Eco northerly sept

northerly september-october, 2013

The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre Magazine

Inside: Festival wrapup • Germaine Greer • upcoming workshops and events

in this issue ...

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Noticeboard

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A word from the Director

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Ten questions with DBC Pierre

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The seduction of Germaine Greer

NRWC 24 October event 06

northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre. The Writers’ Centre is a resource and information base for writers and readers in the Northern Rivers region. We offer a year-round program of readings, workshops and writer visits as well as the annual production of the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival.

The Centre is a non-profit, incorporated organisation receiving its core funding from Arts NSW.

Wales- from new to old- a writing retreat

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LOCATION Level 1 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay Annie Barrett POSTAL ADDRESS Christos Tsiolkas: Barracuda PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 PHONE 02 6685 5115 FAX 02 6685 5166 NRWC 30 October event EMAIL info@nrwc.org.au Pitch Perfect: five minutes of mayhem WEB www.nrwc.org.au Polly Jude NRWC COMMITTEE The metaphor is the message CHAIRPERSON Chris Hanley VICE CHAIRPERSON Lynda Dean Laura Shore SECRETARY Russell Eldridge Coffs Harbour Writers Group TREASURER Cheryl Bourne Lorraine Mouafi MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Fay Burstin, Marele Day, Robert Hanson, Lynda Hawryluk, Brenda Shero, Adam Heading North van Kempen Tessa Bergan’s story & report LIFE MEMBERS: Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, Festival photos

John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer SCU page Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Heather Wearne

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Book review: The Local Wildlife

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Helen Bilston Kids’ page – Aaron Blabey

Tristan Bancks 17

From the reading chair

Laurel Cohn 18 Events 20 Workshops 22

Opportunities & Competitions

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Writers’ groups and member discounts

CONTACT EMAIL: northerly@nrwc.org.au PRINTING: Quality Plus Printers Ballina MAIL OUT DATES: Magazines are sent in JANUARY, MARCH, MAY, JULY, SEPTEMBER and NOVEMBER ADVERTISING: We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior. Email northerly@nrwc.org.au.

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

Cover: Photo by Joyce Fabriek

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Noticeboard Byron Bay Writers’ Festival LitLink & Varuna Unpublished Manuscript Award Byron Shire writer and Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre Committee Secretary Russell Eldridge has been awarded the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival LitLink & Varuna Unpublished Manuscript Award for his novel Shame.The award was presented at this year’s Festival by Jill Eddington, Director of Literature at the Australia Council for the Arts.

Shame is a story about a boy burdened with a terrible secret. It is an adult general fiction novel set in South Africa in the early 1960s, at the start of the apartheid period sometimes referred to as the Decade of Silence.

Eldridge created the fictional world of Shame by drawing on childhood memories and historical events such as the hunt for and capture of Nelson Mandela around his hometown of Pietermaritzburg.

“I found out recently that when Mandela was on the run, one of his safe houses was in the street where my grandparents lived,” Eldridge said.

Shame was accepted into the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre residential mentorship under the guidance of author Marele Day. The manuscript was then selected for a Varuna Litlink Fellowship. From that group, Shame was awarded the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival LitLink & Varuna Unpublished Manuscript Award. Said NRWC Director Jeni Caffin “The entries are judged blind, so that the names of the authors are unknown to the judges. Russell’s was the clear and unanimously selected winner.”

Eldridge has just spent two weeks developing his manuscript at the Varuna writing house in Katoomba and after working with Varuna consultants, he will be commended to a publisher.

Russell Eldridge is a former newspaper editor and multi-award-winning journalist. He emigrated to Australia in 1979 to write for The Sydney Morning Herald. He later moved to the NSW North Coast, where he worked on the Northern Star.

He lives at North Ocean Shores with his partner Brenda Shero.

