said her father from the doorway.

He creaked across the room, his clothes smelling stale and his breath rotten. ‘We’re not a zoo, we don’t keep animals. Get it out of here.’

Smiling patiently, she put the puppy down to her right, picking up the blue crayon this time. On the paper she extended her father’s arm towards the crayon dog’s head. The real dog bounced over to the real dad, wagging its tail excitedly and jumping up to lick his hand. Laughing, he petted it’s head gently, a smile of his own creeping onto his face.

‘You know what? Keep the little thing,’ he said, taking a beer from the fridge and leaving, chuckling to himself. Satisfied, she picked her crayon box up, returning all the crayons to their rightful places, perfectly in order. Through the northerly SPRING 2019 | 09

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wall she heard a bang and a yell as one of her brother’s possessions collided with the ceiling.

‘That boy will be the death of me,’ her mother said, re-entering the room to pick up the basket.

The girl frowned. Well, she couldn’t have that, could she?

Carefully, she pulled at the side of the paper, tearing the green crayon teenager out of the happy picture and tossing him into the open fire. The noise from the next room instantly ceased and she smiled, sliding the lid onto the crayon box.

He wouldn’t be bothering them anymore.

One Thousand Paper Cranes Gabrielle Hill-Smith

New Year’s Eve 2029, NYC *** It is said that the crane lives for a thousand years. No one really knows where the story started, but that’s the case with all stories, is it not?

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You remember Jiji telling folktales while she folded the origami cranes, her deft wrinkled fingers stroking the coloured paper as you watched, your arms folded under your head at her red kitchen table. You remember following the dancing patterns of the carpet with your eyes, the embroidered birds dipping and soaring, dancing to Jiji and Baba’s wartime music.

You remember softly falling asleep curled up on the carpet, the warm homey smell of Jiji’s famous sukiyaki filled the room, Jiji and Baba’s bones creaking as they sway gently around the room. *** Years later, it is New Year’s Eve in an unfamiliar city. It’s time for the countdown to 2030. Ten, nine, eight. Strangers’ laughter, their heady perfume and cologne fill the air around you. Lipstick marks champagne flutes. Someone has sparklers lit on the balcony, tiny galaxies in their hands, laughing like little children at a fair, giddy on happiness, liberated for just one night. Seven, six, five. The unfamiliar faces are haunted by the horrors of the last decade. After travelling the world for a year, a whole world lives inside of you. The air has seeped into your lungs, the

harsh rays of the sun scar your skin.

Man-made poisons live in your liver. Four, three, two. It’s only been a year since the disasters ended.

Some say they are never going to end. Some say it is only the start.

One. The fireworks go off on the widescreen behind you. More than one person flinches, the sound just too familiar. It hasn’t been long since the peace, yet the memories still have trouble fading. *** You remember the aftermath of that first tsunami, how it destroyed your home country and all you could do was sit and watch, sit and wait for news of Jiji, news of your family. You didn’t know it was the start of something much bigger.

You were just a child then, still at school. Even though the tsunami was thousands of miles away from Australia you remember teaching your classmates how to fold the paper cranes. You were only eleven, and yet you created a movement.

The one thousand paper cranes need to be completed within the year for your wishes to come true, but your friends made several thousand in just a fortnight. The teachers strung them up around the hall, a sea of colour and wishes.

Your Jiji phoned that night. Your

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mother was in tears, you weren’t old enough to understand if they were happy tears or not. As long as you are safe, as long as you are safe. She repeated into the phone.

Your father made Jiji’s famous sukiyaki. It wasn’t as good, but you didn’t complain. *** It’s morning. Dawn’s rosy fingers are climbing the skyscrapers of the city, its famous landmarks sunning themselves like lizards, the river twists its way through the city knocking on people’s doors reminding them of the flood marks that still stain their windows. The wheel starts turning. It’s morning, the first day of the new year, and the city shakes itself awake. Grief is a heavy burden to shake off. You are not ready to forget the shackles around your ankles but you are ready to start healing.

You tie up the last string with a red bead at the end. Red for fire. Red for strength. Red for bloodshed. You fill your bicycle basket up with forty strings of cranes and cycle through the city.

The dusty bullet-strewn streets glow in the early morning sunlight, and you smile. The cranes fly out of the basket, rainbow streamers caught up in the wind, and you

are glad that you tied them down.

The Vanderbilt gates of Central Park come into view. At least that is what your battered map says it is, 5th Avenue. You don’t remember New York looking like this. There are others already at the gates, holding their own fragile paper wishes. You set to work in silence, helping each other tie every string onto the gates. There must be at least 15,000 cranes here. The gates soon become a mountain of colour, sea of wishes. Your fingers are numb and icy, like the crunchy, frozen skeletons of leaves from last autumn.

As you lay down the last string, you remember the story of twelveyear-old Sadako Sasaki. She died of radiation-sickness in 1955. It was only seventy-five years ago, but it feels like a thousand. She never finished making her wish, never made the one thousand paper cranes. She died of leukemia from the American poison seeping into her blood. Every year since the world has finished making her wish for her. All around the world, every year, she is immortalised into thousands of tiny paper cranes. At the peace park, on Obon, people leave their strings of cranes, their tiny paper wishes for Sadako, for

themselves and their loved ones, but also for the world.

You remember being small, you remember your mother gripping your mittened hand in the cold evening air waiting to lay out the paper cranes on the memorial. You wished for a bike that year. Your mother wished for Baba to get better. The old man who carefully arranged the cranes smiled at you, his eyes twinkling, the crinkles around them like rays of the sun.

You remember what he told you now, as bitter snowflakes start to fall on the cranes, and the fragile paper crumbles under the weight of the first snowfall in over a decade.

Let me tell you what I wished for, Kodomo, I wished for the world, I wish that my one thousand paper cranes will protect your world. The crane lives for a thousand years, does he not? I hope that he protects us for a thousand more.

See page 24 for more stories from this year’s Susie Warrick Young Writers Award.

northerly SPRING 2019 | 11

FEATURE

Writing for recovery Having been established in 2018, a unique writing project in the Northern Rivers has come to fruition with the publication of the book Don’t Let Suicide Kill You: Nine Stories of Survival and Recovery. The book is the result of Story Circle, an eight-week course in which people who had experienced suicidal thoughts were mentored by local authors Sarah Armstrong and Jesse Blackadder.

Story Circle’s Project Manager, Heather Ellemor-Collins, composed the introduction to this important book, which we are pleased to publish here.

