impriNorthern Territory Writers’ Centrent Journal | December 2016 Imprint CONTENTS EDITORIAL: SALLY BOTHROYD, NT WRITERS’ CENTRE NORTHERN TERRITORY WRITERS’ CENTRE JOURNAL

ABOUT BOARD OF MANAGEMENT FEATURES Welcome to this re-launch of Imprint is a publication of the President Professor Martin Jarvis Judges Report: Northern Territory the Northern Territory Writers’ NT Writers’ Centre. It is devoted OAM (Darwin) Book of the Year Peter Bishop | 3 Centre Journal Imprint (previously to NT writers and writing. Vice-president Dr Adelle Sefton- On Writing: A Handful of Sand | Write Turn). Rowston (Darwin) Charlie Ward | 4 It’s been about 18 month since a Treasurer Dalton Dupuy (Alice Springs) You’re Always a Winner to Us new team took the driver’s seat at EDITORIAL & PRODUCTION Secretary Michelle Coleman (Darwin) Mary Anne Butler | 5 the NT Writers’ Centre. Imprint is edited and produced by Regional Representative Linda Wells NTWC staff. (Alice Springs) In Search of Pixie Glenn Morrison | 6 There have been challenges, but the Graphic design Ash Steel Public Officer Michelle Coleman On Still Emerging Megan McGrath | 8 Alice Springs program manager Printing Colemans (Darwin) The Asian Festival of Children’s Fiona Dorrell and myself feel we’ve Ordinary Members David James Content 2016 Sandra Kendell | 10 now managed to get things back ABOUT NT WRITERS’ CENTRE (Darwin), Nicola Pitt (Alice Springs), on track, so we can best help our The NT Writers’ Centre encourages Toni Tapp Coutts (Katherine), Ktima members while also promoting writers vibrant literary activity in the Northern Heathcote (Tennant Creek) INDUSTRY and writing in the Northern Territory. Copyright 101 Jo Teng | 11 Territory, developing and supporting The NT Writers’ Festival was held Representing the NT in Ubud writers across all genres at all stages SUBSCRIBE in Darwin in May, and came hot on The NTWC would not be able to Christopher Raja | 11 of their careers. We value quality NT NTWC members receive all issues the heels of the 2015 Alice Springs operate without the funding we writing as a unique component of of Imprint. $55 waged/$45 unwaged Push Your Book Ellen van Neerven | 12 Festival in September (postponed receive from Arts NT, and thanks Australia’s literary wealth and recognise per year. Join or renew your Botanic Gardens Retreat due to the staff changeover). We’ve must go to them for their continued Indigenous writers and storytellers as a membership at ntwriters.com.au Leonie Norrington | 13 hardly had time to catch our breath, enthusiasm and support. We are core component of this. grateful to also have continued or call 08 8942 1100 25 Years of KROW Katherine Region but it’s been a fun time. funding from the Australia Council, As well as our ongoing member of Writers | 13 Both festivals were a great success. services, we offer a program of and the support of other funders, SUBMISSIONS Larrimah Retreat Kylie Stevenson | 14 Huge thanks go to Fiona Dorrell, workshops, opportunities and including the Copyright Agency, The NT Writers’ Centre welcomes NT Writers’ Festival: Wordstorm 2016 | 16 and our Alice festival director Dani the Alice Springs Town Council the showcase events across the NT writing submissions by our Powell, Darwin festival co-ordinator including an annual Writers’ Festival. Catalyst Fund, and the Community membership. For details visit Cora Diviny, and our many volunteers Benefit Fund and to our sponsors ntwriters.com.au our website ntwriters.com.au/ INTERVIEWS who stepped in to lend a helping including Channel Nine Darwin, Courtney Collins | 18 membership/writing-submissions Writing in Ngukurr hand. Thanks also to the NTWC’s Charles Darwin University and the Illustrating Children’s Books board, and bookkeeper (and brains Darwin International Airport. STAFF Freya Blackwood | 19 trust) Hamish McDonald. ADVERTISING Executive Director Sally Bothroyd For inquiries about advertising Online Publishing Colin Wicking | 20 We’ve also managed to get the Sally Bothroyd Executive Director enquiries please email workshop program up and happening Alice Springs Program Manager NT Writers’ Centre [email protected] again, and have been pleased to see so Fiona Dorrell FICTION many people taking the opportunity to 2017 Festival Director is printed in good faith Tea Anyone? Maureen O’Keefe | 21 Imprint exercise their creative writing muscles. Dani Powell and NT Writers’ Centre staff and The Dog Karen Manton | 22 We’re hoping to offer another program Board of Management accept no of inspiring workshops in 2017, and to responsibility for any misinformation. be able to take them further afield. The views expressed by contributors LOCAL BOOKS or advertisers are not necessarily Desert Writing Kieran Finnane | 26 The NTWC has also been happy to endorsed by the staff or board. Short Reviews | 29 support numerous literary events and opportunities: including the NT Literary Awards, the Young Author Awards, the LISTINGS | 32 Red Dirt Poetry Festival, the Darwin Poetry Cup, and the National Poetry Slam Championships, and St Vinnie’s Guest Cover Artist Write Away Poverty competition for Talea Pattemore is a young graphic school children. designer/illustrator living and working in the Top End. She is a lover and a contributor of the NT arts scene, including traditional arts. JUDGES REPORT: FEATURES A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT: PROFESSOR MARTIN JARVIS OAM

I am sure some of the members me if I was interested in standing in May, which was highly successful; of the NT Writers’ Centre will have for a position on the NTWC Board, and the inaugural Andrew McMillan wondered why I became the new it was not hard for me to answer in Memorial Retreat at Larrimah: Kylie Northern Territory President? So I would like to take the affirmative; and, I immediately Stevenson was the first writer to this opportunity explain. Also, as joined the association via the website. benefit from this initiative. Also some members will already know The following Monday I attended worthy of a mention are the biennial of me only as the former conductor the AGM, and, much to my surprise ‘Territory Read Awards’ for published Book of the Year of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, I found myself volunteering to take NT authors: The Book of the Year and others not at all, so I think it is the role of President. And, thus was won by two authors, Clare Atkins PETER BISHOP appropriate to introduce myself to began my involvement with the NT and Mary Anne Butler, and the other you, as a writer, as well. Writers’ Centre! Besides being very category winners were Irena Kobald experienced in arts management, I and Derek Pugh – congratulations to The first thing to say is that these Mary Anne Butler gives Irena Kobald’s My Two I have been a writer in various formats believe that I am suitably qualified, as all of them. book awards are an excellent us a stunning vision of Blankets is a quiet book most of my professional career (as a writer, to be President, and to act institution and a splendid way to Australia in Highway of –but a true friend. It’s a musician). My first professional The new funding round is already in support of all the writers who are draw attention to the quality and Lost Hearts. It’s also a a moving experience writing engagement was for the underway, and Sally Bothroyd, and members of NTWC and represent the range of writing being produced and stunning story of the to sit with it –to think Hobart Mercury in 1982, when I her team in Alice Springs and Darwin, association in an appropriate manner. published in the Northern Territory. human heart –how it of the role kindness became their new music critic. Since plus the Board, have done a great The two judges –Jennifer Mills and can be bludgeoned and plays in alleviating the that time I have been a concert So far this year the NTWC has job in developing a new 5-year plan. myself – haad a stimulating and withered – and the miracle that is sufferings of the world –the quiet way reviewer for the British Arts Council, presented many fine events and So there are many exciting plans in exhilarating time reading, pondering the wounded heart’s regeneration. s kindness can change things, and written books (two published and two opportunities for writers, but two key the pipeline for the future of the NT and re-reading before sending each This is a piece whose bold and bitter what it means to a human being to still in preparation, including a novel), events deserve a specific mention, Writers’ Centre as we head into 2017 other our shortlists. metaphors speak to so many of the feel safe. and I have written many journal they are, the ‘Wordstorm Festival’ and beyond. doubts and conflicts that come at us articles. So, when David James, a We came up with a strong shortlist Meg Mooney’s wherever we are in today’s Australia Being Board member of the NTWC, asked for the Book of the Year — is that –and it’s a powerful reminder that Martha’s Friend Mary Anne Butler rare and valuable thing: Highway of Lost writers will always be at the forefront a sober luminary. I Hearts of cultural imagination and change. Meg Mooney think of her as the best Being Martha’s Friend This is major Australian writing. Chris Raja The Burning Elephant guide a reader could Claire Atkins Nona and Me Claire Atkins’ Nona and have to the country and FROM THE ALICE OFFICE: FIONA DORRELL Derek Pugh Tambora Me brilliantly uses the communities of Central Australia. I’ve Irena Kobald My Two Blankets genre of Young Adult known these poems for some time I was thinking recently about how arts So what is a Writers’ Centre? I get Romance to point up –and I speak of my first knowledge workers, and indeed writers, are a bit asked the question often. By taxi A strong shortlist –and a splendidly the central dilemma of of them on the cover. Renewed like trees. Perhaps it was because my drivers; by workers at Coles; by my varied one: a play, a collection of the character who is the acquaintance brings renewed housemate recently ordered a copy of Grandma. And why do I love it? poems, two young adult novels –one Me of the title – that the admiration –to quote myself in 2014: The Hidden Life of Trees and it arrived apparently desirable life isn’t always It seems to me that it may have set in India and one in the Territory, this one’s permanent. in a plastic satchel in our bleached a richly informative travel adventure the authentic life – that the authentic something to do with Wohlleben’s And about Chris Raja’s shopping basket strapped-to-the- and an illustrated children’s book. life takes courage – and that courage forests. fence as a mailbox, and then appeared, doesn’t have predictable outcomes. A The Burning Elephant: Every sentence is vivid, unwrapped on the kitchen table. If you live in the desert then perhaps Each of these books does the thing book that should be in every Australian that only exceptional books do – every sense engaged – it’s more useful to think in terms of weight in passion, thoughtfulness and high school – multiple copies! In the book, forester and ecologist, which is to create a wholly individual every detail on the canvas something like the low-lying Mulga participation, cardamom cupcake Peter Wohlleben presents research to world where readers are startled Derek Pugh’s Tambora carefully placed and scrub. In the Blue Mountains where I baking, and definitely in community suggest that trees in fact have needs to find themselves wonderfully at is the kind of book we memorably articulated. am from, it’s Eucalypt and Acacias— consultation meeting hours. and behaviours uncannily akin to can never get enough or the wild Blue Gums forests that home. And they make the world a This debut novel is an humans, preferring to grow together In the year and a half since I began my of –an enthusiast taking Archie Roach sings about. Rather better place –richer, livelier, more astonishing evocation of a child’s in social networks, and interacting role at the Writers’ Centre, I’m lucky us into enthusiasms with than dealing in sugars, electrical remarkable and interestingly new. world within an adult world that’s and communicating in complex and enough to have encountered and admirable knowledge spinning completely out of control. signals and scent compounds, our The shared winners of the Book of the nuanced ways. worked alongside writers who have just and brio. Mary Shelley’s And so many images will haunt your economy of entanglement is through Year award in 2016 were found publishers for their books, writers Frankenstein’s Indonesian connection It may seem banal to flip this research the written word. mind with their power and sadness. trawling through old diaries, writers Mary Anne Butler Highway of Lost –how the victory of Waterloo was back onto writers (we are humans It was not possible to shortlist every It strikes me that the success of our completing PhDs and masters degrees, Hearts soured by an Indonesian volcano – after all) but if you are somewhat of book that was of value and interest. I little office in Alice Springs is largely writers carefully unfurling the first draft Claire Atkins Nona and Me you’ll leave Tambora with a wider and an introvert, a recluse, or even one of would particularly like to commend due to the shifting writer-forest that, of a poem, writers taking their work livelier idea of how history and the those roguish cowboy types that I often Russell Guy’s Dry Crossing as another over the years has worked hard to overseas, writers struggling to find a For the Non-Fiction category world actually work. encounter in these parts, it may be engagingly eccentric, compelling generate humidity, maintain a canopy, voice, writers winning national awards useful to remind yourself of this similarity Derek Pugh Tambora and truth-telling read from a writer to store water, to moderate the and prizes. with trees. In fact, you may even find it extremes of heat and cold--in short; For the Young Adult/Childrens who as long ago as 1978 gave us the an easier, more gratifying task. Even here in arid country there are to hold the ecosystem. Securing an category cult classic What’s Rangoon to You certain tiny ferns and lichens that It’s s no secret that writing can be a office; a permanent part-time position; Is Grafton to Me. Guy’s sense of time miraculously persist, and that in my Irena Kobald My Two Blankets lonely practice. Similarly, being the only a festival; local festival directors; an and landscape are uniquely Australian experience, seem to prefer to grow in the worker in a shoebox office, 1500kms advisory committee. and yet unique in Australian literature. Mulga scrub; amongst groups of trees. from Sally, my other lone permanent I hope it’s not another 40 years before In some ways though the community we hear more from Russell Guy! colleague based in Darwin, has been Perhaps it’s useful to remind ourselves is small here, it punches above its sometimes taxing. from time to time about our similarity Peter Bishop was the founding creative director of Varuna, The Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains, 1994-2010 and Jennifer Mills is the fiction editor with trees. at Overland literary journal. Peter and Jennifer were the 2016 Northern Territory judges. The Awards were sponsored by the NT Chief Minister, and the 2 Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, with thanks also to the Northern Territory Library. 2016 Northern Territory Book of the Year Award Judges 3 FEATURES On Writing: You’re Always a A Handful of Sand Winner to Us CHARLIE WARD MARY ANNE BUTLER