Lisa Walker donates BBWF books to the Byron Bay Library on behalf of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre

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~ Memb ers

News ~

Lorraine P ascoe su ccessfully Street Dog launched s Tea Party Neat - th Dog series, with the ne e first in her Neat Str eet xt two com ing out sho rtly.

New book From Ballin a With Lov Former Ba e llina Shire general m Faulks has anager, , just release G d a book o during a n his experie ary long care n ces er in loc including al govern true acco m u n ent ts of overs Papua Ne eas projec w Guinea a ts n d a sectio in of aviation n on the h in Ballina. istory The book is av Office, Ge ailable at Ballina Tou rist Informa t Hooked tion on online thro ugh bookp Books at Alstonville , or stores. En al, Amazo quiries or order from n and other bigpond.c ballinawith om Teleph love@ one 02 66 86 2620 Bette Guy ’s ten minu te play Win been cho dow Dress sen for the ing as 2013 Hot Drill Hall Th Shorts sea eatre Mullu son at mbimby in October.

A word from the Chair What a wonderful festival.

It was without a doubt our best ever event and the reason is simple.

The program and the writers.

Sessions were full everywhere you went and the weather was a fabulous complement for the laughter and amazing conversations in the tents.

Congratulations to Jeni and the team for creating such a pulsing and exciting spectacle.

Chris Hanley

A word (well several) from the Director

Dear members, I love this time of year. The golden weather improbably but delightfully has continued as the weeks stretch out, the sea is bouillabaisse with whales, dolphins and turtles rolling and diving and surfing, I’m luxuriating in the office with sock free feet and the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival was a joyous and glorious event, and it’s over!

What a weekend it was. The rain that had dampened our spirits for the past seven months continued into the secondary schools day on Thursday 1 August and I wryly smiled at soggy students as they hastened into, yes, into, marquees. “Don’t worry, Jeni” said one, “It’s like Splendour, but with books and no drugs.” Indeed. Then on Thursday afternoon, a rainbow appeared, the sun came out to play, decided it liked what it saw, and stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

The BBWF featured 135 presenters, 90 conversations, thousands of engaged and dynamic readers and listeners, brilliant book sales, shorter than usual coffee queues, luscious, sparkling North Byron Events site, Anne Leon’s silken flags, Suvira McDonald’s thoughtfully curated sculptural display, yummy local food and our 150 strong army of volunteers. Indelible memories include the resonance of the PEN Empty Chair heroes, the ethereal beauty of Archie Roach and Paul Kelly’s voices raised in song, DBC Pierre’s raw and revelatory conversation with Chris Hanley, Peter Carey’s soaring presentation

of The Madness in the Method, MJ Hyland’s fabulous master class and conversation, again with one C Hanley, the Bedroom Philosopher’s pole dancing, Anne Summers’ discussion of misogyny…It’s a privilege to engage intimately with the most interesting minds imaginable.

And it’s a privilege that I will shortly hand over.

My year back in the Director’s Chair is almost at an end and in November I will plump up the cushions for my happy successor. You want to know who it is, don’t you? Oh I love to tease, but in fact the appointment has yet to be made. I know it will be a person who values the Centre and the Festival as I do. In fact, I will still be hovering around the edges in some capacity so I won’t say goodbye just yet.

show was the best time I’ve had in Australia since childhood. Thank you for thinking of me: the place, the people, the vibe were just perfect, and I really came away with valuable new spirit and new friends.

Of course it’s an irony of your job that in organising everyone you don’t get much chance to hang out; but your spirit was woven through every inch of the place, vertically up through the air and in the drinks and sunlight, so I feel we touched base the whole time. Alchemy is the key to what you do, and thank f… science will never explain it.

Aaaaah.

Jeni Caffin

Please join with me in thanking Sarah, Lisa, Brigid, Cherrie, Erin, Mic and Penny for working like mad people to bring the Festival to you. We sat in marquees sponsored by Southern Cross University, Macquarie, Feros Care and New Philosopher, who also T-shirted our vollies. In addition, Macquarie made it possible for DBC Pierre and Peter Carey to turn left instead of right when they boarded their flights. Special mention to Rebecca and Tom Lloyd of Blue River Design who created and sponsored the elegant BBWF app with which I remain obsessed. To all of our sponsors: three cheers!