Early last year, I sat around a long table in a meeting of the newlyformed Lismore Suicide Prevention Steering Committee (LSPSC). There were about twenty of us, each with some sort of expertise in suicide prevention. We were talking about statistics, about target groups and gaps in services, and while all of those things are important for improving suicide prevention, I felt something missing in the conversation. Every person in the room was a caring professional, passionate about suicide prevention. So why did I still find it so hard to say, ‘I’ve been suicidal myself, actually. That’s why I’m here. That’s the expertise I bring’.

This is when I realised how strong the taboo and stigma about suicide still is. If we had come together to talk about improving services for heart patients, I doubt I would have felt apprehensive about admitting to a heart condition. And if I couldn’t own up to my own suicidal history in that setting, where on earth could I? Feeling suicidal does not mean you are weak, or incompetent, or 12 | SPRING 2019 northerly

selfish, or attention-seeking, or strange, or diseased, or even living with a mental illness, yet many of us feel judged in these ways – by ourselves or others – and we tuck it away from public view. Feeling suicidal means that you are in extreme distress – unbearable distress – such that ending your life seems like the best or the only option. The causes of this overwhelming distress are varied: common themes are unbearable psychological pain; a sense of isolation; feeling trapped and hopeless; and feeling like a burden to others. For some, this experience lasts just a few moments; for others, it lasts weeks, months or even years.

Isn’t that something we should know about each other? Wouldn’t we want to ask why there was, or is, so much pain? Wouldn’t we want to care for that pain? We have probably all experienced the comfort and relief of sharing a problem with an understanding friend. So why do so many of us feel we can’t share with others one of the most distressing experiences

we have ever had? Why do we feel this will elicit judgement, rather than care?

In the meeting, I forced myself to own up. I suggested that in addition to services for at-risk groups, there could be a place for building community understanding of why people feel suicidal. I wondered whether people who have recovered from a suicidal crisis might like to write their stories and publish them. However, I knew, from experience, that writing about extremely painful experiences, while potentially therapeutic, can be extremely distressing and lonely. So, I proposed that a group would be the best forum, where the writers could share their experiences and their writing with others who could understand.

I am very grateful that the committee embraced the idea, and that Niall Mulligan from Lifeline generously helped me to develop the idea and gain seed funding.

This enabled me to recruit an exceptional team: Peter Chown, a psychologist with thirty years of

FEATURE

experience and Playback Theatre actor; and Sarah Armstrong and Jesse Blackadder, both awardwinning authors. Each of these professionals brought their expertise, skill, heart and humanity to the project, and together we developed an eight-week, supported writing program, and published a book of the stories developed during the program.

It is now more than two years since that first LSPSC meeting, and Story Circle has been supported by innumerable people and organisations along the way.

Here, I would particularly like to thank the nine wonderful people who trusted us enough to participate in our new, experimental program. Their open sharing, from the very first day, created an intimate group connection. Our afternoons together were filled with gentle care, careful listening, insight, creativity, humour and fun! And we all loved listening to the beautiful stories. Even when the stories were heartbreaking or raw, it felt heartwarming and inspiring to hear

them read aloud to an attentive audience. Each week, we left the group with our hearts full.

The stories in our book – Don’t Let Suicide Kill You: Nine Stories of Survival and Recovery – are stories of hope and recovery. None of them contain graphic descriptions of suicide attempts or traumatic events. Rather, they explore – each in remarkably different ways – the impact of these events on the author, and how they got through the toughest of times.

So, come now, and join our Story Circle. Make yourself a cup of tea, find a comfy seat, and listen to these tales of wisdom, courage, compassion, kindness, insight and humanity.

Then take a moment to think about the people you know. There are more than 3,000 suicides each year in Australia. There are also an estimated 65,000 suicide attempts each year, and 1.25 million people who have thoughts of suicide every year. That translates to one in twenty people who have felt suicidal. Given that, it is likely you

know one of these people, yet because of the stigma, they may not be reaching out. Who might they be? Could you reach out to them?

And if you, right now, are in crisis or feel suicidal, we hope these stories help you to feel not quite so alone, and not quite so hopeless.

Each person’s story is different, yet there are common threads, common experiences. Please reach out to someone who can help. If no one you know is available, the crisis lines listed below are always available. Real, caring people will answer the phone and help you.

No matter how distressing things feel right now, they will change.

Recovery is possible, with support.

Lifeline: 13 11 14 Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 If a life is in danger: 000

Copies of Don’t Let Suicide Kill You: Nine Stories of Survival and Recovery are available. Email storycircleproject@gmail.com

northerly SPRING 2019 | 13

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Sophie Cunningham This year’s Byron Writers Festival line-up included Sophie Cunningham, co-founder of the Stella Prize, editor, and author of five books, all of which reflect on our relationship with built and natural environments. Her latest offering, City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest, explores universal themes of dying and grief and our love and need for trees. The essays ruminate on a theme that may be relevant for many of us: what does it mean to admire the beauty of nature in the face of climate catastrophe? Interview by Katinka Smit.

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INTERVIEW

What was it that sparked your serious interest in trees?

I’ve always loved trees but when I was living overseas I did a lot of walking and started to really notice the roles trees play in making urban and rural places livable. A lot of trees had been bought from other places – figs in San Francisco, palms in Los Angeles, plane trees in my home town of Melbourne – and I started to think about why trees were used and moved around in certain ways and what that experience did to them – their growth patterns, their health, their happiness. I started to spend time sitting in groves – chestnuts, giant sequoia, river red gums, manna gum – and had such a strong feeling of the personality of the different forests. It went on from there.

It’s such a simple equation: trees equal life. Why are we as a society so ignorant to this simple reality?

I think it’s possibly because trees stood in the way of agriculture in secular society. There was a sense that you had to remove trees to bring in sheep and grow fields (even though it’s not even necessarily true that you need to do that) and I think it was partly because for those of us who came from England the trees were very ‘other’. This is obviously an Australian answer because trees are in trouble all around the world, but to the people who came to Australia it didn’t seem like they were ‘real’ trees: they looked weird.

And there’s the terror of them dropping limbs, eucalypts do drop limbs fairly dramatically, so that might be part of it.

How do you think we can undo the settler imprint of broad scale land clearing on our national psyche?