motivation to research and write for However, ‘Winning a Big Award’ is “It was not so much The NTWC asked Mary Anne Butler “I’m a firm believer in Charlie Ward, author of A Handful eight full-time years was never an issue, also an event I’m conflicted by. Tom to tell us how it felt to win a national of Sand: the Gurindji Struggle, After in other words. I was just lucky that I a case of choosing a Stoppard said: “I don’t think writers the adage that ‘You’re award for literature, and this is her the Walk-off (Monash University could organise my life around it. are sacred, but words are. They topic, but of following response. only as good as your Publishing, Aug 2016), on the process deserve respect. If you get the right In my time-traveller’s cocoon, the of writing his first book. my schtick until the ones in the right order, you might next work’. So I’d hardest task I faced was….well, the On January 28 this year, my play received two major awards: nudge the world a little...” And I think If I am what I eat, I am also what writing. Who would be a historian?! topic chose me.” Broken better get cracking.” The Victorian Prize for Literature, and the problem with awards, is that they I read, and what I write. I am not Thousands of contradictory, undated the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award often position the writer as sacred, only a bibliophile but a bibliotroph, sources, being forced to rely on component of my book created extra for Drama. I had been forewarned of rather than the words. To single a bubbles, took red carpet photos and consuming and expelling the written whitefellas’ interpretations of historic challenges. I interviewed approximately the latter, but when they announced ‘Winning Writer’ out of all the others they presented me with a ‘Moo’ award word. My first memory is of learning Gurindji voices, and reconciling 100 people. To keep peace, I chose ‘The Big Kahuna’ as my friend Luke is problematic. It skews the focus – a cow’s plastic rear end mounted to read. One book led to another and multiple perspectives. These to share my written accounts of their called it [it’s Australia’s richest Literary away from the many other generally on a diamanté-clad tea saucer with my responses to them taught me challenges were all interlinked. How actions with them, before publication. Award], I was utterly stunned. Things excellent works in an often-massive ribbon attached, so I can wear it as a about who I am in the world, and to create an account that makes Most people were content, though I happened in slow motion. I have field. As Susan Lever argues; with medallion. It’s awesome. what my interests are—and aren’t. My sense and is factually accurate? One learnt early on that some would not be no idea what I said to the gathered Literary prizes “Writing begins to metabolic processes may explain why that conveys complexity, as well As the award winner’s name came satisfied with anything I wrote. Racing throng. I have no idea how long – or look like a competitive sport, with I’ve spent eight years writing my first as being compelling and easy to down via Twitter, someone said to against death and Alzheimer’s, I had short – I spoke for. It was all just too losers eliminated in each round …the book, but they don’t explain why I read? Composing each sentence me: You’re always a winner to us. And cause to reflect on the truism: dead overwhelming. What I do remember winner will, indeed, be as much lucky wrote A Handful of Sand: the Gurindji and paragraph of 300 pages, I was a I felt my friends close around me with people don’t answer back. is standing down from the podium, as deserving… because judges will Struggle, After the Walk-off, instead of juggler with a dozen balls. That was love and pride, safe in the knowledge finding my way back to my family and always have subjective taste.”* a gardening guide or bodice-ripper. my highwire act. Reading A Handful Researching and writing in the NT that they will always be there for me, friends and feeling them close around of Sand now, I can see where I teeter, is unique, and a fantastic—if little I write because I love it. Because winner or not. A Handful of Sand is both a history though I don’t think I fall. supported—indulgence. Learning me with love and pride. And feeling it calls me. Because it gives me and the book I had to write. After more about Dexter Daniels’ role in safe because they were the real world; purpose. I write because the actual Finally - I’m a firm believer in the decades of bibliotrophic discovery, I That last ball—of being easy and the Walk-off, for instance, took me and I knew they would have still been act of writing is joyous for me. It’s the adage that “You’re only as good as came inevitably to a gap in the lettered compelling to read—sets me apart to Ngukurr more than once. For me, there, winner or not. process, not the product which keeps your next work”. So I’d better get and literal landscapes, imperceptible from some in my guild. I am a writer cracking. The last one’s about to run visiting a place like that is a treat, Since that night has received me here. Yes, it’s hard sometimes. And to others. I was in Kalkaringi in 2006, first, and a historian second. A Handful Broken out of novelty value, and the new which is lucky because on one trip it a swathe of awards and nominations. frustrating. And a constant challenge. organising the 40th Anniversary of the of Sand actually began its life as one’s not even half way there yet. also destroyed the engine of my Hilux. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t delighted, But I always did like a challenge - so I Wave Hill Walk-off celebrations. On historically-themed memoir of my And boy, is it a challenging one. I sat on a remote stretch of road for humbled and honoured by the guess we suit each other. the one hand, my Gurindji friends were experiences on Gurindji country. The 36 hours and returned to Mataranka massive local and national recognition …but then again, I always did like a telling me of old times on Wave Hill advice I received back then was in A few weeks ago Broken was up for on a tow truck. The NT History it’s received. And I’d be lying if I said challenge… station, and their current battles. On this vein—‘more personal voice! This another major award, which I knew it Grant paying for my fuel on that trip it isn’t life changing. It is. National the other, I had Frank Hardy’s 1968 is where the story comes alive!’ As my hadn’t won. I resisted the phone calls insidestory.org.au/on-literary-awards’ was never going to cover the huge recognition in particular has seen me classic about the Gurindji Walk-off, inexhaustible enthusiasm for research urging me to fly to Sydney for the damage done to my car. settle. It’s let me sit inside my own Mary Anne Butler is a Darwin-based The Unlucky Australians. How could I continued though, historical material ceremony, and instead held a ‘Losers skin in a way I’ve never been able playwright and fiction writer. The reconcile the two? It was not so much began to outweigh my personal Sadly, gladly, now the journey is Award Night’. I got a bolt of red to. On a purely practical level, the NTWC hopes to offer her popular a case of choosing a topic, but of account. I entered the tunnel through over. What A Handful of Sand cotton from Spotlight, rolled out the associated award money has bought workshop series Story in Six Weeks in following my schtick until the topic a Masters in Creative Writing, and will contributes to the place that inspired red carpet, put some fine bottles of me writing, reading and breathing the first half of 2017. chose me. It grabbed me by the throat. emerge from it with a PhD in History. it is for others to judge. I remain an Australian sparkling on ice and invited time along with some level of financial ‘Your little anecdote about attending unrepentant bibliotroph. a bunch of mates around. We drank For all current workshops visit our Years of inquiry began. While I spent security which I was beginning to Mick Rangiari’s funeral is quite website ntwriters.com.au my days exploring the minutiae of the Charlie Ward is a writer and historian distracting’, later readers would say. despair of ever obtaining. Gurindji land rights campaign in 1970, based in Darwin. His work has ‘What are you, the author, doing in the for instance, at times my obsession appeared in Griffith Review, Meanjin story? Take it out!’ became unhealthy. On weekends I and Southerly. A Handful of Sand is his would poke my head up, and find that Identifying, finding, and talking to all first book. most people seemed preoccupied the people involved in the story was with the rather thin, one-dimensional a huge buzz. Their memories were reality of the new millennium. Finding fascinating, though the oral history

4 5 FEATURES In Search of Pixie GLENN MORRISON

train from Sydney, the short walk a smaller boat emerges, bearing For Pixie was painfully shy, shunned write like Steinbeck. On the left-hand “Here in her room, The Blue Mountains are cold in uphill. And here to this rambling to shore ‘mysterious beings with her public, loathed publicity. She page of my notebook. Where the autumn. The shaking in my hands, mansion, for a fortnight’s retreat. No faces pale as bones’. And then, as once wrote to her American literary dross of the mind collects so readily surrounded by her however, is a tremble of fear. Of my phone. No internet. Writers’ heaven. mysteriously as it had arrived, agent Nellie Sukerman: ‘If I could like scum on the tide. things, I strain to chronic inability to get out of my arrange the literary world to my And perhaps, for all of this, also a One morning quite early, when the own way and simply write. More satisfaction writers would never be And in the embrace of this easy half- imagine this shy torture chamber, as I try to extricate creamy film of fog was just lifting pressingly perhaps, to write simply. photographed, and would be known slept feeling, consciousness comes my writerly self from the research from the bay, their boat had spread woman some call Writing is about process, I remind by numbers instead of names!’ fresh and in fragments like pilfered in which I have become so deeply its wings again, and made for the myself. Steinbeck. Diary of a Novel. fruit cake. To where portions of the a genius.” embroiled this past year. open sea. At left and behind me, a black and The scribbling. First the scribbling. whole are, occasionally and purely white photograph of Eleanor’s by chance, fused magnificently, Then the work. Light from the bay window fails to Through the window dawn spills sepia tones I don’t quite hear. Then I husband Eric as he climbs a rock impossibly together. For inside each dissolve the shadows dressing the quickly, and on its rays I sail past lose hold of the rope. Eric slips from The day ahead fills my window. A face. With his back to the camera of us, I believe, there is a canvas remainder of the office. Twilight. In the mango tree in a boat of my view. As melting butter, I fall. Pixie is deep bay affair, framed in white and no date on the shot I cannot tell upon which is painted the portrait which I yearn for the presence of own imagining, on through the mist nowhere to be seen. And I start to enamel over a wide bench seat, a if he is young or old. Eric met the of our life, a snapshot of individual one-time owner of the home, author with the English. Will Eleanor reach panic. But a hand reaches down, out cosy nook of the sort found in Home biographer in his 90s, perhaps too truth. That truth is, of course, Eleanor Dark. For the umpteenth through to haul me back? How would of the mist. It is Eric’s. He has me. Beautiful, where a dog may once late for memories of youth, after fated to be obscured by age, grief, time since hauling open the heavy she write her book today? What Gladly, I accept his grip. have curled. I peer through the glass Eleanor’s death, shortly before his door on her private writing studio, I might she make of Australia’s bitter happiness and trauma, the detritus as if to a shark aquarium. But there own. Perhaps climbing was why they realise I am to sit where she sat. To identity politics, the likely allegations of life. Yet underneath the dust and are no sharks. Only the silence of a located themselves near the ancient write where she wrote. Here Eleanor of cultural appropriation? Did she the mildew, the original portrait lies Acknowledgement garden. Calm. Raised beds of lilac chasms of the Blue Mountains. To penned The Timeless Land, an epic write it here at all? Maybe (like me) unaltered. Our task as adults is to In 2012, Glenn Morrison won a crocus, each in its own way a-bloom. be far from the madding crowds of of Australian literature, one that critic she couldn’t resist the pull of the slowly uncover pieces of that image, Varuna Retreat Fellowship and in In the early half-light, a mist drifts Sydney, perched on the fringe of Humphrey McQueen characterised house’s rambling kitchen, the desire using whatever tools we may find. April the next year spent a fortnight through a maple and a breeze stirs their culture. Like many left-leaning as having ‘performed two miracles’: to make a cup of tea, find another Our job as artists—a toil to which writing in Eleanor Dark’s writing several natives beyond, outside, intellectuals of their time, perhaps to enliven a day—26 January, 1788— biscuit? Eleanor’s 1923 introduction Pixie so steadfastly devoted her studio near Katoomba, courtesy of where the world continues to turn. they felt pressed to take shelter whose ‘basic events were too well to the house plays out behind time—is to assemble such glimpses the Eleanor Dark Foundation. Notes A young mango I pushed past on there. known to Australians,’ and then to my brow. Dark hair billowing on a into a best-guess replica, probably made there formed the basis of this my way from the kitchen reaches turn the arrival of the First Fleet on Katoomba wind, she arrives several The need to clear from my mind the without ever seeing the full canvas. personal essay. skyward through an aged timber its head, to pull it inside out, see days behind husband Eric, respected life of Alice Springs comes upon me pergola, greying wood no match for And so I write. In search of Pixie. To Glenn Morrison is an award-winning it from an Aboriginal perspective. doctor, a ‘red-headed bloke with like a triple-0 call, barging through the resolute push of its branches. find my canvas. Until the hazy half- journalist, author and researcher living Impressive for 1941. Controversial eyebrows like steam-shovels.’ She any feeling of having ‘crossed The push of loneliness, I whisper to liquid of the early gels, crusts and in Alice Springs where he writes of some 75 years later. settles in to the room. Arranges her over’ to a much-needed liminal no-one. Here in this writing studio, crumbles into the late. Until day has Central and Northern Australia, its books. Hangs her pictures. space. Here, among the traces of a few short steps from the house, I On my desk is an Imprint Classics exerted its reason and purpose onto people, landscape and politics. Glenn another’s life, I had sought a way am light years from everything and paperback edition of The Timeless Beside my window and to the right, the room. Until, with no forewarning, divides his time between a weekly back to my own consciousness, everyone. And so I cut myself some Land and I open it. Six-year-old Eleanor hugs the wall from a portrait the moment is gone. And once newspaper column, media and cultural perhaps to places never visited. Can slack. Greenly defiance, I’ll call it. Not protagonist Bennilong is at the sea no doubt popular in its day. Another again, I brim with the sense of my research, and producing for ABC the emergency of life wait? Can I loneliness. Greenly defiance. cliffs with his father. The Aboriginal hangs below, offset, showing her own inadequacy, the chimera of radio. In 2015 he earned a PhD from mentally wander this garden? Find boy is sleepy and cross, sitting in the with a fiendishly weighty manuscript. possibility broken, and there hovers Macquarie University, and in 2016 A complete set of the 1922 edition my bearings? Retrace footsteps shade of a rock, copper-coloured She is outside a house, possibly even any number of reasons to doubt lectured in journalism at the University of the Historical Records of Australia along paths well worn, but somehow legs thrust out in front. The sky is a hidden corner of this house, but the work. Then I must walk. Swim. of Sydney. line an oak shelf to my left. The become so foreign? Clearly, this is blue, not a cloud in sight, down to some turn of its myriad stone paths I Eat. My gaze wheels once again to hefty volumes weigh heavily over where the sea ‘joined it in a silver Eleanor’s place. Pixie is everywhere. Eric the climber. A powerful man. 1 Eleanor Dark: A Writer’s Life, by Barbara Brooks am yet to discover. The Eleanor Dark (with Judith Clark), McMillan: Sydney, 1998. a timbered credenza. Gold letters Breath rises fast and sudden in my White shirt billowing, sleeves rolled line’. As for his father Wunbula, he biography1 (borrowed from the house dress the olive drab spines, officious, chest. I try to quell it, to be still. To Image: Eleanor Dark from wikimedia creative is stillness itself and towers above library) tells me I had barely finished for the climb, the rope looses away military. Dictionaries crown the breathe. Just breathe. It is a year commons. Bennilong, only ‘his hair and his university by the time she died in 1985. up the rock face, a tight-knitted shelves. To my right, through a since my last severe panic attack. beard, blowing in the sharp sea Born a school teacher’s daughter in beanie crowns his head. Baggy smaller, stripe-curtained sidelight Since then, I have learned how to wind.’ Wunbula is recalling the time 1901, Eleanor was small, impish some street trousers finish with sturdy window—framed once again in deal with them. But time is what I long ago when there came a ‘boat said. Family called her ‘Pixie’. Here in shoes; a charmer with the ladies, the the same honeyed oak—is Varuna, need. Time to observe the world with wings’, a ‘magic boat’, one that her room, surrounded by her things, biography says. A guy who has your The Writers House. Its proximity without judgement. To find what I Eleanor’s whitefella readers would I strain to imagine this shy woman back. I almost feel a breeze on my brings thoughts of last evening: find. As it comes. So I make a vow: recognise as a sailing vessel of the some call a genius. left cheek as, in my mind, I press it my flight from Alice Springs, the Europeans. For only a few days later Each morning, at least until the light once more to the cool of the rock. becomes too clear and fixed, I will Above me, Eric speaks gently, in