And thank you to everyone who came, who listened, who loved. In the words of DBC Pierre: I waited back to write and say that your

photo by Greg Saunders

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Ten questions with DBC Peirre Welcome back to Australia!

[Pierre] Thank you, it’s like returning to a dream after the alarm has gone off (work that one out!)

Was winning the Man Booker Prize for your debut novel fun, or a tad confronting?

[Pierre] I guess like all game-changing events, it has its own lifespan with qualities that change from beginning to end – and it hasn’t ended yet. On day one it was like being told you never had to die; like being lifted from a pit back up into the light, and being welcomed by rescuers. THEN it grew confronting, not so much for purely personal challenges as for how it changed people and relationships around me. My quiet and cordial relationship with publishers, for instance, suddenly became pressured and fraught; I’d never been a commodity before. So it’s been half fun and half difficult, but as I say, it’s a curve, and it falls to me to manage the curve – and now after ten years, really for the first time, I feel I’m the writer I was at the beginning, and am ready to just put best foot forward again.

One beautiful moment it brought was during my first return to Australia, within months of winning the prize and after an absence of ten years. The news had been so widespread that as I walked past Circular Quay in Sydney at peak hour on my first day back, a man – who could have been a businessman from the fifties, I think he even wore a hat – bustled past without stopping, and just raised a hand and called: ‘Welcome back!’

Just like that, a friendly face in a crowd – he didn’t stop, he didn’t ask for anything – but the moment still shines, it was like the country itself saying welcome, and in just the way that it would. Really only two or three shining, symbolic moments like that are what you keep from ten years of Booker.

What made you pick up a laptop and begin a novel?

[Pierre] Anger and desperation. I’d been a visual artist for all my years, and while I liked words and language, I knew I didn’t have it in me to go the long-haul of something like writing a book – I mean

that’s two or three years of work in a complete vacuum, battling with demons and faith. I guess it was a case of my life becoming an equal or greater vacuum than the job of writing, so I fell into it and wrote my way out. I was unemployed and just couldn’t get the materials for anything else. I was angry because I’d spent years reconstructing myself, losing the sense of entitlement that got me into so much trouble as a kid – and it was as if I woke up one morning at the end of the 20th century and found that everyone around me – EVERYONE, a whole culture – had a worse sense of entitlement than I’d had. In the midst of that revelation I saw a clip on TV of some kid in the United States being bundled into a police car after a school massacre, and things all started to make sense – my sense of entitlement, the culture’s new sense of entitlement, and this kid having missed the boat of life. I wrote a page in his voice, and all the other pages followed – and that was the voice of Vernon God Little.

Do you have any idiosyncrasies about your writing (eg Truman Capote liked to lie down, John Cheever wrote in his underwear, Nabokov only wrote on index cards)?

[Pierre] I don’t write in daylight (though I edit and read back in cold light of day).

And I split the job into two halves, writing backwards, in a way; that is, I write a first draft without stopping for structure, plot or grammar, on the theory that art will come out there – presuming that the real value in writing comes from things which even I don’t consciously know. When I have a pile of pages I look through them and find whatever glimmers, then begin to expand on them. It’s only at the end that I’ll put a structure (what I call the ‘carpentry’ of the job) and build the writing into something that tells a story. I’m actually finishing a book on how to do that, I think it might suit a lot of people who have a strong feeling without knowing how it could become a structured book.

Is there an author you admire and read a lot?

[Pierre] Not an author but a period – I’m always going back to 18th

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and 19th century writing, and often books originally in French or German.