The political lobbying really has to intensify around logging old growth trees. That’s the real priority because they’re irreplaceable. Once they are gone you can’t get back what they offer to ecosystems, let alone the spiritual, cultural qualities those trees might have, and the number of species of animals and insects we’ll lose if all those trees disappear. You have to prioritise trees that have several hundred years under their belt, and not be fooled by formulas about off-setting, because they’re very wonky formulas. You can’t replace a five hundred-year-old tree with a dozen seedlings, and if you do, you have to make sure those dozen seedlings survive. It’s a long-term commitment, not just a kind of mathematical formula, ticking a box. These policies are in place; they are meaningful. It means something to produce X number of trees to a certain age, and understand that it actually connects to real life. I sometimes feel with bodies that build roads that they are just trying to game the system.

It feels like they are very defensive, not taking suggestions seriously that they should not build a road, unless they are forced. It feels like it’s not really a discussion, just a bureaucratic exercise.

There are many cultures in the world that see trees – and all of nature – as sentient, yet the Western mind continues to denigrate this as superstitious and wishful thinking. Yet this is really the crux of the problem, isn’t it?

These kind of ideas were once seen as fanciful, but I think there is an increasing body of accepted science which makes them less so. I suspect the problem is not so much that some people don’t

believe that trees and ecosystems behave in a way you could describe as sentient, but that they don’t care. Industrialised thinking separates humans from nature which isn’t only incorrect but dangerous.

When you look at the indicative distribution maps of river red gums in Australia and recognise their relationship to waterways above and below ground, it upends the notion of Australia’s dryness. The tree is almost a symbolic representation of the entire continent’s (including its first people) effect on the European mind. Yet this places the river red gum in a unique position, having survived desertification, ice age and so on, to answer a lot of questions of how to survive from here on in, culturally and existentially. Are we capable of approaching this?

Well, there are a lot of scientists who are doing amazing work with river red gum and other Australian trees. And those scientists are talking more and more to the traditional landowners in different areas and learning from them. I think the question is, who listens to these people? How seriously do policy makers take this work?

That said, as I meet more of these researchers, I’m aware of how adept some of them are becoming at general communication and media work. So they are doing their very best to spread the word – and are always very generous in sharing their research with writers like myself.

City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest is published by Text.

northerly SPRING 2019 | 15

FEATURE

You owe it to your work: The structural editing process Ahead of a three-day workshop in October and November, local editing guru Laurel Cohn offers insight into the importance of structural editing for a manuscript.

At the end of the session Writing Process: The Agony and the Ecstasy at this year’s Byron Writers Festival, a woman in a turquoise jacket asked for advice on how to push through her resistance to revising her manuscript after ‘finishing’ it. Isobelle Carmody, bestselling author of over twenty-five titles, didn’t hesitate for a moment: ‘Editing is part of the creative process; don’t see it as separate from the writing process – you owe it to your work to deepen it.’ This resonated strongly with me.

Much of what I do as a developmental editor focusses on helping writers understand how to deepen their writing: how to dig in to their most recent draft to build on the strengths and address the weaknesses; how to amplify the themes, strengthen the structure, develop the characterisations, hone the dialogue, finesse the argument, intensify the descriptions, stabilise the point of view, nail the opening, strip away what isn’t serving the story. This is the stuff of structural editing.

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I relish this engagement with a manuscript, but most writers don’t. Like the woman with the turquoise jacket, for many writers, the idea of revision and self-editing is daunting and, to be frank, unappealing. I love that rush of creative inspiration; I don’t want to have to get all analytical about my work. Isn’t the ‘editing’ side of things boring and uncreative?

Well, no. Structural editing – as opposed to copyediting or line editing which focusses on punctuation, grammar, spelling, syntax – involves looking at the story as a whole and considering all the various elements of effective story telling. Structure, themes, character development, point of view, backstory, voice, pacing, dramatic tension, language usage, setting, central thesis – these are elements that most writers have given considerable thought to as they are writing.

However, it is an understanding of how all these aspects are working together to deliver the writer’s intent – or not – that lies at the heart of the structural editing process. It requires a shift from the

perspective of the writer to the perspective of the critical reader, and while you will never be able to have the same distance from your own work that an outside reader has, consciously stepping into a different frame of reference can be an illuminating and empowering experience.

The notion that editing and revision must somehow numb the creative spirit arises from ignorance of the process, and an unrealistic romanticism about the nature of the craft. All published writers revise their work. All published writers undertake some level of structural editing to develop their work to a higher standard. It is, as Isobelle Carmody said, about deepening the work. From my perspective, this is an intensely creative process that harnesses the powers and possibilities of the analytical mind – a stimulating and stimulated synthesis of left and right brain.

Every writer I know who has taken on the structural editing process has been grateful for where it has taken the manuscript and where

FEATURE

it has taken them as a writer.

One friend of mine, who has a particularly potent, poetic voice, was quite intimidated by the idea of undertaking a structural edit of her manuscript, an idea introduced to her at a publisher’s mentorship program. But she bit the bullet. After all, she wanted the work published, and if this was the pathway she had to take, well, she was willing to overcome her fears. It was at times painful and challenging, but also enlightening, and ultimately rewarding; she has since found a publisher for her novel.

After that session on the writing process at Byron Writers Festival, I sought out the woman in the turquoise jacket. I wanted her to know that she was not alone, and that I understood the space she was in. She was already on the road to becoming a better writer – she had asked the question; she had recognised that she had to find a way to push through her resistance to revising the manuscript, and she had come to terms with the fact that there was more work to do, even though she had thought she was ‘finished’. She told me she’d

been buoyed by Isobelle Carmody’s response because it had dispelled the last of her lingering reluctance.

It was time to embrace the editing and revision process – she owed it to her work.

‘Through the principles of good structural editing that Laurel imparted, the course fertilised my practice and fomented some wonderful new ideas. Whatever voodoo she was channeling, pedagogically, Laurel had a great passion and skill for breaking her knowledge down into very specific and practical experiential processes. I was able to notice problems in my prose, discarded some of what didn’t work and rehabilitated what remained.’

– Michelle Braunstein

‘Laurel’s three-day structural editing course helped me clarify issues with my writing voice, plus a dilemma with my time line and backstory. Laurel gave us generous individual feedback with warmth and frankness, a variety of structural editing approaches and the confidence to keep going.’

– Annie Barrett

‘Laurel is a passionate and engaging teacher, a consummate professional with a depth of experience across genres. I am indebted to her for her significant contribution, seminal really, to my growth as a writer!’

– Lynton Berger

Laurel Cohn is a developmental book editor passionate about communication and the power of stories in our lives. She has been helping writers prepare their work for publication since the mid 1980s, and is a popular workshop presenter.