6 7 FEATURES

My outcomes in the past few years can And OK, I have been emerging for a “Whatever it takes to be categorised in two ways: periods while now. It’s so clear to my peers, where I was writing and submitting a that I’ve been insulted about it a few finish things, finish. lot, and those when I was not writing times recently. Oscar Wilde was right You will learn more at all. This came down to some bad when he said, “A true friend stabs habits I’d picked up along the way. I you in the front.” On all occasions, from a glorious failure was great at starting stories. Terrible at the insults were well-intentioned, than you ever will from finishing them. I’ve wasted a number mis-delivered congratulations on of opportunities by looking forward my Queensland Premier’s Young something you never instead of keeping my head down and Publishers and Writers Award win. finished.” seeing something through. This is why And I’m glad my industry ‘friends’ I still don’t have a novel out (and now pointed this out. From this, I have I’m thirty). Instead of knuckling down come to understand the significance and committing to the long game, to finishing the draft of my novel. I’d drop my novel draft after writing By publishing short stories, I moved forty thousand words to go after a through the rungs from aspiring quick buck by publishing an article or author to emerging writer. Then I submitting to a short story competition. solidified my status by selling more This habit was fuelled by the explosion short stories (to more prestigious of online journals and new print journals) and for winning awards for, magazines. When I was an aspiring yep, short stories. I love writing short writer, there were about four places fiction. But I can’t stay in this pond to send fiction in Australia. Then forever. Neil Gaiman says, “Whatever the rules changed. With the ease of it takes to finish things, finish. You will online submission portals, I was no learn more from a glorious failure than longer restricted to the local market you ever will from something you (nor did I have to pay for whale-mail never finished.” This is the lesson I am postage across the Atlantic). This learning now. There is nothing more access to new markets meant there valuable than persistence. On Still Emerging were so many places to send work, Part of the Queensland Premier’s especially short-form fiction and Young Publishers and Writers Award MEGAN MCGRATH articles, and I got power-drunk on prize was professional development the possibilities. (If you don’t know and support, which has afforded me where to start looking for places a bit more time to write (actually to send your work, regularly check write), and allowed me to attend The in with the Opportunities page at Novelist’s Boot Camp at QWC (see, Writing Queensland, sign up for The BACK when I was just a no-name kid talking about why I wasn’t writing – Everything I knew about writing then even I’m still learning). The ultimate Australian Writers Marketplace, and from a patch of sand in Queensland, that would come later). I was doing (and honestly, it wasn’t much) implied test will be seeing my current novel be sure to read the tips on submitting I had big dreams of making it as the work by getting the words down. that writing was an artform, a craft. manuscript all the way through to you work on the QWC website). a writer. I wanted to be the kind Stephen King is famously hardnosed This, I found out, was a lie. Writing The End. And then I will definitely, of author who inspired other about getting the words down. He is, really, a trade. Like any trade, you Now don’t get me wrong. As an absolutely, no doubt about it, have my aspiring writers to create something says, “Amateurs sit and wait for have to take it seriously and build a aspiring writer, going after these first book published…soon. meaningful. Penning stories about inspiration, the rest of us just get up skill-set. You work hard, learn more, short-term milestones were a great overcoming adversity, nature versus and go to work.” and improve. I’ve been publishing way to build up a portfolio. But I’d Megan McGrath is an award-winning humans, and (of course, because I work for ten years now and I still already had my share of success, my fiction writer from North Stradbroke I wanted to go to work, but I’d was a teenager) big love was how I learn something new each time. I’m portfolio was solid. Compulsively Island. She is the author of the finished school with an average spent my free time. I filled notebooks active in my creative development. I submitting short work became novella, Whale station, and winner score and though I desperately faster than my little island newsagent have a creative writing degree, but detrimental, personally, because it of the Queensland Literary Awards wanted to study writing, the Creative could restock them. I was definitely, I still attend writing workshops. I meant I was continuing on the same 2015 Queensland Premier’s Young Industries was new and popular, and no doubt about it, going to have my go to festivals and events where path, rather than advancing. Publishers and Writers Award. More required a genius level OP for entry. first book published while I was still I participate by listening to other from Megan at Megansfictions.com To my advantage, because I had at school. Then I graduated. authors. I read. I read everything. I been writing so much, I’d also been read powerfully. Ernest Hemingway This article was first published by Though I look back and laugh at submitting. I’d won a few writing Qld Writers Centre qwc.asn.au on sums it up best when he says, “We my naivety, those were my salad competitions and had my work WQ Online in March 2016 and is are all apprentices in a craft where no days, and the beginning of my published in the local rag. With some available at writingqueensland.com. one ever becomes a master.” I have so apprenticeship. I was doing the best small-time success, and my ample much more to learn. au/on-still-emerging thing I could as an aspiring author: portfolio, I was accepted into QUT’s Image from flickr: Metamorphosis Insectorum I was writing. And I mean actually Fine Arts program. I was definitely, no Surinamensium writing. Not just thinking about jokes this time, going to have my first writing, or talking about writing (or book published before I was twenty- Amsterdam: Voor den auteur, als ook by G. Valck, [1705] five. The real work began. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41398744

8 9 INDUSTRY The Asian Festival Copyright 101 of Children’s Content JO TENG

SANDRA KENDELL But how do I prove that I wrote it? you can take legal action against As a writer, you want to protect your You can put a copyright notice on them. Generally, but, it’s highly work. It’s your creation, the shining your manuscript (eg., Jane Leong unlikely that a professional agent or product of your countless coffee- © 2016). Although this notice isn’t a publisher would risk being sued and or-tea-fuelled hours, and valuable legal requirement for copyright, it’s a damage their reputation by ‘stealing’ not only in terms of money, but your good idea to use it as it will give rise your manuscript. name and reputation. As a lawyer at to a legal presumption that you own The internet is another matter. the Australian Copyright Council, I the copyright. Keeping records of old Although copyright does protect your see a lot of questions from writers, drafts and dated notes will also be manuscript online, given the nature established and aspiring, about how valuable in the small chance that this of the internet, if someone copies to ensure their work is protected presumption is challenged. while ‘putting it out there’ to agents, your manuscript without permission to publishers, and ultimately, to Can I copyright an idea I share in a it can be difficult to take action to readers around the world. Here are writer’s group? stop them, particularly if the infringer some of the most common questions Although copyright will protect your is overseas. If your manuscript is writers ask. manuscript, it will not protect the valuable and you want a publisher to ideas behind it. Nor will it protect publish it, don’t put it online. How do I copyright my manuscript? facts, information, titles, or your Where can I get more information? Automatically! One common myth writing style. There are laws regarding The Australian Copyright Council is that you need to pay fees and file confidential information, but in the website has a large number of paperwork to register copyright (and context of a writer’s group, if you free information sheets on various there are scam websites that exploit have a particularly juicy story idea, it aspects of copyright. We also provide this myth). In Australia, you get may be best to keep it to yourself. copyright automatically the moment online training and a free legal you express your writing in material Is it safe to send a manuscript to advice service. Our book Writers & form. You can save your manuscript agents or publishers? What about Copyright is a comprehensive ‘how putting my manuscript online? to’ guide for writers, publishers and Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. A as Word document, hand-write it Golden Baobab, an organisation that Copyright gives you the exclusive editors alike, and is available via our The Asian Festival of Children’s lively author’s debate: “Where to on paper, carve it into stone—the nurtures emerging African children’s right to deal with your manuscript, online bookstore (copyright.org.au). Content (AFCC) is an annual festival Draw the Line? Adult Content in YA method doesn’t matter; as long as book writers and illustrators. including its reproduction and held in Singapore that celebrates and Children’s Books” highlighted your writing is recorded in a form a publication. This means that if an Jo Teng is a Copyright Council senior and promotes the creation and The festival was also teeming with the differing cultural taboos of person can read, it is automatically agent or publisher deals with your lawyer with a background in and appreciation of children’s books and talented established and emerging represented countries. In Australia, protected by copyright. No fees or manuscript without your permission, passion for intellectual property and content. It encompasses a Writer’s authors and illustrators, inspiring it seems almost anything goes, for paperwork required. the creative industries. and Illustrator’s conference, Teacher’s company for this humble picture book Young Adult Fiction at least. Congress, Parent’s Forum and a Cross creator from the NT! The festival also offered opportunities Platform Summit for literary and Given the quality of the program media professionals. for rights exchange, “speed pitching” my dilemma was deciding which and one on one manuscript and This year in I was fortunate to be sessions to attend. Some I found portfolio reviews. For a few brave Representing the NT in Ubud able to attend this welcoming, mind useful were entitled “If we don’t souls there was a public critique expanding festival and important support authors and illustrators who session of the first pages of their CHRISTOPHER RAJA cultural exchange of ideas, thanks in will” (incorporating festival directors unpublished manuscript. Added into part to some generous funding from from Singapore and Australia and the mix was bunch of book launches, the Northern Territory Government’s, representatives from children’s a skype conversation with Shaun around the world but at the same This year I had the opportunity to Arts NT Quick Response Scheme. literature support and promotional Tan, collaborative story wall, “duelling time while it promoted diversity attend and promote my novel The The country of focus for the year was organisations) “The Editors are Your illustrators “and the chance to meet a it also celebrated difference in at The Ubud Writers Japan and the Festival also featured Best Friends” and “Where are the gaggle of passionate children’s book Burning Elephant language and culture and religion. & Readers Festival, Southeast Asia’s children’s book luminaries from Parents?”, all offered insights into enthusiasts from around the world, leading festival of words and ideas There were many highlights for me at around the globe. Notable presenters the broader ecosystem of children’s complemented by Singaporean style that was conceived of by the charming this festival but most important of all, included; Tadahiko Motoyoshi, The content. Also interesting were catering. The Festival truly provided Janet DeNeefe, as a healing project in I have forged many new friendships. Director General of International sessions delving into the craft and nurture for the mind, soul and palate, I response to the first Bali bombing. This Festival certainly attracts the finest Library of Children’s Literature in psychology of writing for children can’t wait till next year! and the challenges of meeting writers from all over the globe and I met Tokyo, renowned picture book historian The theme for this year was Tat Tvam demand for both local and globally Sandra Kendell is a Darwin-based writers from Austria to India to Nigeria. and reviewer from The New York Asi or ‘I am you, you are me’ and I relevant stories. I was enthralled by author and illustrator of five published Times Leonard Marcus and Deborah found this idea to be very relevant at I had a busy schedule and so when I sessions examining ‘classic’ children’s children’s picture books. She creates Ahenkorah, CEO of The African Bureau a time when we are experiencing so wasn’t being star struck or falling in workshop called “The Elements Of books from the western tradition stories that celebrate some of our most for Children’s Stories and founder of much division and conflict in the world. love, I was on two panels “Imagining Story”. This was a once in a lifetime and educated in some classics from fascinating native animals. India” and “I, Migrant”. I was also part opportunity that was made possible by This extraordinary, vibrant festival afcc.com.sg/2016 of a special event where readers met the support of the Northern Territory afforded bringing together many some of us writers over delicious food Writers’ Centre and the Australian ideas and thinkers and readers from and drink and I delivered a sold-out Government’s Catalyst Fund. 10 11 INDUSTRY Push Your Book Botanic Gardens Retreat ELLEN VAN NEERVEN LEONIE NORRINGTON