She has a PhD in literary and cultural studies. www.laurelcohn.com.au For more information on Laurel’s workshop and how to book, see page 28.

northerly SPRING 2019 | 17

SCU SHOWCASE

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

Lilies Rebecca Ryall

An ex-lover has a thing for lilies. He has lilies for birthdays, lilies for condolence and congratulations, lilies just because. I often wonder if he does this for all his ex-lovers, or if he perhaps has a different flower for each.

For years his lilies were pink, which research reveals carry a sentiment of admiration and attraction.

It was towards the end when he started bringing white lilies. I now understand (and wonder, did he?) that white lilies are the traditional funeral flower, symbolising purity, the innocence and liberation of the departed soul.

He brought lilies just after my forty-second birthday and they were white. I remember when they first arrived. They smelt glorious, and fresh, and I decided to put them in her bedroom, to counter the smell of death which was slowly, surely permeating everything. We had been sleeping in there together – her in a hospital bed which rhythmically inflated and deflated throughout the night; me in another bed beside her. Throughout the night she would wake with a whimper or soft weeping and I too would wake to sit with her, delivering drugs and rubbing her back. Each morning I would wait to help her out of bed and into the wheelchair. With her transferred to the recliner in the loungeroom, connected to the oxygen, I would return to put the room to rights again. I would strip the sickbed of sheets, stinking from

the urine that leaked through her incontinence pads in the night. I would empty the bin of the blood-soaked tissues and drug packaging, open the windows to the spring breeze.

The day he bought the lilies was the day before she went to the hospital for the last time.

I placed them atop the white bookshelf, visible from both beds and their scent cutting through the odors of bodily decline. I didn’t go back in there again until weeks after she had died. The petals had all fallen and the stems rotted down to brown mush. The smell of their stagnant water was putrid. The pollen had stained the white melamine of the bookshelf where I had placed the vase. The vivid orange stamens had dropped and landed in the wax of the expensive candles there, staining their surfaces. Though I wiped everything they had touched, I only succeeded in smearing the oily marks, across the wax, across the bookshelf.

I hated these lilies. I hated the melamine bookshelf, and I hated the decorative, overly perfumed candles she would never light in case they started a fire.

These dead lilies taunted me with their putrescence, were smug in their disarray. ‘Death is natural!’ they seemed to chant and who was I to wallow? So what if she was beautiful, loved and cut down in her prime? ‘Get over it’ those wretched lilies seemed to say, ‘everything dies.’

I felt my heart harden as I scrubbed at the stains on the melamine.

Rebecca is currently a full-time student at SCU, completing her BA with majors in Writing and Cultural Studies, and intentions to undertake honours next year. She is a single mother living off-grid, deep in the forest in northern New South Wales.

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FEATURE

What’s WOB got to do with it? Or some rules for starting a lit.zine Northern Rivers writer and publisher Paul Shields, aka the George Plimpton of Kyogle, reflects on setting up the new journal WOB. Chapter One: What’s WOB got to do with it?

I had the idea for starting a lit.zine last year when I was studying honours in Creative Writing. But the seed came from an interview I did a long time ago, when I was working as a music journo, with Quan Yeomans, the lead singer of Regurgitator. Quan had just released an album called Amateur – a side project which celebrated a DIY aesthetic, running contra to the idea that we should always be seeking to monetise our talents. The idea appealed, sticking with me.

Ambitious was the word my honours supervisor used when I told him about my plans – he was right and TBH if I hadn’t missed out on a PhD scholarship by a single mark the lit.zine idea would have gone into the dusty drawer of shit I have not followed through with.

But I did miss out and I was pissed off. Pissed off for months. But then I got to a stage when I realised that for my own mental health I needed to do something productive. Hence WOB. ‘WOB’ stands for West of Byron – the simplest way of describing where Kyogle (where I live) is to anyone. It also stands for a metaphorical West we engage with in Australia. A feeling that if we turn our gaze inland we are instantly engaged with the exotic Other. That non-metropolis writing is about hard knocks, droughts, flooding rains, and bitter rednecks (or worse, magical realism) is the sort of bullshit I wanted to call out. I have no idea if I succeeded or not, but I am happy with WOBone, and WOBtwo is building.

Chapter Two: Some rules for starting a lit.zine Marry a graphic designer. Also, marry a VCA grad who did a subject on book binding. Move to a town where there is at least one Vogel Award finalist who’s

nice enough to contribute. And proofread. Make sure he’s got an older brother who is also an excellent writer. Find a spot on the farm with mobile reception, move the horse float head office there to send your emails. Realise early on that emails are a chickenshit way to ask people for material and use this to your advantage. Or to paraphrase Dylan: ‘When you got email you got nothing to lose, you’re invisible with no secrets to conceal.’

Ask other people who are making zines to contribute to yours. Make sure said wife is also handy at the website stuff. Enjoy the freedom that writing for your own publication gives you and try something weird and different. Be thankful that when you fuck up the type setting on your first print run, the Vogel Award finalist really is a nice bloke. Come up with a pretentious new term for what you are doing. Like lit.zine. Understand that people confuse zines with blogs, and try not to get too uppity. Officeworks will stuff up your printing order. Douglas Adams wrote that he loved deadlines, especially the noise that they make when they go flying past. Lit.zine deadlines are more like dark matter. They exist and help shape our universe but their powers shouldn’t be enough to have an effect on your everyday decision making.

Have silly dreams. Like holding on to a couple of copies thinking that they are going to be worth a motza in years to come. Ask people who work in bookstores to contribute. Ask those people who work in bookstores to carry your lit.zine. You might think it’s funny to offer Passion Pop as a currency of payment.

Not everyone is going to think that offering Passion Pop as a currency of payment is funny. Give away copies of the lit.zine for free. Lose money. It won’t be much.

You can pick up a copy of WOBone here: wob-lit. com.au. WOBtwo will be out in October(ish).

northerly SPRING 2019 | 19

BOOK REVIEW

That feeling of belonging Growing up Queer in Australia Edited by Benjamin Law Review by Kathy Gibbings

Although Benjamin Law is happy to use the term LGBTIQA+, and he acknowledges that for some people ‘queer’ has a sting, he has reclaimed an older interpretation of the word: ‘To “queer” is to subvert, interrogate and flip – which all these stories do in their own way.’