LAUNCHES. do things for free: appearing at a local You know, the botanic gardens YOU are in the fortunate position Each publisher has a different budget, event, writing an article or contributing residence in Darwin was the best where you have secured a publishing but it is likely they will help support a a blog. For a number of reasons, you retreat I have ever done, and there contract, survived the editorial process, launch in your home town or city. Choose may need to say no to paid or unpaid was a time when I was a retreat junkie. and now your book has gone to print. a location like a book store or café that requests. Make a criterion to see whether The house is filled with louvres and What happens next? What do you you like. Invite everyone you know. You these opportunities will be helpful and surrounded by giant rainforest trees. have to do to give your book a fighting might have to explain to friends and make sure that they align with your It was like being in a cubbyhouse chance to be noticed? family in advance that you only receive a career goals. with all the amenities. Beautiful walks, small amount of complimentary copies, a garden to play in if I needed time If you’re a first time author, it’s important SOCIAL MEDIA. and they will have to purchase a copy to realise you can’t rely solely on others It is recommended you have an online away from the book to think. The of your book themselves, but you will – you’re going to have to push your presence by having one or more of house in the Gardens is just secluded happily sign it, and there will be free book yourself. You are the biggest seller the following: an author website, blog, enough so that you can’t see and be drinks or food at the event. of your book: through what you say, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram page. distracted by the wider world, but still what you do and where you do it. After Some authors provide warm touches This is a good way to connect with within walking distance to a gorgeous the release of your book, your life will when autographing to create a readers and showcase your work, but cafe and a deli. My residency took distractions; have even been known able to keep the story in my head for change, even in small ways. You’ll have connection with their readers. Sunshine don’t feel you have to engage in ways place during the Darwin Festival, so it to dust and mop, clean fridges and of weeks. I could write till late at night, to make time for administration that Coast author, Inga Simpson has a you’re not comfortable with. This will was also just a short pushbike ride to course I can always be self-righteous go without food or have an apple for could interfere with your writing, work personalised set of stamps for her books show in your interactions, and may great entertainment. and get out in the veggie garden. dinner, even go out for dinner and still and family life. which she marks reader’s books with. cause more harm than good. Why retreat? My friend Kim Caraher Writing seems so self indulgent that keep writing, wake up in the middle of anything else can easily legally take the night, turn on the light and write Since the publication of my debut Heat once said that characters are like FESTIVALS. WRITING WHILE TOURING. precedence. If you don’t have visitors, in bed till I fell asleep again. It was a and Light, I have been involved in more fairies, they never appear when anyone You might be invited to a small American author, David Vann keeps the you can visit someone. If no-one rings perfect place to write. than fifteen festivals, and have travelled is around. Even if I go out to my regional festival, or an event in a major mornings to himself when he’s touring, you can always ring someone. across Australia and Canada, India and city. All exposure brings you closer to but travel can set your normal writing studio which is fifty metres from the Applications for the annual the US. These are my top tips to make readers. You could be invited to be routine into wack. Public demands house, I can hear what is going on and It takes me such a long time to get George Brown Botanic Gardens the most of the journey. on a panel, to read from your work, can be tiring. You may lose focus. And don’t have the courage or discipline into a story and then incredible retreat open in April. to ignore potential fun. So at home amounts of discipline to stay inside it. PUBLICITY. or to teach a workshop. Make sure meanwhile everyone is asking: ‘what are Details via our website I am constantly on the lookout for At the botanic gardens retreat I was Your blurb and cover are two of you feel comfortable doing what is you working on next?’ ntwriters.com.au asked of you. Don’t be scared to ask your biggest marketing tools, so make There’s no golden rule for writing your questions, the earlier the better. Do sure you have input in this process. second book. It will be your biggest your homework on the writers or Your publisher might work with you to challenge. Continue to write through moderator you’re interacting with. develop a plan of attack leading up to self-doubt, even by just keeping a diary. the release date. This could include a Put yourself in your audience’s shoes media release and a list of key media – what would you pay money to see? Ellen van Neerven is a Mununjali woman 25 Years of KROW contacts that you may add names to. Come prepared for anything. from South-East Queensland and the author of the David Unaipon Award- Review copies of your book will be sent If you have the chance, see if you can KATHERINE REGION OF WRITERS winning Heat and Light. She works as out to media and reviewers, and your tie in a visit to local bookshops. Send the senior editor of the black&write! publisher will pitch you to festivals. an email in advance, and offer to Indigenous writing and editing project. In 1991, a group of Katherine people Numerous KROW members have PHOTOSHOOTS. sign your books. This industry is an with a common interest in literature had their work recognised by the NT Before you seek out a photographer, industry of relationships. Kindness and This article was first published by Qld decided to form a writers group – to Literary awards, including: Toni Tapp have an idea of other author pics you consideration to others will pay off in Writers Centre qwc.asn.au on WQ encourage each other, bounce ideas off Coutts, Kathleen Donald, Ron Ball, Jill like. Most will have a headshot on their the long run. Online in April 2015 and is available each other, and generally have a yarn Pettigrew, Michael Whitting, Bruce online at writingqueensland.com.au/ website. Wear what you’d usually wear. SCHEDULE. about writing. Hocking, Marion Townsend; and several push-your-book. Be comfortable. Smile (if you want to). Keep a physical diary as well as a planner Initially known as the Katherine Writers have made their mark on the publishing world, notably Ron Ball for A Pom in INTERVIEWS. you can carry with you on your devices Guild, the group later evolved into the the Outback, and Toni Tapp Coutts for These could be for radio, television with key dates. This way you will not Katherine Region Of Writers group A Sunburnt Childhood. or print. Print interviews could be forget an interview and you can see your (KROW for short), and although some conducted on the phone or by email. year of publication visually. members have moved away, new ones KROW members name as a highlight have arrived, the group is still active 25 Radio and television could be live or EMAILS. the writer retreat weekends held at the pre-recorded. Get ready by writing There will be a lot of emails, and if you years later. Emerald Springs Roadhouse, and next down prepared responses. Have a friend do not yet have a system for filing and KROW’s first anthology of work by year they’re planning another one. practice with you. Some questions will sorting emails, create one. Emails could its members was The Wanderers, Here’s to the next 25 years! be a given e.g. What inspired you? How include contracts, flights, invoices and published in the 1996, and since then long did it take you write? Some might media requests. You will be asked to there’s been a steady program of take you by surprise. events and publications.

12 13 INDUSTRY

Larrimah Retreat KYLIE STEVENSON

I am in the outback, miles from “Yeah mate, clean yourself up, would Barry Sharpe owns the pub and its Bill turns up each night for a beer and The pub is a character unto itself, Although it’s tempting to sit in the bar civilisation, in the scorching midday you?” Barry chimes in. attached wildlife park, which is home the 7 o’clock news. painted pink and decorated with and listen to the parade of peculiars heat with three men I don’t know all to 500 birds (some who swear), 20 blushing panthers, rusty old ice- all day, many things conspire to Both are old friends of Andrew’s, a Lennie, a collector of monogrammed that well, five dead people, and a large squirrel gliders, three crocs (one with skates, a triple-tandem bike, crusty keep me indoors and writing – the well-known author and journalist glasses, comes to the pub one mob of flies. no eyes called Ray), two emus and a saddles and dusty kettles. A network 40-degree temperatures, the pair of based in Darwin, who passed away in morning looking dishevelled – his handful of wallabies. of spider webs overhead completes hostile wasps that live outside my These men have brought me into the 2012, leaving money to the NT Writers’ favourite Black Douglas Whiskey the ambiance. Owner Barry is a hipster door and ambush me any time I leave. scrub to meet Andrew, who I only Centre to establish the retreat in He’s been here more than 20 years, glass has taken a tumble and ahead of his time. And, of course, the desire to finish my know by reputation. He is the man Larrimah, a minute speck of red dirt on owned the pub for 12 and seems shattered. It’s really shaken him up. first novel so perhaps one day I can responsible for my current living the vast Territory map, 497km south of to have a wardrobe exclusively And then there are the trickle of tourists, Karl and Bobbie’s house is over the send another budding author on a conditions at an odd outback pub, Darwin, population: 11. comprised of sleeveless khaki shirts the ones who haven’t got the memo road. “Woke up the other night with a bizarre bush adventure. where a crocodile lurks 5 metres from and matching shorts. that the dry season is over and it’s too This was where he used to come to death adder in my bed,” Karl tells me my door and the threat of a death hot up here now. Heat that in practical As I sit in my room contemplating my write, and after two weeks in this “I just stopped in for a drink one day and when I pop over to say hello. “Felt him adder slipping into my room always sits terms means a light jog is a near-death time in Larrimah – the solitude, the desolate furnace I can see why. There I never left,” he says. crawling across my chest and flung him in the back of my mind. experience and if you want to eat an greatly-needed space and time to write is nothing much else to do. But in the across the room.” There’s a sign on the bar proclaiming ice cream you need to do it in under and the people I’ve met - I’m pretty But it’s not as sinister as it sounds. same breath, there is so much going on. it’s the “highest bar in the Territory”. Back at the pub I tell them the story 10 seconds or risk the entire thing sure I hear laughter brush through the This is all part of what could be Drover Dave from Kununurra, our and how I doubt I will sleep tonight. dribbling down to your armpit. trees on the sultry afternoon breeze. “What does that mean?” I ask Barry. Australia’s most unusual writer’s retreat - other tombstone accomplice, tells me Instead of putting me at ease, they And there’s no doubt in my mind it’s A bloke from central Australia the Andrew McMillan Memorial Writer’s I should burn the book I’m working on “Well, it’s according to the latitude and recount every death adder story they coming from Andrew’s grave. saunters over after seeing me take Retreat at the Larrimah Wayside Inn, and write his story. He could be right. longitude,” he says pointing to the have. Drover Dave tells me a snake got a million snaps of a brilliant sunset Journalist, emerging author, and also known as the Pink Panther Pub. painted numerals. “But is it true?” I ask. in his swag two nights ago. While he This tiny town might be home to more overwhelming the bush. “Like sunsets recipient of the inaugural Andrew was in it. “It was OK,” he tells me. “The Today the pub’s owner Barry has driven wild donkeys than humans, but there He looks surprised and shrugs. “No do ya?” he asks. Sure. Who doesn’t? McMillan Memorial Writer’s Retreat, Kylie thing is you don’t panic.” me out to this peaceful bush cemetery are a trillion stories here – and that’s one’s ever asked me that. I dunno. It “I’ve got some good ones on here.” Stevenson, just returned from two weeks where we are erecting a tombstone on without even delving into the area’s was there when I came here. No one’s More recent arrivals include Five- He hands me his camera and makes in the remote township of Larimah. Andrew’s grave. fascinating WWII history or the town’s ever disputed it. People always get Cokes-A-Day Karen and her husband me scroll through a year’s worth This retreat is the result of a bequest own long-running civil war, which photos in front of that sign.” Mark who manage the pub, and soon- of family photographs to get to an We heave the monument onto the tiles, to the NT Writers’ Centre by the late Andrew wrote so eloquently about. to-be-20 barmaid Tessa, who was outback sunset. I pause on a picture mix the glue and assemble. Paddy lives on the other side of the author Andrew McMillan. Andrew working as a ringer on a local station. of some boggy grass. “Crop circles,” The offbeat locals – most of whom still highway and when not erecting asked that the NTWC use the bequest “Here we go Andrew, give ya head a She came in one day to collect her he says matter-of-factly. “Heaps of do not speak to one another – are a tombstones can be found melting into to establish an annual retreat for an wash,” Paddy says, as he pours water mail and never left. ‘em out there.” novel waiting to happen. a bar stool at noon each day with his emerging author across genres. onto on the grave to wipe off the excess dog Rover at his feet. paste and shine up the tombstone.

14 15 Photos this page: Indonesian writers Eliza Vitri Handayani and NT Writers’ Festival: Eka Kurniawan with Dr Sandra Thibodeaux; CDU’s Dr Adelle Sefton-Rowston, Dr Christian Bok, and Professor Brian Mooney with Wordstorm 2016 playwright Mary Anne Butler; Children’s author Paul Seden reads FOUR DAYS CELEBRATING WRITING AND STORYTELLING FROM to some kids; Memoirists Marie Munkara and Toni Tapp Coutts; and THE NORTHERN TERRITORY AND BEYOND. PHOTOS BY PAZ TASSONE YA author Clare Atkins. Opposite page: Slam poet Zohab Zee Khan; Magda Szubanski talks about her memoir with Rebecca McLaren; Richard Glover meets a fan; Maureen O’Keefe reads from Desert Writings; Kieran Finnane launches her book; and NTWC workers Jen Dowling, Cora Diviny and Fiona Dorrell close the festival. INTERVIEWS Writing in Ngukurr Illustrating Children’s Books COURTNEY COLLINS FREYA BLACKWOOD

“It works really well. If I need a chat I just Is it difficult to get noticed by “It’s good if people Sally Bothroyd spoke with Courtney go next door. There’s always someone Freya Blackwood lives in Orange, NSW, publishers as a new illustrator? Collins about living and writing in happy to have a cup of tea with me. and works full-time as a picture book I think publishers are always looking have their own style Ngukurr. It’s quite a secure feeling because illustrator. Since 2002 she’s illustrated for new illustrators. A lot of people so they’re able to my previous experience had been of numerous books including: Maudie who’ve done a lot of work get booked When Courtney Collins moved from and Bear, The Territory Suitcase, The Victoria to the remote community writing a novel in isolation.” up. I’m booked up for a few years, and communicate something Runaway Hug, Hattie Helps Out, and I know a lot of other people are as of Ngukurr, she had the bones of a Since moving to Ngukurr, Collins said of themselves - so the Territory Read Award winning well. So I think there’s always room for second novel. But despite being about she’d witnessed and heard “the most book by Irena Kobald My Two Blankets. new illustrators. the drawings have 300 kilometres away from the nearest amazing stories – beyond imagination”, She spoke to Sally Bothroyd about town (Katherine), Collins found she still but she was glad she had her own personality and soul.” what it takes to make a living in the What advice would you give needed to find the time and isolation story to tell. picture book world. necessary to write. to people wanting to get into “The odd experience of going to place How did you get into the illustration illustrating for picture books? How did you come to illustrate My “I moved to Ngukurr about 18 months like Ngukurr and taking with me a Collins said she’d had some business? It’s good if people have their own Two Blankets? ago,” she said (after her partner took a half-baked novel set somethere else preparation for this cultural divide, I always enjoyed drawing, but I didn’t style so they’re able to communicate My Two Blankets was offered to me job running the Ngukurr Arts Centre), has been good, because I’ve had the thanks to a long friendship with a study it at university. something of themselves - so the by the publisher. So I read it and felt “and pretty quickly I got enmeshed authority of a world of my own making.” woman from the Torres Strait, but she drawings have personality and soul. it was really special and that I’d like it in the community and community hadn’t felt it so acutely until she lived in I took up drawing again at about 25 to be a book - that it was important “In hearing and witnessing other Figure drawing is very important. You life. Part of that is because we live in a remote community. after working in the film industry, it was made into a book. But it people’s stories, I have to set myself have to be able to draw children well, the arts centre and it’s such a hub of where I met quite a few illustrators in was quite a challenge. It had some the limit. It’s not my story to tell. The Collins also said the Western especially, and keep them consistent. activity. It’s not like we go home at the the design department. I was lucky concepts that weren’t visual so I had indigenous approach is culturally concept of “writing a novel” is not end of the day and have that work-life in that we had a family friend who There’s also a lot of networking to create visuals for them. different to the Western approach… easily translated to the community’s balance. You do need a place to retreat worked as an illustrator, so in my involved, as well, and really it’s just just because you see or hear a story, residents, but she wasn’t complaning to and know that you have a stretch of instance I did ask him for some advice, practice. There is so much practice What makes a picture book doesn’t mean it’s yours to tell. That’s a too much about that. time that won’t be interrupted.” and my first job came through that. required to get to a point where the successful? really interesting place for a writer to “Writing a novel is totally meaningless But Collins said she’d managed to find a Some of my first jobs were with an work is publishable. A lot of it’s luck. You never know be – feeling all of the inspiriation, but to them. One of the freedoms of routine that worked in with community educational publisher in New Zealand. whether a book will work or not. It having to respect the limits.” being in Ngukurr is that really at the life, and her second novel The Walkman They did fantastic journals for school How does a person practice doesn’t necessarily do as well as you end of the day I’m judged by how Mix was now nearing completion. kids, so I did one-off illustrations for illustrating picture books? think while you’re doing the drawings. “That’s a really good the lunch was, and whether I practiced just by choosing stories I plays, and book covers. They were But I love that you can explore the “We have a rhythm there in that we there was enough meat in it. This liked and analysing the way a picture interesting place for my first jobs, and then that led to a parenting side of life in picture books. get up early so we have some time to project I’m cooking up in the shipping book worked, knowing the framework picture book. Often I get comments from parents, ourselves. By 8 o’clock people start a writer to be – feeling container, no one’s concerned about that you’re working within, and saying that they can see themselves arriving and I’m at my desk pretty all of the inspiriation, it except me.” My first book was Two Summers by studying what’s around at the moment. soon after that. I write in the morning, John Heffernan. He was well known so in the books as well. Courtney Collins’ first novel The Burial and then I often prepare the lunch for but having to respect he was a good start for me. There’s so much more to it than just was published by Allen & Unwin in 2012. the artists lunch program. After that I being able to do a one-off drawing. Is picture book illustration a good the limits.” It’s since been published in the UK, the retreat into my re-purposed shipping How do publishers pair writers with You have to be able to get the whole career choice? US and France. container and write more. illustrators? way through a book, and you have It’s hard to find full-time work. I’ve In March 2017, she’ll bring her two- It depends, some writers ask to work to know about colour, composition working 13 years as a full-time day writing workshop “Beneath with certain illustrators, but normally, and materials, and have an idea about illustrator, and I can survive from it … The Surface” to Darwin. Bookings can when the publisher reads the telling stories with pictures as well. but I’ve had to push myself on it. be made via our website manuscript they get an idea of the But it’s lots of fun. I’d recommend it ntwriters.com.au kind of pictures that would suit that to anyone. text, and they go to the illustrators they have on their books. Freya Blackwood is an Australian illustrator and special effects artist. She Publishers often pair unknown illustrated the multi-award winning book, illustrators with known writers, as My Two Blankets written by NT-based happened with my first book. author, Irena Kobald.

18 19 FICTION Tea Anyone? MAUREEN O’KEEFE

‘Come on Nungarrayi,’ hurry up with ‘Oh no,’ she said to him, ‘I thought it Mum and dad were great tea drinkers. that tea,’ he said to mum. She was was sugar you know.’ Poor mum. In the You could say they were tea-aholics. standing by the fire. big rush to make dad’s tea, she didn’t When I was little mum made tea for realise I’d brought over the tin with ‘Go get em tins,’ she said to me, dad and later, when mum was getting salt in it. She’d not bothered to dip her pointing her chin towards the older, I’d make a pot for her. Many finger like usual. funny stories revolve around mix-ups Landrover. Online Publishing Another time mum bin stirring dad’s and mishaps over the famous Bushells I went as fast as I could. I didn’t want to tea with a stick, when she noticed tea. Here’s a couple to read while upset dad. But I could only carry two COLIN WICKING white flecks floating on the top. She sipping a steaming cuppa. tins at a time. They were heavy for a wondered to herself why the milk kid. There were no labels on the tins Mum was always mixing things up, just wouldn’t dissolve, but she gave that either as none of us could read or write, like a mad scientist. You never knew tea to dad anyway because he was in but usually mum knew what was inside what she’d put in a cup of tea next. a hurry. Once mum poured juice into a mug of by opening the lid. He was about to drink it when he tea instead of cold water. It had gotten ‘Oh, this is tea leaf,’ she said, chucking a looked at that tea and said: ‘What’s this the world,” said Wicking, “but as a - and is happy with the way it’s going. dark real quick and she couldn’t see handful into the water. As the long-standing cartoonist for the commercial product.” He receives about 75 per cent of the which tin had cold water, juice or tea in Nungarrayi? What is this floating in the NT News, most people have heard of sale price, but hasn’t made his money it. Fortunately, my cousin quite enjoyed Dad had a pannikin – a little, shiny silver tea? What is this white stuff?’ Colin Wicking. “The book took 18 months to write, one – and once the water boiled she’d back yet. the fruity taste; unlike the time she ‘That’s milk,’ she replied. and only six weeks to publish as pour the brew backwards and forwards But people may not know that Wicking mistook the salt for sugar. an ebook. I used Vivid, a boutique “I set the price at the minimum from the tin to the pannikin. She’d do ‘It doesn’t look like milk to me.’ Dad bin is also passionate about writing. He’s publisher based in Fremantle.” possible (US$2.99). I’m viewing it as a Whenever we went out bush dad liked this several times to make the tea taste taste a little bit more. started many novels over the years, long-term investment.” to stop for a cup of tea. That was one The immediacy of ebook publishing just right. completed a few, and earlier this year of his favourite things to do. He would ‘Hey Nungarrayi,’ dad said after tasting was the chief attraction for Wicking. As with all self-publishing, the book’s published his debut work as an ebook. get out his blanket and pillow and lie ‘Where’s my tea, Nungarrayi?’ Dad his tea, ‘this isn’t milk. This is some of promotion is left up to the author. asked. Dad was not the kind of your ashes for mixing up with tobacco.’ “I’ve written two previous complete “With ebook publishing, you start under a shady tree while mum made Wicking’s profile as a cartoonist, and person who could wait around much, novels,” said Wicking, “the first one getting feedback immediately. I like him a special brew. ‘I wondered why that milk was floating inside knowledge of the media world especially for tea, and on this day he 20 years ago. I shopped it around to that. It’s quite encouraging. People are on the top,’ she replied. has helped in this area. As a kid I couldn’t understand why dad was particularly cranky. publishers with a reasonable response, enjoying reading it. They’re treating it always had to have tea. I was amazed dad let mum make tea but there were no takers, and I put it as a work of popular fiction. I’ve tried “You have to promote yourself rather Feeling a little more flustered than for him ever again after that, even if away in the drawer.” to make it as entertaining as possible.” than the book initially,” he said. “You ‘Tea is very good for you,’ he’d tell me. I usual, mum pried open what she have to engage with people or they’re just hated it but never said anything. the two of them laughed about mum It cost him a little over $500 to get his thought was the sugar tin, poured a “I wrote another one a few years ago, not interested. And you have to jump mistaking her ashes for the milk. He ebook up on all platforms, worldwide, One time we were driving home to Ali teaspoon of granules into his pannikin and also shopped it around. But I in with both feet, you can’t just dip was really fussy. I once made tea for along with a web page that enables Curung when dad suddenly stopped of tea, and took it to dad. found the process quite frustrating your toe in the water.” him. He never asked me again. I think because it’s so glacially slow. I readers to contact the author directly. the car. He had a Landrover back then. He got up from his bed, a big smile he knew that it wasn’t good to hurry shopped it around for about two But he warns that this direct contact Wicking is planning to publish Well, that day he was in a bad mood. spreading over his face as he slowly mum up. But that didn’t stop him. years, and then slotted it away as well.” with readers may not suit everyone. another ebook next year, and Maybe it was because we didn’t see brought that pannikin up to his lips. At When it came to his tea, especially the hopefully one a year after that, to any turkey along the road. Of course, a “You have to prepare yourself for the last he had his cup of tea. famous Bushells tea, dad was the most “With this book, I decided to write a build a following of readers. cup of tea would make him feel better; feedback,” he said. “It might be worse impatient person alive. genre novel of some sort and publish calm him down a bit. Well, I only bin little one, about four or it myself. It started out as a creative than getting a rejection letter from a “If you’re confident about your five, but I’ll never forget the look on his Maureen Jipyiliya Nampijimpa writing exercise more than anything. publisher – especially if you’ve written product, and think people will buy it, ‘I will have my cup of tea now, face as he took a sip. O’Keefe is a Warlpiri woman, born I hit on the zombie thing one day, a personal story. As a cartoonist for I would recommend trying an ebook,” Nungarrayi,’ he said to mum. and raised in Ali Curung, south-east of 30 years, I’ve been getting letters he said. “And there’s always the ‘Are you trying to poison me,’ he yelled, inspired by something I saw on the As usual mum and I went to gather Tennant creek. She was the recipient telling me I’m rubbish for years. But chance that it might catch the eye of spitting the tea out in disgust. Mum Discovery Channel.” wood to make fire to boil water for tea. of an Australian Indigenous Creator the online world, it’s getting scarier as a publisher.” was confused. She’d made it exactly as Mum always kept a billycan of water scholarship with Magabala books and The result is Cauldron – a ripping yarn each day passes. If people are wary of she’d always done – nice and hot, with in the back of the Landrover and five was most recently published in Desert about Nazi zombies in Outback Australia. the online world, they might want to Colin Wicking is the editorial a teaspoon of sugar. recycled milk tins. One had leaf-tea in Writing (UWA Publishing 2016). This think twice about publishing an ebook.” cartoonist with the Northern Territory “I treated this thing from the outset, News. Based in Darwin, his work also it and one had sugar; there was one ‘What’s with the tea Nungarrayi? It’s salty.’ story was presented earlier this year at not as a novel that would change So far he’s sold 300 to 350 copies – appears in the Centralian Advocate with powdered milk; another for mum’s the Red Dirt Poetry Festival. to readers as far afield as Germany and the Sunday Territorian. ashes (to mix with tobacco); and one stored Saxa salt. Image by Ben Speare 20 21 FICTION