This is the book that Benjamin Law wished he’d had when he was growing up. Stories that spoke of ‘queer people… and depictions of queer sex… I craved them with a desperation that bordered on hunger.’ Chairing a panel, Growing up Queer in Australia, at Byron Writers Festival 2019, Law said it was an opportunity to bring to light ‘Australian stories that are hidden, erased, buried and dismissed.‘ He writes that, For queer people it’s especially important, because while other forms of prejudice – like racism – can make you feel just as alone and isolated, ethnic minorities like me go home to families and communities who share our backgrounds and experiences, and affirm who we are. Queer kids growing up typically don’t have that. I didn’t. That feeling of belonging – of understanding you are not alone and not insane – is a core human need. If we can’t get that from the people around us, we need stories.

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Scott McKinnon, in his contribution to the book ‘Kissing Brad Davis’, discusses the lack of representation, the censoring of even relatively chaste queer images as the province of the ‘adult’ and the ‘sexual’… heterosexuality was the only imagery available to kids like me… children’s entertainment was a hotbed of heterosexuality. The central romance in Lady and the Tramp ensured that I had seen a loving kiss between two animated dogs before I witnessed one between two human males… and Miss Piggy’s feelings for a somewhat startled Kermit were nothing short of barefaced, voracious lust… Even the simplest of kisses between men was considered so shocking, even pornographic, that it could never be permitted to appear in a movie accessible to kids.

Speaking on ABC’s The Drum in August, Law reminds us that there is ‘no such thing as a queer experience.’ And there is certainly a diversity of voices in this book, covering varieties of sexuality and gender; cross-cutting indigenous and migrant experiences; the urban/rural cultural divide; of bodies that are intersex, bisexual, trans; and bodies with disability. The writing styles encompass essay form, short story, lyricism, and lecture. Some speak with hindsight, others talk in an immediate, visceral voice.

All are autobiographical, from both established and emerging writers.

BOOK REVIEW

“Many of the writers explore a sense of arrested development. When you’ve spent your teen years hiding who you are, your twenties are catch-up time.”

There is a curious digression near the half-way mark, with the insertion of six interviews. This breaks the flow of the text, and when the interviewees include writers such as Christos Tsiolkas, you wonder at a missed opportunity for more creative pieces.

Some pieces speak of shame, and internalised selfloathing. Heather Joan Day in ‘Andraphobia’ writes: …I wish that I’ll wake up and be an entirely different person. I finger the self-harm scars on my body, imagining them opening and closing like gills. Blood pours from them, emptying into the shell I live in.

Other stories protest society’s need to categorise and catalogue. Stephanie Convery in ‘Jack and Jill and Me’: I resented the idea of coming out. It wasn’t that I was introverted or that I felt like my romances were shameful… but that I loathed the idea of being pigeon-holed… coming out was... an expectation, like taking a ticket to join a queue or picking up litter; it was the responsibility of every good citizen to keep things neat and tidy… Not only that, the idea that my relationships or my identity required formal sanction by others frustrated me.

Many of the writers explore a sense of arrested development. When you’ve spent your teen years hiding who you are (for fear of violence, social

ostracism, family schism, community disparagement), your twenties are catch-up time. Unlearning and learning what you are.

This book is for young people growing up queer today. An opportunity to see representations of themselves, to feel less alone. The contributors to the anthology have committed an honourable act, exposing the vulnerability of their early years, for the sake of next generations.

I can’t do justice to all the works. When you come to read it, you’ll have your own set of stories that glitter and hurt.

But let’s finish with some sex and love from Justin Hyde in ‘The Most Natural of Things’: One drunken night… we stumble along the fringe of the Botanic Gardens. The dark limbs of Moreton Bay figs arch over us, rustling with fruit bats… V takes my hand and closes it between hers. Time bends and my head swims with alcohol and desire.

My pores spring sweat, my blood surges and my heart bursts through my rib cage. ‘Do you want me to kiss you?’ she asks. As our mouths connect I think of all the sea creatures swimming in the harbour, breathing flagrantly through their gills as if it is the most natural of things.

Black Inc. / 352pp / $29.99

northerly SPRING 2019 | 21

YA BOOK REVIEWS

What YA Reading?

Reviews by Polly Jude

before. Mick’s dealing with his own issues and the loss of his sister in his own way.

Tartan-wearing Gem has also had a hard life. She takes Nate under her wing and introduces him to life living and working on the river. Their friendship brings out the best in both of them and Nate can finally see a future worth living. Nate’s got a new life on the river, his new friends, work; life is finally working out for him.

Promise Me Happy

by Robert Newton Nate’s life so far has been anything but easy. His mother tried to protect him from his abusive father but when she’s killed in a shocking accident, Nate lashes out. He’s done terrible things and has deep regrets. Now Nate has served his time.

When he’s released from juvie, Nate’s got to get used to life on the outside. After eighteen months inside, he needs to adapt to life without the rules and structures. He’s also struggling to get used to life without his mum.

His uncle, Mick, offers him more than just a home. Mick offers Nate a job and a new start.

Nate’s got lots of questions though and wonders why his uncle never tried to help them

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The Honeyman & The Hunter by Neil Grant

When Nate finds out just how sick Gem is, he’s lost his new anchor in life and his old ways threaten to take over again.

Sixteen-year-old Rudra Solace lives between two worlds.

Half-Australian and half-Indian, he struggles to fit in with an Australian culture that always sees him as foreign. Except Rudra’s never been to India and feels Australian.

If you are giving this book as a gift, you’d better throw in a box of tissues! Promise Me Happy is beautifully written and will appeal to younger YA readers and their mothers.

When his Indian grandma shows up, everything is about to change. Ancient family secrets are revealed and this past binds his Australian and Indian families together.

But sometimes life doesn’t always have a happy ending.

Gem’s sick.

For readers who enjoyed any of Robert Newton’s previous novels, you’ll love this one too. Newton has once again managed to nail authentic YA characters and dialogue. In Promise Me Happy, Newton is tackling big issues such as grief, identity and domestic violence.

His gentle manner helps his readers come to terms with this tragic story and the beauty in it.

Penguin / 282pp / $17.99

Rudra must travel to India to right the past and change the future.

The Honeyman & The Hunter is a coming of age story. It is beautifully written and exotic.

It is a heart-warming story of loss and belonging. Grant presents us with a fascinating glimpse into Indian culture by exploring traditional myths, family, society, bullying and friendships. The mums will want to read this one!

Allen & Unwin / 288pp / $19.99

BOOK REVIEW

d a passionate ervice. Here, abides.

erington

Local colour

poetry by Nola Firth

Counting on Murwillumbah

Nola Firth

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ope, the n in ound , these are d acceptance.

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ent into stralia’s ires, portance of of country h privacy’.

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ers us a teady hic and elebrates so

Review by Julie Gittus

by Nola Firth

MARK TIME BOOKS

Mary Oliver, when reflecting on what she learned from photographer and long-term partner, Molly Malone Cook, wrote: ‘Attention without feeling, is only a report. An openness – an empathy – was necessary if the attention was to matter.’

Openness and empathy are defining features of the poems in Nola Firth’s collection, Counting on Murwillumbah. Through this lens we share Firth’s keen observations – the idiosyncratic, the dangerous, the profound aspects of her world. Combine this particular way of seeing with an elegant and precise use of language and you have a collection that definitely ‘matters’.

Whether meditating on the history of a bunya pine in her backyard, or the Tweed Valley caldera, or stepping through the doorway of Cologne Cathedral, or sitting on a black cushion at a Zen retreat, as a reader we feel with a visceral certainty exactly where we are, which in turn, allows a deeper listening to each poem’s intent.

This strong sense of place is one of the threads knitting the collection into a cohesive whole.

An awareness of social justice is evident across Firth’s work. ‘Painting the Heart’ was written in memory of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran and the men who were executed with them in Indonesia.

Through Firth’s empathy and deft poetry, we are compelled to face, open-eyed, the true crime of state sanctioned murder: They sang on the way, Ambulances to care

feeling the clear night air for the bodies.

coming in and out A surgeon to sew shut

of their perfect lungs, the bullet wounds we make

feeling the soft earth in each heart. under every footstep.

This poem won the 2015 Rhonda Jancovic Literary Award, while another of Firth’s poems in the collection, ‘Leave Half the Turtle Eggs’, was shortlisted in the same competition. The opening poem, which bears the same title as the collection, won the Byron Writers Festival Dangerously Poetic Award in 2017.

Firth brings her sensitive touch to her reflections on indigenous culture and history. She reminds us how the bora ring at Tweed Heads ‘holds troves of time coded memories / - thousands of operas by the sea.’

She also encourages us, with a devastating simplicity, to observe how the path to the adjoining bora ring ‘lies under a suburban house’.

Published under the imprint of Mark Time Books, the collection is divided into four neatly titled sections. This structure, together with the poem groupings, creates a logical flow. Recent poems have been mostly placed in the earlier sections. These poems tend to be stronger, highlighting the fact we are observing a poet on an exciting trajectory.

Lovers of poetry tend to be familiar with the particular thrill that comes when reading a really good poem for the first time, a poem you know you will be revisiting for many years. Counting on Murwillumbah is littered with such poems. Lifeaffirming and eloquent, this is a book that will appeal to a broad audience including those who rarely read poetry, local history lovers and those with a strong social awareness.

Let me close on a cliche: I can’t recommend this collection highly enough.

Mark Time Books / 76pp / $25 northerly SPRING 2019 | 23

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Susie Warrick Young Writers Award: The runners-up Congratulations to the runners-up in the 2019 Susie Warrick Young Writers Award, Ally Broome in Category 1 and Tiane Alexander in Category 2.

Shadows Ally Broome

I live alone. Well, not entirely. You see I have always felt as though there is a strange presence that calls my house its home as well. I couldn’t sleep the first night when I moved in. The room felt damp and heavy, as if something was surrounding me but wouldn’t touch me, like I was a shark surrounded by baitfish. It was surreal and I had never experienced anything like it.

I’ve lived in this house for fortyseven years. Every night I feel the same. I’ve tried to move houses, I’ve tried and tried. But every time a strange part of me resents. I fear that I have trapped myself in this house, and I am afraid that I won’t ever be able to escape.

I lie in bed for what feels like the millionth time, preparing myself.

The polished timber floorboards creak as wind runs up and down my hallway. Through a crack in the curtains moonlight shines through, creating an eerie glow all around me. Yet these things do not scare me. They would be called creepy 24 | SPRING 2019 northerly

by some, but they remind me that not only the strange ghost is watching me, but the moon is too.

And the wind? Well the wind to me is like protection. A guard, you could say. As I blow out my candle the moon’s glow becomes brighter and my eyes fall.

The sounds of kookaburras wake me. What was once the moon is now the sun and it dances through my curtains and around my room.

It makes my room alive, and is the only joyous thing in here. My single bed lies in the corner with a greyish-brown floral doona that you would only be able to find at your grandma’s nursing home. It does its job well enough. A dead cactus my son gave me many years ago sits on my bedside table, next to a picture of him. I miss my son more than anything in the world, but he is gone. The paint on my roof is peeling away, revealing the wooden skeleton of this house. I really should repaint it. Another day, I tell myself.

I walk to the kitchen, the floorboards creaking with my steps.

I boil the kettle and make myself a black tea and vegemite toast. I take

it out onto my porch and feed the magpies a piece of white bread.

I stare out into space when I feel that strange feeling that you only get when someone is watching you. I turn around, expecting to see nothing, but what I see shocks me.

A tall boy stands in the doorway.

My face goes pale, I can feel it. He looks perfectly real, yet I know that my crazy old mind is playing tricks on me. That would be impossible.

I stand up and walk backwards, down the stairs and run. I trip on a crack in the concrete and fling forward onto the grass. The boy runs over and offers his hand to me. I’m overwhelmed and lose my breath. My eyes close and I lose control of reality.

‘Can you hear me? Catherine? Are you there?’

‘How do you know my name?’ I ask.

‘I live with you,’ he replies.

This is getting crazy. My head is throbbing and I try to sit up but am pushed down by my lack of strength. ‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’ he asks.

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‘I am not a goddamn baby,’ I reply, still in shock and extremely overwhelmed. ‘Who are you?’ I ask.

‘I’m Christopher. Let me tell you a story,’ he replies.

‘Jesus. You don’t give up do you boy. Go on then.’

He smiles and starts talking. He tells me his story. How he fell in love. How he died. How this house is his. I don’t know if I should believe it, but I’m mesmerised. By the time he finishes I feel like I have known him forever.

We lie on the lawn, staring up at the sky. It’s dark now. Clouds blanket the stars and all that’s left of the moon is a dimmed blur, but we look up anyway.

‘I’ve always loved looking up at the sky, whether there are clouds or not,’ he says.

‘But when there are clouds, you’re staring at nothing, so what’s the point?’ I ask.