noise of the girl approaching. sprawled across the floor. In the middle So now, in this house of the dying of the rug was the shuddering body of a dog, he knew the girl was unafraid. Her ‘Who’s there?’ Bo demanded. small, brindle dog. fingers soothed Angel’s shivering body, A spade supported her crooked stance. caressed the dry nose, felt the heaving The Dog ‘Oh! Angel! There you are!’ Bo smiled. breath. The dog’s one open eye turned Matt waited like an alarmed rabbit in the ‘Here she is!’ to look up at her. Janie’s eyes stared KAREN MANTON glare under the house. Matt stared, appalled, at the closed eye back. How much of a blur is the dog, ‘It’s me,’ said Janie. of the dog, shut now forever, and the for her, wondered Matt. Call her blind, abdomen laboring with breath. A paw as some people did, she could see ‘And Matt from next door,’ he added. trembled out to him like a frightened some things better than anyone, and ‘Oh!’ said Bo, walking to them, dragging offering. The one open eye flickered. the dog knew. Die, die, he thought to the spade after her so that it rattled the dog. Die in the girl’s safe embrace. Matt shivered. Revulsion, grief, guilt across the concrete floor under the Angel’s eye half closed, as if to grant the jostled with tumbling questions. He house. She brought with her the smell wish. But Bo interrupted, dragging the could drive two hours to a vet. Or ask of red wine and wet grass and dirt. She trembling creature from Janie. Dougie down the road to shoot it. Or considered him for a moment, and Janie, finish off the dog himself, with the spade. Matt wanted to look away but couldn’t. before letting out a watery sigh. Or wait for the dog to die. The dog’s eye was fixed on Bo’s ‘Everywhere — everywhere is death.’ contorted face with a kind of love ‘Poor Angel, what have I done to you?’ he couldn’t fathom. The woman was Bo crooned, kneeling beside the shaking Her words spread out slowly into the babbling. Death, loss, death was all he animal. darkness with the movement of her could hear. Janie listened keenly into hand. Matt guessed the dog would be dead in the darkness, lassoing each word and ‘Yes,’ said Matt at last. ten minutes. In his mind he felt he should retrieving it into herself. He would leave stay until then. Janie’s fingers brushed but for the girl. And the dog. If only A familiar coldness was creeping his back. He was glad she couldn’t see he could get Bo to give it to him. He through him, though the skin of his properly. He could say he was guiding offered to drive to the vet. But Bo didn’t hands felt hot. The woman looked at her home, and come back about the like vets. She’d always lived on farms, him, almost surprised, and blurted, dog later. But Bo had already taken where people looked after their own ‘I tried to kill the dog.’ Janie’s hand, and drawn her in, to sit with with spades and shotguns. the dog too. Her hand lifted the spade a little way ‘It’s the kindest thing,’ she slurred. ‘—Angel’, whispered Janie, taking the and brought it down hard. A sharp clink The problem was, she went on to say, dog in her arms. sounded into the night. that now she’d moved off the land to a Matt sat awkwardly beside the girl, town she didn’t have a shotgun. Or her ‘Matt! Matt!’ ‘Over there,’ she said quietly. ‘You can She was looking up at him, waiting again, ‘She’s very sick. I tried to do the right unsettled by her poise in this house of son who could kill a dog with one blow. hear it.’ thin and trusting. Her wispiness was thing.’ It was that young girl Janie, calling him, shadows. Janie was at ease in many almost ghostly sometimes, as if she’d ‘I’m not a farm boy,’ Matt said, as if by come over for a chat because she’d The house was on stilts, the upper Bo looked at Matt with something like a houses not her own. Matt had seen her come to haunt him with wisdom or way of explanation for many things noticed he was back from weeks out level in darkness. Under the house smile. He stood near, helplessly. wandering along the street, passing accusation. Matt sighed. He wasn’t keen — the lateness of his presence in this at the mine. Here she was, looming out was floodlit with fluorescent lights. in and out of other people’s places to go over the fence. He didn’t know the ‘I tried to kill her, but she wouldn’t die,’ Bo crisis, unseen cruelties on properties, an of the shadows, the thin girl with the Nobody seemed to be there. The sound whether anyone was home or not. From neighbour apart from a wave and a hello. continued. inability to understand what she had scraggly hair and that voice. of weeping came from further out in one house to the next she made her way She hadn’t been there long, seemed self- done this night. the garden, where the light did not Her hand wavered with her voice, along the street, hand bumping across ‘I heard someone crying,’ she said, sufficient, a loner. Bo, she called herself. gesturing to the dark garden. moving towards him through the dim reach. Matt moved closer to the fence, the fence-tops. He wondered how she He felt a gathering anger, and took light, her hands reaching out to brush straining to see, until he found her, the ‘We’ll go to her gate,’ said Matt. ‘She’s out there, somewhere. Poor Angel.’ knew where she was so well, passing the dog from her clutching, desperate silhouette lying on the grass. Every now through the shadows and light. fingers. The animal’s shudder the verandah poles. ‘Over there,’ she A crescent moon watched the shadows and then she sat up, before dropping Immediately Janie stumbled onto the reverberated through his sternum bone. gestured behind her towards the side of the man and the girl shuffle through He used to see her from behind the again into the dark. grass, calling the dog. Chastising voices swarmed. Hadn’t he fence and the shed with a sunken roof. leaves to the place next door. The latch safety of dusty, transparent curtains and heard the spade, the woman’s grief- Janie shifted closer to the fence, fingers for the gate was jammed. ‘Leave her Janie. She wants to be alone.’ windows split by louvres, until the day There was a silence between them. He struck curlew cries, the screeches and pulling at the wire. Matt stared on into he’d found her in his kitchen. was wishing she’d gone to someone ‘Lift me over,’ urged Janie. There was an insistent edge to the agonised wails of the dog? Was it only the dark, wishing he’d stayed in the chair. else. He was so tired he wasn’t sure he woman’s voice. Her hand caught Matt’s ‘What are you doing?’ he’d asked. the girl Janie who had ears open to the He’d heard something earlier, and now Matt hesitated. could lift himself from the chair. Still, she wrist so he couldn’t follow. right frequency? the strange weeping of the woman was ‘Waiting,’ she’d replied. was waiting, believing he would stand ‘Come on!’, urged the girl. unnerving him. He was guessing Janie ‘Come upstairs,’ she urged, resting the ‘Die, die, die,’ he thought to the dog in up, and so at last he carefully placed spade against a table scattered with ‘For what?’ down the beer, and let her take hold of had heard it too. The dash of a spade Defeated, he lifted her up. The bones of his arms. against concrete. A dragging chain. her felt so thin he was almost afraid to paint pots and soaking brushes, an ‘For you,’ she’d said, quivering at his his fingers. There’s an oddness to this, But Angel kept her eye open, as if by High-pitched shrieks, low whimpers, hold her. She was gone from him quickly, overflowing ashtray and empty bottles confusion. he thought, the girl with the dimmed staring into Matt she might live. distorted moans like the agony caw of a gripping the cyclone wire with knowing of wine and spirits. sight leading the man through the night. He understood, now, that she liked to dying bird. Someone was taking down toes to shimmy over. From the other ‘If this was a child I’d take it,’ he thought. She could pick vague light, shadows and Matt had the strange sensation of know where everyone lived, to know a wall. Breaking a chain with a spade. side she worked the latch and unraveled ‘I’d just walk off with her in my arms.’ hazy shapes, people up close in the day, climbing instead of descending to a how their place smelt and felt — as if Killing a sick dog, perhaps. He’d chased the chain that held the gates closed. he knew, but in the dark she found her kind of hell. At the top of the stairs Then again, maybe not. He wondered away that last thought, and gone inside she might find someone lost and have way with her ears and her hands. Matt winced, reluctant, as the gates his eyes took in the wide verandah if Janie could read his thoughts. He’d for a shower. to put them back where they belonged. squeaked open. The girl gave up on him where a couch, and a couple of large She was often in his house or garden, heard the thuds in her house across They paused by Matt’s shed where old armchairs with sunken and worn the foliage was unruly, and old planks Now, in this terrible silence, he felt sick. and ventured in alone, feeling her way though not always to visit him. He would the road, the high-pitched screech that under the house. Worried, Matt followed. cushions were gathered to make a round a corner and see her asleep on could be a dog but was really a child. lay rotting across the ground. The girl ‘We must go to her,’ said the child. sitting area. A red, shag-pile rug was pointed into the neighbour’s garden. The woman staggered upright with the the verandah day bed, as if she’d lived Janie took Angel from him and hummed there for years. 22 23 FICTION

softly. Bo watched. Angel’s eye closed. ‘It was the same with Jesse,’ she “The question held him in the bush; a dingo attack; a near miss dead stranger child and the dead lover. “The girl was heavy They were all waiting. murmured. ‘I had to let him go.’ with a wheel. He’d run 4,000 kilometres to escape under water. There was both, but here they were, reincarnated to hold, still asleep. ‘It’s like Jesse,’ said Bo, suddenly. Her hand waved towards the open door Matt’s heart lurched. A near miss with in the girl asleep on the couch; the dog of the house. only one answer. He a wheel. The words spun into him. Bo At her fence he paused. The dog’s eye opened. Matt shifted shrieking under the spade; the slurring was pulling Angel from his grasp. He let awkwardly, Janie listened. ‘I still have all his clothes. Boxes of them. was a coward. He didn’t talk of the woman. Out the back, bottles go for fear of injuring the dog more by It’s like hanging on to someone’s skin.’ ‘My son,’ explained Bo, lighting a fresh have the guts.” holding on. Angel’s teeth chattered, jaw At first light the girl woke him with her cracked on concrete. cigarette while the other smouldered in She was silent then; the woman. Angel in a spasm. Bo’s fingers squeezed the silent waiting. She was standing close, Wails and curling hair askew, listening. The old little face the ash tray. ‘I had to make a choice.’ started up a new shuddering. The Angel opened one eye, and tried to little body tight. battered eye struggled open, to look smiled at his yawn. threats belted the dark.” She splashed the last of a bottle of red edge nearer Bo, claws catching in ‘Jesse had no hope,’ she told the dog’s up at Bo’s face. And the eye was wine into her chipped mug. threads of rug. Janie stirred. solemn eye. ‘But you — Wonder Dog —,’ Bo’s gate was ajar. They climbed the adoring, though bewildered, holding a and she held the bedraggled, shivering stairs, calling. Silence. Angel was pressed The shot was quieter than Matt expected. ‘It was a motorbike accident, you know. question without judgment. To trust in ‘Sorry,’ murmured Bo, smearing away animal out in front of her, to admire, up against the fly-wire door. There all Serious head injury. They said he wasn’t spite of everything: a dog will do that unwanted tears. ‘Wait for the blood to drain,’ was all ‘You’ll outlive us all!’ night, trying to get inside, Matt thought. coming back.’ best. Seven blows of a spade would be She shook her head as if to expel the She seemed dead at first, until the one Dougie said. forgiven. Angel’s tongue darted out to ‘I need to go,’ said Matt. ‘I can take the Matt watched her throat in all its moment. eye opened and the shuddering began. They wrapped the dog in the sarong, Bo’s chin. dog for the night if you like.’ Matt eased the dog into Janie’s arms, and paroxysms. Until this night he’d never ‘Don’t worry,’ Matt replied, though there snout and one paw protruding. heard of Jesse. Bo grasped the dog ‘Do you want to go home?’ Matt asked If she would just give it to him, he could called through the fly-wire. No answer. was a rage in him for the dog between Bo was waiting for them in the shadows from Janie, for comfort. Janie. make a decision. But Bo shook her head, them. He stretched to gather Angel to It was a few minutes before Bo emerged under her house. muttering away the offer. Matt went to ‘I had to decide.’ ‘No,’ the girl replied, easing herself up him. The small warmth of her shocked to unlatch the door. Janie was already Janie instead, and gently lifted her. ‘Do you want to carry Angel?’ Janie onto the old couch, where her body him. A chafed paw shifted against his around the corner of the verandah, She was holding the dog at her neck, asked, offering the bundle. uncurled to rest. palm, skin on skin. Her claws were ‘I’m going,’ he said, trying not to wake whispering to the dog. Bo stared at clutching the sagging body. miniature, delicate, limp in his hand. The the child in his arms. Matt for a moment, leaned against the ‘No — you hold her. It’s better that way.’ Matt felt a kind of helplessness. Angel ‘His grandmother says I’ve sent him to hell.’ open eye looked straight into him, as if verandah railing to light a cigarette and kept heaving air. to ask, ‘Why didn’t you come?’ Bo watched as if she didn’t quite believe gestured back towards Janie. Matt led them to the hole he had dug. Angel struggled against her grip, let out they were departing. ‘You can leave Janie here,’ slurred Bo, ‘She looks peaceful,’ said Bo. a slow moan. The question held him under water. ‘She likes coming here — finds things staggering to her feet. ‘Stay —,’ she began, as he carried the girl There was only one answer. He was a and goes off with them — odd earrings, Dirt fell softly from the spade. ‘Because when he was born I never downstairs. The dog rolled to the carpet with her coward. He didn’t have the guts. coins, a bit of ribbon. I don’t mind.’ christened him; and when he was a man ‘We can plant a tree here,’ whispered cigarette. Stumbling over a fallen branch on the I let him go.’ The dog’s eye widened in horror. Her Matt said nothing. Bo exhaled. Smoke Janie, her fingers taking hold of Bo’s. way to Janie’s place, Matt remembered Matt smiled weakly. ‘It’s alright.’ tiny teeth were weird pins of light in reluctantly curled into the morning air. The dog licked her face; her mouth. the darkness, jittering faster and faster. he hadn’t blown out the candles, or Early the next morning Matt heard ‘She moves around with her fingertips,’ Coils of smoke wisped upwards from With a high-pitched yelp her body reminded Bo to watch for live ash in the gate squeak. It was Janie with a ‘What else could I do? Let him keep on Bo murmured. ‘It’s as if she has little glowing threads in the rug. His boot jerked from his arms to skid across the the carpet. Too late now. Perhaps it was spindly lime tree in a cracked plastic pot. like that?’ buds in her skin, and the buds are eyes.’ stomped out the danger. Bo was floorboards. The other eye snapped better if the whole place burnt down. Together they went to the side fence. She looked at Matt desperately. stumbling to the liquor cupboard’s open Tomorrow would be easier if all that open, with a wild look for him. She was Matt shivered, afraid. ‘Bo!’ called Janie. doors. remained was a charred, skeleton house, ‘I had to set him free.’ shrieking now, her body shaking and scoured of memory. He wished he could ‘What do you want me to do about the No one answered. Matt lifted the girl ‘Here,’ she said, holding out to him a new twisting, travelling in circles across the ‘You did the right thing,’ said Matt. do the same to the house of his self — dog, Bo?’ over the wire. She waded through the bottle of whisky and a smudged glass. floor while claws scratched desperately reduce it to cinders and flaky ashes. grass, knowing her way. Janie murmured to confirm the truth. Her eyes were brown like the dog’s and at the surface. He couldn’t believe that She took a drag on the cigarette. something so near death could be so begging for something. The girl was heavy to hold, still asleep. Matt looked at her, waiting. She was ‘Bo!’ Angel licked Bo’s collarbone. The suddenly, violently alive. At her fence he paused. Out the back, ‘I don’t drink,’ he lied. staring out across the wavering fingers A cockatoo screeched. Footsteps woman curled into the dog, pressing the bottles cracked on concrete. Wails and little brown worry face and bung eye And all the while the dog kept that of palm fronds, as if he wasn’t there. shuddered the house. The fly-wire door She sat down and sighed, poured widened eye on him. She knew him for curling threats belted the dark. Matt against her cheek. ‘Take her to Dougie,’ she said at last. clanged. Bo leaned over the verandah. whisky into the chipped mug. who he was — the man that didn’t come turned and carried Janie back to his ‘That’s what I tried to do for you Angel. place. On the verandah day bed he laid ‘It’s for you,’ said the girl, holding high the Janie seemed to be asleep already, to save her. Possessed with shakes and It took all Matt’s energy to dig the grave But you wouldn’t die.’ her down, cocooning the mozzie net little tree. whistling fragile snores through her nose. shrieks she spun back to his legs, claws with the spade that had not killed the scratching at his skin as if scrabbling to around her. He tried to sleep in a nearby dog. He dug in a kind of frenzy, as if Bo raised her head to look at Matt. chair. But the eye of the dog stared into ‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ Matt get in. to save his life. Or to get the task over Karen Manton is a writer living in his silence, and the light from under Bo’s ‘She was very sick, you know. Fitting. apologised. with, in case, as in his nightmares, he Batchelor, Northern Territory. Her short ‘See,’ said Bo, topping up her drink, and house seemed to shine into him through Dying.’ exhumed Liam’s pale face, or the fingers stories have won NT Literary Awards Bo looked at him, not understanding. He filling Matt’s empty glass. ‘She is very the fence. of the accident child, twisted through several times and are published in The dog snorted and Bo covered her put out his hand to touch her shoulder, sick, my Angel.’ head with kisses, clutching the trembling but she cried out and gave him a fright. His thoughts had no mercy. The dog the wheel spokes and chain of his bike. Bruno’s Song, True North, NT Literary body with one hand while the fingers The glass tilted, spilling whisky onto the Matt struggled to wrap the dog in a was none of his business. But for some He stopped, panting, to look behind him. Awards, Award Winning Australian of the other searched for a cigarette in carpet. He watched her swallow back sarong discarded under the couch. reason it brought everything back. A Janie was there, holding the shivering Writers, Review Australian Fiction, The dog in a torn sarong. Best Australian Stories and Landmarks. the crumpled box. Matt helped her with the outburst, steady the glass with her ‘I’ll take her to Dougie for you,’ he said. child tangled in the spokes of the front the cigarette. Bo stared out beyond fingers. The distorted mask of her wet ‘It’s quick: a bullet.’ wheel of his pushbike. Bone spiking ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. Image from flickr the balcony, into the darkness and still face pleaded with shadows. through skin like the sword of truth. shadows of palm fronds, the long rustle Bo waved away the thought. A gathering crowd. The absence of Matt hardly knew Dougie, though he Liam who was far off, fading into white lived down the street. Janie went in first, of a snake. ‘She’ll live, you’ll see,’ said Bo, and stories hospital sheets, soon to be swallowed calling. Dougie shuffled out to look at of Angel’s invincibility whirred out into by the earth. Dust to dust, ashes to the dog and hear the story. the warm night — a crocodile; days lost ashes. Matt had two ghosts now. The