‘You’re not staring at nothing, Catherine. You’re staring at galaxies. Universes. Milky Ways.

Planets. Humans only have the capacity to see what’s in front of them. Many people don’t believe in something if they cannot see it with the naked eye. But knowing what is out there is enough for me. I don’t need to be able to see what’s up there. I can imagine.’

We lay in silence.

‘Thank you for keeping me company today, you should stay.

Forever.’ I tell him.

‘I’ve always wanted to escape, ever since I was a young boy. I’ve wanted to escape everything really.

I escaped life the selfish way. But I guess I’ve never really escaped this house. But meeting you I feel free. I believe that you are my bridge. My bridge to happiness. To freedom.’

‘What are you saying?’ I ask.

‘I’m saying that I can leave. I can maybe be a star. I’ll be your star.’

A single tear falls from my right eye and runs down my cheek, falling onto the grass. I’m happy for my dear friend but my selfishness wants him to stay. Oh, how I’ve missed human interaction. Having

someone to love. He squeezes my hand and whispers to me, ‘I’ll guide you.’

I look at him. He’s fading away, specks of him drifting upwards. A second tear rolls down as I watch him leave me. He waves. I smile through sadness.

I continue to lay down on the damp grass. I never want to leave. I stare up, at nothing; some may say.

But as I stare up I know that I’m staring at my friend, Christopher.

Red and Purple Tiane Alexander

‘I guess you’re wondering why I seem so distracted lately, aren’t you? Okay, I’ll tell you – I really need to get it off my chest, I suppose...

Well, I’ve been having these nightmares lately – nightmares so damn realistic that I remember every single second. And they northerly SPRING 2019 | 25

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always begin the same way too...

I’m waiting – I don’t know what for at first – but I just have this real certain feeling that something’s ‘bout to happen... Anyway, so, I realise I’m standing at this point, and I feel so aware of myself! It’s like... It’s like I can feel my heart beat and each breath as it comes – and I really feel them completely, like, completely! I can picture it so vividly! Even now... Even now it’s so goddamn clear in my mind... So what was I saying? Oh, yeah, okay – so, then I realise, I realise that I’m standing in front of this massive wrought iron gate. And it’s super thick, boy, it really is a massive gate; stretches real far too. Behind it I can see these sort of purple coloured trees – well, the trees aren’t purple, I guess it’s sort of just the leaves, yeah, the leaves are purple... Anyway, these trees edge the garden and they’re blowing in the wind, really bending all over the place and it looks crazy. It’s a pretty unfortunate sort of day I guess, all cold, grey sky that makes your eyes wince to look at cos it’s so bright. Anyway, I just keep feeling like, like I’m really there.

And when I open the gate it feels uneven beneath my fingers, all bumpy and uncomfortable, and it reminds me of something real familiar. It’s super heavy to open too, I can barely push it, and it’s annoying, you know? It really does irritate me, even now, god, it just seems unnecessary to make a gate that heavy. And the wind feels real sharp on my skin, making all my hairs stand up all straight!

And it just adds to the whole gate problem and by now I’m pretty well peeved...

Actually, now I think about it, I’m starting to think that maybe the trees were in front of the gate, yeah, they were closer, more 26 | SPRING 2019 northerly

red than purple... Hey, are you listening? Stop looking away and listen to me, your eyes keep drifting off somewhere... Yeah. Okay, well just pay attention alright? Okay. So, where was I? God!

that? Oh don’t be like that... You know this is your fault? If you’d just pay attention I wouldn’t keep on forgetting. Oh don’t be like that, come on. It’s annoying, you know?

Yeah. Anyway...

Anyway, so the gate leads to this house, a real old house on stilts, you know the kind. It’s all timber and tin and it’s so darn windy I reckon that the house is right close to getting blown away! And I get to thinking, why’s a house like this got such a humungous gate, you know? Cos it really was...

Now I think about it maybe he’s standing, yeah.. Yeah, he’s standing near the trees and he’s sort of just looking, well he looks angry actually. Real mad now I think about it, yelling, raising his fists and all. Super loud too, it makes my hairs stand on end! Gosh, he’s furious, he gets pretty close too, he doesn’t really have freckles up this close, actually... Well, that can’t be right... I don’t really remember...

I think, well, I think maybe he’s crying a lot by this point, but – stop it!

Hey! Listen to me, would ya? I always forget this part... Let me see... Well, god! It’s your fault, you know that? If you’d just listen I wouldn’t lose my place. And it’s annoying, you know? Because the beginning is just so clear in my mind... It’s really vivid, you know?

I can just feel it in me, it feels so goddamn familiar but when I wake up it’s all muddled up again...

Well, it’s your fault for not listening, isn’t it! You’re acting real immature, you know that? It’s your fault, and if I wasn’t so decent you’d really get that by now – oh!

There it is!

There’s this kid out the front, yeah! And I reckon he’s real young too, well he looks it, super skinny and freckly with this stupid mop on his head. Super long too, it keeps getting in his eyes, it seems really annoying. Because it would be, annoying that is, to have all that hair... And anyway he’s crying I reckon, he looks super upset. God, it’s hard to tell though because it’s so windy, it feels so cold... I guess he’s crying though, yeah, really bawling at this point and it’s pretty pathetic to watch cos – hey!

That’s it! You’re just not listening!

God! You always do this, you know

I’m speaking to you! Look at me! Why are you crying? Stop it, I swear this is your fault! Look at me, I swear to god you’re making me forget this on purpose! Look at me! You can’t can you? You know you’ve got some nerve! You’re bawling like a baby you know, you stupid idiot, you’re absolutely pathetic! You’re a fucking child, I swear to god you’ll get what’s coming to you! I’ll-‘ His blurred vision clears as he blinks away tears, staring deep into cobalt eyes that are edged by his hair. The silence rings in his ears.

‘Okay look, I’m sorry I yelled, let me clean this mess up. You just make me so angry sometimes,’ he says, picking a shard of mirror out of his own fist.

‘See, this is why I don’t like telling you my dreams, you never let me finish...’