24 25 LOCAL BOOKS Desert Writing: Stories From Country KIERAN FINNANE

MARALINGA’S LONG SHADOW the adults, mostly women, look back, Edited by Terri-ann White In the stories from the APY Lands the to their parents and grandparents’ UWA Publishing historic event of the atomic bomb tests generations and the country they Remote is a relative term. Remote from at Maralinga leaves a long shadow. The moved around in, and to their own early where? For many living in so-called workshops, led by Indigenous writers Ali years in times of great change. Cobby Eckermann and Lionel Fogarty, remote communities or lands, their Not surprisingly the accounts tell of were held in Yalata where many of the place is the centre; it’s the cities and all kinds of outside interferences in people who had been living around the coast that are far-flung and on their lives, and it’s interesting to read Ooldea were forced to relocate after many a day scarcely thought of. That their reflections on this. Joan Marie the tests. The image of a family walking sense of Australia lived ‘from the inside Nagomara, for example, speaks of her out through the smoke of the blasts, to out’ strongly permeates the anthology, father being forcibly taken as a young the shock and terror of the soldiers, is Desert Writing: Stories from country, man to Alice Springs but escaping memorably evoked in more than one recently released by UWA Publishing. when they stopped for a break in the contribution (from Hilary Williams, and Tanami and managing to find his family The collection of stories is the result Kumunu Queama and Margaret May), tells of her mother leaving her sick baby and Holly Ringland, professionals with again. In later life, he told her that he “It is difficult of a purposeful project creating an as is the suggestion that these people brother to die. But her father tells the their own websites, who spent time regretted running away. He would sometimes to measure opportunity through writing workshops were going to be shot “because of the “babysitter” to go back for him. Later the working in the desert, is a bit misleading. have liked to have gone to school boy was cared for by nuns. Did he ever and eventual publication for desert- threat of radiation”. It’s not that we don’t encounter writing all the outcomes in and learned to drive a truck, but he rejoin the family? We are not told. dwellers to educate the Australian at this level in what follows. We do. But majority, the “coast-huggers”. And Cobby Eckermann sets up the was afraid when he and others were various workshops. section with a vivid account of her rounded up on Gordon Downs. He PRESENCE OF PARUKU it sets up poles, particularly for the although it originated in Western At Mulan, the workshops also involved Western Australian selection: at one Is a happy heart an Australia, under the leadership of Terri- and Fogarty’s journey to Yalata and thought “they were gonna kill me”. then eases the reader in at her side Karen Lulu also regrets not doing school children. The presence of end, a string of women, coming into outcome? Is healing ann White, director of UWA Publishing, Paruku, the lake, looms large in their communities (Warburton, Mutitjulu, it reached across borders, drawing with a gentle poem, ready to listen more school. “Too much bullying” and and reverence an to story in the mulga smoke of a punishment – “workforce” – drove her lives. From the little kids to the seniors, Balgo, Mulan) from elsewhere, reflecting in story-tellers from Tennant Creek in there are lots of stories of swimming, on their experiences with a good deal outcome? Is three the NT and from the vast APY lands in campfire. She also reflects on the away: “I’m sorry about that.” There’s no nature of the workshop exercise: “It is more adult education in the school, so fishing, finding swan eggs, and of flair for written communication (I generational mentoring South Australia. The Western Australian cooking up the food on campfires. enjoyed all these pieces, from variously selection is dominated by contributions difficult sometimes to measure all the her hopes are for her grandkids, that outcomes in various workshops. Is a they’ll learn to read and write, “learn Who they did these things with – other a cultural strategist, a media compliance an outcome? I think so. from Mulan, a tiny community of mainly children and family members – is officer, an art centre director, nurses, a Walmajarri people near Paraku (Lake happy heart an outcome? Is healing white society. Both ways.” If so, then it is a good and reverence an outcome? Is three usually a feature. There’s interesting teacher); at the other, the Aboriginal Gregory) in the East Kimberley. Shirley Yoomarie remembers crying generational mentoring an outcome? evidence of great change in their people of Mulan, supported or coaxed life to live.” all the way when she was packed Each of the workshops put its own I think so. If so, then it is a good life lives too, compared to the lives of through the workshops, to record off on a truck from Billiluna to go to It’s critical that we hear these Aboriginal stamp on the writing. The Tennant to live.” their parents and grandparents: Theo their stories in English. For the adults, I Creek stories are as eclectic a mix school at Balgo, at just five years old: Fernandez wants to be an inventor, of expect most, if not all of the stories are voices from Mulan. In situ the experience as you’d find anywhere: there’s Later she travelled to Pukatja “I never used to see my parents”, only a go-kart fit for a Spiderman movie; transcription of spoken word. would be carried richly by all the nuance (Ernabella) and Umuwa and gathered on holidays. She says she got used to Junior Ovi tells of getting lost on a of people’s personalities, gestures, affectionate, proud memoir from Mahood, a writer and artist who spends more stories, with a range of subjects: the dormitory life though and when school trip to Melbourne, and with contexts. Stripped of all those things Warumungu woman Rosemary several months of each year working being sent to work down south in she left school she continued hanging the help of a prayer and his own by scrupulous transcription and Plummer; heartfelt verse from police at Mulan, urges us to approach much mission times (from Mavis Wari), on around there. She was only 17 when navigation skills, finding his way back unadulterated reproduction on the officer Matthew McKinlay; sci-fi of this writing as “a form of poetry, to adventure from Indigenous writer gathering bush tobacco (Wari and she had her first child, without a to their accommodation. printed page leaves them as husks Jennifer Summerfield), cleaning husband on the scene, and the nuns be heard as much as read”, to read it of what they originally were. How to David C Curtis; a suspenseful murder The writing in the anthology, then, is as aloud to appreciate its “rhythms and story edged with the paranormal rockholes (Sue Haseldine, writing of packed her off to Wyndham. overcome this problem is a challenge for rough, dirty work, done for the sake of varied as the contexts in which it was cadences”. It’s good advice, this makes future projects like this one, of which I from Ktima Heathcote, whose name There are some riveting glimpses of the animals, to give them “sanctuary”), produced, so it would always have been a difference to the reading experience. hope there will be more. I’m used to seeing on media releases events that leave the reader hungry to and a deft little tale from a 10 year old, challenging to find the opening piece in But nonetheless I don’t think it gets over from the Barkly Regional Council. know more: Evelyn Clancy, for example, Kieran Finnane is an Alice Springs Kaya Kaya Kelly, about the friendship terms of setting expectations of what the problem of juxtaposing worked up Heathcote was also a leader of the in an interview with workshop leader journalist, artist and author. Her book of between a man and a fish. would follow. From this point of view, texts by native speakers of English with workshop together with the Top End Kim Mahood, tells of her big sister killed the choice to open with two stories that transcribed, first takes of oral stories long-form journalism, Trouble: on trial in writer Marie Munkara, and as “the In Mulan, the Aboriginal story-tellers because she was “too bright” (light- seem to have been produced outside in English spoken as a second, third or Central Australia, was published in June birth mother” of Barkly Writers’ Ink, tend towards a bigger sweep of skinned) and thought to be the child of the workshop context, both of them by fourth language. 2016 by UQP. This review first appeared is committed to nurturing the “great family story rather than focus around a kartiya (white person). It’s not clear non-Aboriginal women, Kate Fielding in The Alice Springs News. literary potential” of the Barkly. a particular theme. Quite a few of who killed her, but the impression is that Image: Wordstorm 2016 by Paz Tassone it was her own people. Imelda Guyaman 26 27 LOCAL BOOKS Short Reviews

A SUNBURNT CHILDHOOD: Flawed and fascinating characters In this gritty crime fiction novel, Sam GROWING UP IN THE TERRITORY pepper this memoir and beautiful Carmody conjures the claustrophic Toni Tapp Coutts writing is a strong feature. Toni’s story feel of a small town, and the people Hachette Australia 2016 is unique, and uniquely Australian. A trapped within its gold-fishbowl-like Sunburnt Childhood is easy to read, environs. the words flow and the humour is Review by Kaye Aldenhoven The book is a skilled exploration of entertaining. ‘The land where I grew up is vast a family coming to terms with the and flat.’ Read it! Read it! sudden and unexplained absence of a loved one – even though we learn that Toni Tapp Coutts, the eldest of ten Toni Tapp Coutts is a writer from Elliott disappeared from his family’s children, grew up on Killarney Station, Katherine. Her other books include lives long before becoming an official a cattle property created by her step Bill Tapp – Cattle King. Kaye “missing person”. father Bill Tapp from country ‘flat Aldenhoven is the author of the only as a breadboard,’ using wild feral poetry book in the Darwin Library The Windy Season is an assured and cattle as stock and an even wilder that is regularly stolen. well-written debut novel, and I’m assortment of stockmen. June Tapp sure crime fiction fans will be keenly nee Forscutt played a pivotal role in the watching Sam Carmody’s career. establishment of the enormous station, THE WINDY SEASON Sam Carmody now lives in Darwin and while she birthed and raised children by Sam Carmody is working on his second novel while also and carried her share of station work. Allen & Unwin 2016 teaching creative writing at Batchelor Toni slept in a swag from the day the College. Sally Bothroyd is the Executive family arrived at Killarney to live in an Review by Sally Bothroyd Director of the NT Writers’ Centre. old water-tank – no electricity, no water. “There are things out there worse than Fun, and empowering, is how Toni sharks”, warns the front cover of this describes her life as she worked novel by Sam Carmody, so readers KULTITJA: MEMOIR OF AN OUTBACK alongside stockmen in the cattle yards; know from the outset that they’re SCHOOLTEACHER drafting and branding cattle; mustering; firmly in the crime fiction genre. Linda Wells sleeping in a swag. The community Carmody hails from Western Australia Ginninderra Press 2016 cared about each other and every one where The Windy Season is set in worked on Killarney regardless of age. the fictional town of Stark – a sleepy Review by Julia Christensen This ethic seems to have produced a settlement reliant on its fishing and After looking at the word Kultitja remarkable Territory family. tourism industries, and a haven for a few times, I read it aloud and The Aboriginal stockmen and the people running away from their past. remembered that indigenous women who worked with Toni’s mother language is an evolving oral tradition, Paul is a young man, with little had a strong influence on Toni’s not a written one! ambition or direction, until his brother understanding of country and her love Elliott goes missing – leaving his As a young schoolteacher, Linda Wells of it. The descriptions of relationships parents paralysed by grief. Deciding worked in Victoria and Tasmania, but with Aboriginal people are a highlight. he has to do something, Paul quits his after a chance encounter, she finally The oppressive climate of the Territory - job and hits the road. fulfils her dream of visiting Central either wet or dry - tested everyone. Fish Australia, a trip she’d missed out on at His brother was last living in Stark, so were known to rain from the sky and school because of sickness. Paul follows in his footsteps, taking sometimes good men drank too much a job as a deckhand for his troubled She discovers that teachers are a and drowned trying to cross swollen cousin who skippers a fishing boat in much needed commodity in bush rivers. The story of the Cattle King’s the waters off the windy WA coast. schools and eagerly signs up for a marriage to Toni’s mother; the tragedies position at the Mount Allen school. and triumphs of life on Killarney; and Naturally it’s not all smooth sailing, the alcoholism that consumed and and there are darker forces at work She takes in her stride creeks with destroyed Bill Tapp are vividly and than just the animalistic men working no water, red dirt roads that never authentically told in this story. on the trawlers, or the half-blind shark end, jaded white locals who’d seen it that is stalking the shallows. all before; she revels in the new and exotic of her adopted landscape. 29 LOCAL BOOKS

As Linda comes to terms with the leaving the audience intimately aware OF ASHES AND RIVERS THAT RUN THE BURNING ELEPHANT Christopher Raja migrated to But time and again, the stories gulf between her “romantic notions…. of what’s ‘not there’ in the lives of TO THE SEA by Christopher Raja Melbourne from Kolkata in 1986, and revealed in the courtroom are of such of peaceful Aboriginal people, Ham, Mia and Ash. Marie Munkara Giramondo 2016 now lives and works in Alice Springs. senseless violence that they almost living in harmony with nature and Ham is a ‘fly in, fly out’ miner working Penguin 2016 The Burning Elephant was written defy comprehension – except to say each other, against all the odds of in the Northern Territory’s Central Review by Fiona Dorrell under a New Work grant awarded by that alcohol is a major player in every invasion” and the realities of sickness, the Literature Board of the Australia single one. Desert – except he drives in and out Review by Dianne Dempsey Set during the lead-up to the drinking, violence and an all too often Council and is his first novel. Fiona – two weeks on, one week off – so There is an adage that goes along assassination of Prime Minister Indira Finnane’s book is not an easy read at dysfunctional family life, she settles Dorrell is the Alice Springs Program he’s home one week out of three. His the lines of “I can say anything I like Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards times – focussing on aspects of our into the rhythms of a remote bush Manager for the NT Writers’ Centre. wife, Mia does not cope well with him about my family but nobody else had in 1984, The Burning Elephant is society that we’d sooner not see. But community. Her curiosity, good nature This review was first published in working away and is experiencing better try it”, an adage that Marie coloured by political eruptions. that’s also why it’s an important book and intelligence win through. She Australian Book Review, May 2016. painful medical issues. On his way Munkara applies with great glee when to read. finds the sense of community she has Through the eyes of young Govinda, a home, Ham discovers a rolled over car she describes in her memoir a much story unfolds about discord within a been looking for and she finds love. Kieran Finnane is an Alice Springs in the middle of the bush. It is here longed-for family reunion. marriage, sectarian violence, and the TROUBLE: ON TRIAL IN CENTRAL journalist, artist and author. Her book Linda Wells pulls no punches though he meets Ash, a biologist studying anticipation of a family preparing to Munkara was 28 when she discovered AUSTRALIA of long-form journalism, Trouble: on when relating the harsh realities of the Mulgara – a small carnivorous emigrate to Australia. her mother and brothers were alive By Kieran Finnane outback life and relationships. marsupial endangered in parts of the trial in Central Australia, was published and well and living on the Tiwi islands. Central Desert. Religion and mysticism are the book’s UQP 2016 in June 2016 by UQP. Sally Bothroyd Her writing style is beautifully poetic, She had been given to white foster primary intoxicants. Characters speak is the executive director of the NT In the beginning, and as we see at the concise and engaging… parents when she was only three years in proverbs and riddles; rivers swell Review by Sally Bothroyd Writers’ Centre. end, all three characters are at turning old. “He” was a paedophile and “she” and burst; hijras and politicians alike “I’d never imagined the desert to be Alcohol, violence - and the points in their lives, a little broken was sour and turned a blind eye to his place curses; Sikhs amass weapons in so dense and abundant. I’d never interconnectedness of the two - are yet hanging on to something barely horrible behaviour. a temple. From the opening scene, in MY IRONING CAREER imagined living on the back of an old at the heart of this unflinching portrait there – luck, memories, hope – all of which a rampaging elephant is shot in truck. Once there, I could imagine When the day of the reunion finally of Alice Springs, told via a number of A ’zine by Kim Scott which are embodied through human a schoolyard, the action is presented nothing else.” arrives Munkara rushes into the fray emotion and symbolically represented criminal trials. head on, “Do you speak English?” she in mythic proportions. Like many of Katherine writer and die-hard zine fan I am a great believer that life takes by the recurring ‘barely-there star’ asks them, slowly and clearly, and the Govinda’s formative experiences in As a journalist, Kieran Finnane has Kim Scott produced this pocket-sized us on a journey; doors open and that appears throughout the text. faux pas accrue from there. She is India, the image of the elephant’s no doubt spent hundreds of hours in ouvre about her trials and tribulations we decide whether or not to walk Over the three and a half years of horrified by the hoards of mangy dogs. burning body plagues him. courtrooms, watching the mundane in the ironing arena. through them. Linda Wells stepped bureaucracy of the justice system, writing Broken, Mary Anne admits that She is terrified of the broken, filthy As the narration is defined by a A kooky tale of ironing in the NT and through the door that took her out alongside the stories of utter tragedy. her characters often told her to ‘shut- toilet and shower. In a country where child’s mind, what is bewildering or bush to teach. She takes us with her beyond, with a gorgeous design by up and listen’ as she experienced the kangaroo meat is a staple, Munkara overlooked is often most interesting on a fascinating journey of cultural, In Trouble, she focuses on half a Di Bricknell, this zine is sure to bring a slow but perpetual revealing of who decides she’s a vegetarian. Her to the reader: the muted eroticism family and self discovery. dozen trials, some of which attracted smile to the most crumpled among us. the characters were and how they aversions are tolerated, but only just, of his mother’s relationship with their national attention, giving a detailed Everything you wanted to know about Linda Wells spent her childhood wanted her to tell their story. She has and only because she is part of the Sikh cook; the fantasy of Australia, the rendition of court proceedings. ironing, but were afraid to ask! in Melbourne but has lived for many done this so markedly well. kinship group. ‘best country in the world’; domestic But hers is not a dry news report. As years now in Alice Springs. She is exchanges between two rival wives Kim says her zine is on sale at the Soon to be produced into an Like her first book, Every Secret Thing, a long-term resident of Alice Springs the author of Still a Town Like Alice – one the servant to her husband’s Emerald Springs Roadhouse, among Australian film, I cannot wait to see which won the 2008 David Unaipon – her children born and raised there and a number of short stories and mistress. Love, jealousy, resignation, other retailers. Broken transform on the screen, so I Award and the 2010 NT Book of the – Finnane’s depiction of a culture of poems. Julia Christensen is a former and grief are tempered or hidden; we can watch it over again – each time Year, Munkara’s writing is distinguished drinking and violence cut deep, as she ABC broadcaster with a love of watch the politics of a nation play out taking something new and something by its humour and vivid descriptions tries to describe how the Northern literary festivals. at an intimate scale. wiser from its deeply etched poetic of raucous family fun. She laughs at Territory’s justice system deals ZERO POINT: ASTOUNDING TALES messages. herself as well as the antics of her own Though Govinda becomes increasingly with the people caught up in the OF HERO FICTION mob. But underpinning the laughter aware of his parents’ fallibility, they maelstrom of destruction. A comic by Jonathon Saunders BROKEN Mary Anne Butler is a successful are acute political statements about remain removed and inaccessible to Mary Anne Butler author, playwright, mentor and In one section she tells of sitting with the poverty of her people. She is him. He is often left on the perimeters Darwin artist Jonathan Saunders educator living in Darwin. the weeping family of a deceased Currency Press 2016 also unabashedly scathing about the of the adult world. As the political this year published the first edition Adelle Sefton-Rowston has a man on one side of her, while the murruntani or whites. Whitefellas take situation in India intensifies, these of what will hopefully be a long and PhD in literature and lectures parents of the young men accused Review by Adelle Sefton-Rowston all the good jobs or they might be on pretences are tested. popular comic series. It features an at Charles Darwin University. of causing his death are on the Mary Anne Butler’s play Broken was some sort of spiritual journey looking Indigenous super hero from Darwin Although Raja’s first novel is other, also weeping. This trial of five this year’s winner of the Victorian for their souls with the blacks. who operates in Melbourne and has presented as Young Adult fiction, it white men accused of killing an Premier’s award for Drama and, quantum-based powers. There is pathos, too. At the heart of the contains layers of meaning that will Aboriginal man put Alice Springs for the first time ever, it was jointly writing is Munkara’s struggle to know satisfy readers of all ages. Inevitably, into the national spotlight, as the This beautifully-drawn work is surely a awarded the Prize for Literature. her mother; to become connected to Govinda must contemplate leaving his judicial system was asked to untangle “must read” for comic fans, new and old! Similarly, her play breaks a number her, and to find a place where she no home country, an experience the book whether racism was at play. of literary conventions: it is without longer feels stiff and self-conscious. treats with honesty and credibility. stage directions; includes only Finnane doesn’t shrink away from two props; and depends on three Of Rembarranga, Tiwi and Chinese these accusations, but seeks to reveal characters to reveal their stories descent, Marie Munkara was born the complexities of cultural relations through triangular prose. The set is on the banks of the Mainoru River in Alice Springs to the degree that ‘stripped bare’ with powerful effect, in Arnhemland. Her first book Every she, as a non-Aboriginal woman, Secret Thing won 2010 NT Book of the understands it. Year. Dianne Dempsey is a scriptwriter, a freelance journalist and book reviewer. 30 31 OPPORTUNITIES OPEN SUBMISSIONS

Templar Quarterly Portfolio The Australian/Vogel Literary The Big Issue Penguin NOVEMBER 2016 Pamphlet Awards MARCH 2017 Award The Big Issue is an independent Monthly Catch The Kat Muscat Fellowship Closes: 9 January 2017 Prairie Schooner Book Prize Contest Closing: May 2017 magazine that publishes informative (first week of each month) Opens: 21 November 2016 The Templar Quarterly Pamphlet Closing date: 15 March 2017 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and entertaining articles on a huge Penguin.com.au/getting-published variety of subjects including arts and The annual Kat Muscat Fellowship Award offers poets the opportunity The Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series is an Australian literary award for Destiny Romance entertainment, street culture, lifestyle and offers professional development up to submit a portfolio of between welcomes manuscripts from all living unpublished manuscripts by writers A Penguin Australia digital imprint, personal profiles. We are always looking to the value of $3,000 for young ten and twelve pages of poetry to writers, including non-US citizens, under the age of 35. The prize Online submission form for good-quality writers. The magazine is female-identifying writers and editors be published as a short Templar writing in English. Winners will receive money is A$20,000. Destinyromance.com.au/writers-centre sold for $7, with $3.50 going directly to working on a literary project that Pamphlet. $3000 and publication through the the vendor. Random House Australia responds to the notion of ‘challenge’. Carnival Hour Playwriting Competition University of Nebraska Press. Hard Copy general submission only that JUNE 2017 Voiceworks Closes: 31 January 2017 are separate from Penguin. The Kill Your Darlings (KYD) Australia’s newest literary talents are Aspiring and experienced Australian Moth Short Story Prize 2016 Randomhouse.com.au/about/ DECEMBER 2016 Unpublished Manuscript Award filling the pages of Voiceworks right playwrights are invited to submit Closing date: June 2017 manuscripts.aspx Closing date: 31 March 2017 now. Submissions open quarterly for unpublished and unperformed one- A 1st prize of $3,000, a 2nd prize of Nakata Brophy Short Fiction young Australian writers. Each piece Lacuna Press act play scripts to the annual Carnival This award will assist an early-career a week-long writing retreat at Circle and Poetry Prize selected for publication goes through Harcy copy submissions only of Flowers Toowoomba Repertory author in the development of their of Misse in France (including $250 Opens: 1 December 2016 a collaborative editing process with the Lacunapublishing.com/index.php/ Theatre Play Writing Competition. unpublished manuscript. The winner for travel) and a 3rd prize of $1,000. The Nakata Brophy prize recognises Editorial Committee, and individualised submissions Winning plays will be workshopped, will receive a $5000 cash prize and the talent of young Indigenous writers feedback is provided for all unsuccessful then performed during the 2017 a mentorship with KYD’s Rebecca Rhiza Press across Australia. The prize is $5000, submissions. Starford (non-fiction) or Hannah Will accept unsolicited YA fiction only, publication in Overland’s print magazine, Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers. OCTOBER 2017 Kent (fiction). online submissio form. and a three-month writer’s residency at Allen & Unwin ASA Emerging Writers’ and The Friday Pitch Rhizapress.com.au/submissions/all- the beautiful Trinity College. Illustrators’ Mentorships FEBRUARY 2017 Allenandunwin.com submissions APRIL 2017 Closing date: October 2017 The Griffin Award Xoum The Griffith University Josephine Applications are accepted for Bloomsbury Spark Closing date: 31 December 2016 Hachette Australia Manuscript Online submission form Ulrick Literature Prize works of fiction, literary non-fiction, Bloomsbury YA digital imprint Development Program Xoum.com.au/submissions The prestigious Griffin Award Closing date: February 2017 young adult literature, poetry, General email submissions Closing date: April 2017. Bloomsbury.com/au/bloomsbury-spark/ recognises an outstanding play One of the most lucrative prizes for graphic novels, children’s literature Wombat books submissions or performance text that displays short fiction and poetry. In addition Shortlisted writers, and their and picture book illustration. Unsolicited picture books only through an authentic, inventive and to a share of the $30,000 total prize manuscripts, are invited to participate Hachette Australia online submission form contemporary Australian voice, with money, winners will also be considered in a four day retreat program, during Scribe Nonfiction Prize General email submissions wombatbookscom.au/authors/ the winner receiving a $10,000 prize. for publication in a special e-book which they receive feedback and Closing date: October 2017 Hachette.com.au/information submissions workshopping opportunities with edition of Griffith Review. The Scribe Nonfiction Prize is a Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize Hachette Australia publishers, editors Harlequin Books Australia Affirm Press developmental award for writers Closing Date: 31 December 2016 The Text Prize for Young Adult and and authors. General email submissions General email submissions aged 30 and under working on Harlequinbooks.com.au/submissions Affirmpress.com.au/submissions Launched in 2011, The Ballymaloe Children’s Writing long-form pieces or their first The NSW Premier’s History Awards International Poetry Prize has quickly Closing Date: 3 February 2017 nonfiction book. Entries are Carina Press Pantera Press established itself as one of the most Closing date: April 2017 The $10,000 Text Prize is awarded between 5,000 Harlequin digital first imprint General email submissions sought after prizes in the world for a Open to Australian citizens and annually to the best fiction or non- and 10,000 words. Submit through online form Panterapresscom.au/fiction-and-non- single unpublished poem. An overall permanent residents. Total prize fiction manuscript written for young Carinapress.com/blog/submission- fiction-how-to-submit winner receives $10,000. Each of the money in 2016 was $75,000. readers, the prize is open to published Finch Memoir Prize guidelines other shortlisted entrants receive Text Publishing and unpublished writers of all ages. Closing date: October 2017 Hard copy submissions only. $1,000. Escape The Finch Memoir Prize is an annual Digital imprint of Harlequin Australia Textpublishing.comau/manuscript- Forty South Publishing Tasmanian MAY 2017 publication prize for an unpublished Writers’ Prize Online submission form submissions Prime Minister’s Literary Award memoir of between 40,000 and Escapepublishing.com.au JANUARY 2017 Closing Date: 13 February 2017 Black Inc Closing date: May 2017 80,000 words. Mills & Boon General email submissions, not accepting The Nature Conservancy Australia Open to residents of Australia and The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Accept general postal submissions unsolitied poetry or children’s books. Nature Writing Prize New Zealand, the prize is for short NSW Premier’s Literary Awards are awarded annually to a work Millsandboon.com.au/submissions Blackincbooks.com/submissions Closes: 27 January 2017 stories up to 3,000 words on an island, Closing date: October 2017 or island-resonant theme. The winner published in the categories of fiction, Harper Collins The Nature Conservancy has receives a cash prize of $500 and poetry, non-fiction, Australian history, Eleven awards across genres. Ticonderoga Publications Wednesday post announced the opening of its fourth publication in Tasmania 40°South. young adult fiction, and children’s General email submissions Wednesdaypost.com.au biennial Australia Nature Writing fiction. The winner of each award Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards Ticonderogapublications.com/web/index. Prize for essay and non-fiction. category receives a prize of $80,000. Closing date: October 2017 Harper Impulse php/about-us/submission/novels Entry Fee: $30 Five awards across genres. Digital first imprint of HarperCollins Prize: $5,000 general email submissions Giramondo Publishing Harperimpulseromance.com./write-for-us Online submission form Giramondopublishing.com./contribute Pan Macmillan Submit manuscripts on Mondays Panmacmillan.com.au/manuscript- 32 Monday 33 18-21 MAY 2017

Stories crossing at the heart of the country

ntwriters.com.au