WORKSHOPS

STORYTELLING FOR CHANGEMAKERS WITH JENNI CARGILL FRIDAY 27 SEPTEMBER

APPROACHING THE PAGE WITH ZACHAREY JANE

THE BUSINESS OF WRITING WITH ANNELI KNIGHT

SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER

SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER

10.00AM - 4.00PM

10.00AM - 4.00PM

10.00AM - 4.00PM

Byron Writers Festival Office

Byron Writers Festival Office

Byron Writers Festival Office

$115 / $95*

$115 / $95*

$115 / $95* In the ancient tales of The 1001 Arabian Nights, brave Scheherazade skillfully wove compelling stories for her barbarous king, gradually healing him of his murderous rage. Stories are a powerful tool for enhancing compassion, gently introducing new ideas and preparing for change. Thus stories and myths can heal and redeem an entire culture. Learn in a relaxed, fun environment how to harness and craft stories for social change. Learn why we are wired for story and how stories can be used to reframe and shift our societal values. You will practice simple storytelling skills in pairs and small groups.

This workshop offers engaging hands-on exercises to breakdown blank page anxiety and kick-start stories. This workshop is for writers of all levels and will address starting a story, structure, character and voice. Writers will leave this workshop with exercises and ideas to support their independent creativity.

Zacharey Jane is an author of literary fiction and picture books, and a contributor to academic journals and magazines. She is also a creative writing teacher, experienced in teaching all ages and levels, and the Tour Manager of Writers on the Road, for Byron Writers Festival.

Award-winning professional storyteller and storytelling coach Jenni Cargill has nearly thirty years of experience. She has taught storytelling to activists, university students, teachers, parents and children.

There are many ways to turn your passion and flair for writing into a reliable income and base for a business.

The workshop will include a mix of guided brainstorming sessions and reflective activities that you will use to underpin a detailed plan for creating or growing your writing business. Anneli will share hard-won tips from the trenches, advice on what not to do, as well as sharing techniques and tools from entrepreneurs, experts and business leaders.

Anneli Knight is a strategic writing consultant, author and journalist with a PhD in creative writing. She’s made her living through various forms of professional writing for the past fifteen years, delivering workshops up and down the east coast several times a month.

For workshop details and to register visit byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on northerly SPRING 2019 | 27

WORKSHOPS

WRITERS GROUPS ALSTONVILLE PLATEAU WRITERS GROUP Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on (02) 6628 5662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com BALLINA/BYRON U3A CREATIVE WRITING Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Ann Neal on (02) 6681 6612.

BANGALOW WRITERS GROUP Meets Thursdays at 9:15am at Bangalow Scout Hall.

Contact Simone on 0407 749 288 BELLINGEN WRITERS GROUP Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2pm. All welcome, contact Joanne on (02) 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@restnet.com.au

STRUCTURAL EDITING FOR WRITERS WITH LAUREL COHN SATURDAY 19 OCTOBER SATURDAY 9 NOVEMBER SATURDAY 30 NOVEMBER 10.00AM - 4.00PM each day Byron Writers Festival Office $295 / $265* Most writers know their manuscript will require a structural edit, but have little understanding of what this means. This three-day course explains structural editing, what role it plays in manuscript development, how to go about it, and how to survive it. Breaking the process into stages, participants will learn strategies and tools to apply to their own work, with the course format guiding writers as they work on their current draft. The course is for writers of fiction and narrative non-fiction with a complete draft of their manuscript who are willing to explore the challenging inner terrain that underlies critical engagement with one’s own work.

Laurel Cohn is a developmental book editor passionate about helping writers prepare their work for publication.

*Byron Writers Festival members or students

28 | SPRING 2019 northerly

WRITING FROM LIFE WITH GRAEME GIBSON SATURDAY 23 NOVEMBER 10.00AM - 4.00PM Byron Writers Festival Office $105 / $85* In this highly participatory workshop in creative nonfiction, Graeme Gibson uses his background in adult learning to ensure participants learn not just from him, but from and with each other. Writing exercises progressively build upon each other, starting at the beginning, and include finding a hook, sensory language and locating the narrative through to polishing.

Graeme Gibson has a background in adult learning, principally in the environmental and community services sectors. His approach to learning is that people learn from and with each other, not just from a teacher. He also works as a group facilitator and mediator.

BYRON BAY MEMOIR AND FICTION WRITING GROUP Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 0420 282 938 or diana.burstall@gmail.com BYRON WRITERS Every Tuesday 10am to 12pm, Byron Bay Library. Contact the library on (02) 6685 8540.

CASINO WRITERS GROUP Meets every third Thursday of the month at 4pm at Casino Library. Contact Brian on (02) 6628 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com CLOUDCATCHERS For Haiku enthusiasts. A ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement.

Contact Quendryth on (02) 6653 3256 or email quendrythyoung@bigpond.com COFFS HARBOUR WRITERS GROUP Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Lorraine Penn on (02) 6653 3256 or 0404 163 136, email: lmproject@bigpond.com. www. coffsharbourwriters.com COFFS HARBOUR MEMOIR WRITERS GROUP Share your memoir writing for critique. Monthly meetings, contact 0409 824 803 or email costalmermaid@gmail.com CRU3A RIVER POETS Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on (02) 6645 8715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au DORRIGO WRITERS GROUP Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm. Contact Iris on (02) 6657 5274 or email an_lomall@bigpond.com or contact Nell on (02) 6657 4089 DUNOON WRITERS GROUP Writers on the Block. Meets second Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Dunoon Sports Club.Contact Helga on (02) 6620 2994 (W), 0401 405 178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com FAW PORT MACQUARIE-HASTINGS REGIONAL Meets 1pm on last Saturday of each month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on (02) 6584 3520 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 0431 443 385 or email info@ goldcoast-writers.org.au KYOGLE WRITERS Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on (02) 6624 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com LISMORE WRITERS GROUP Meets second Tuesday of the month from 6pm to 8pm at Communities Hub Art Space on Keen Street. Cost is $5 for Hub members, $7.50 for non-members. For more details phone 0410 832 362.

MIDDLE GRADE / YOUNG ADULT FICTION WRITERS’ GROUP Meets monthly at 2pm on Sundays in Bangalow.

Contact Carolyn Bishop at carolyncbishop@gmail.com or 0431 161 104 NAMBUCCA VALLEY WRITERS GROUP Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca. Contact (02) 6568 9648 or nambuccawriters@gmail.com TAREE-MANNING RIVER SCRIBBLERS Meets second Wednesday of the month, 9am-11:30am, Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on (02) 6553 2829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com TWEED POETS AND WRITERS Meets weekly at the Coolangatta Senior Citizens Centre on Tuesdays from 1:30pm to 3:30pm, NSW time. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers are all welcome. Phone Lorraine (07) 5524 8035.

WORDSFLOW WRITING GROUP meets Fridays during school term, 12:30pm-3pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412 455 707 or visit www.wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com