Depending on how you define civilisation, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that as human social creatures we had peaked by 1850, and now decline. So, without necessarily pursuing that idea, I’m forever attracted to the manners, and especially the manners of expression of those earlier times. Also they used much more language than we do today, so ideas are more fully described, they shine with perfect subtlety and higher ideas, and that’s inspiring. My last character Gabriel Brockwell spoke a bit like that, and it will partly be because I was full of Flaubert, Baudelaire, Zola, Goethe, Mann and all those great voices.

An outsider might deduce that your approach to writing was far from cautious. Does this apply to other aspects of your life?

[Pierre] Ha, that’s a lawyer’s question because you already know the answer.

I’ll say this: as a result of whatever forces and actions in my life I have a strong awareness that none of us ‘owns’ life – that we’re just passing through here, just renting at best. And from that feeling you can’t help but decide you have to head where your instinct leads you. The only reason not to do it is to keep a sense of security, but much security is false, it seems to me – so, put it this way: now I can be bold on paper and more careful in life. I’ve found a place for those risky adventures I once took in life, and you and I can share them much better on a page than in life. So, a better result, hopefully for both of us.

I have to add that my instinct can just as easily be wrong sometimes – but in writing I can learn about that and hone it down. By the time I knock on your door with a bottle of tequila and two bus tickets to Mexico I hopefully will have risk all figured out.

You have had what is generally referred to as a “colourful” past, with some financial issues: do you currently have good financial advice (Macquarie are a financial institution) [Pierre] Is this the Quid Pro Quo question?

Then no, I have crap finances because I’m

a writer and my income is sporadic – for God’s sake, Macquarie, come and dig me out, I’m not such a bad guy.

This is your first Byron Bay Writers’ Festival: has Jeni Caffin prepared you for what to expect?

[Pierre] Ha ha, no, but do you know what?

Jeni Caffin is her own living warning of what to expect – and I’ve met her. So rest assured I’ll be coming with the tequila and bus tickets to Mexico, as well as a bail bond and a fake nose and glasses.

What or who do you absolutely have to have with you when travelling?

[Pierre] I have a bag like Felix the Cat; it’s only an overnight bag, but I can survive from it for weeks and months at a time, it seems. It always has a hat, some vitamins, some tobacco, some Alka Seltzer, a copy of The New Yorker, and is riddled with lucky charms – and the mysterious thing is that, although I can only remember that those things are in there, it seems to also have anything else I need too, as and when I need it. Even found spare underwear in it once.

Do you write when travelling?

[Pierre] No, but I’d like to.

Travelling, or just being in public at all, seems to suppress the place where the ability comes from – for that I not only need space, but a guarantee of space ahead and behind me. I’d like to write while travelling, so will keep trying – but, as written above, I think the conscious gets in the way of art, and the conscious rules whenever you’re outside your house.

Having said that, you get good ideas when travelling, so the work is going on inside; it’s one great thing about writing, much of the work happens away from the page.

Maybe in my own aeroplane I could write as well. After all that sound Macquarie financial advice.

Your website says that you prefer

chocolate milk, and if there is no chocolate, then strawberry, however there are stories that you might occasionally imbibe something stronger.

Coffee?

[Pierre] Coffee is my thing, I love it, believe in it, and it treats me well. I’m not quite up to some writers from history who could do 50 cups a day (and then die at 40) – but I have a small espresso machine, grind my own beans, and fuel my day with it for sure. I bring good coffee beans back from any interesting travels.

Sometimes of course I might try an alcoholic beverage.

What is the best thing about having won one of the most prestigious literary prizes on the planet?

[Pierre] Being able to at very least have my manuscripts looked at by publishers – the prize is no guarantee of lifelong publication, but it should at least get me through the odd door.

Writing is one of the truly terrifying arts to try and live from – as first-time writers we all feel like Toulouse Lautrec did with painting, that it’s a permanent buyer’s market and your chances of even being

read are one in thousands.

And the worst?

[Pierre] It strangely makes it harder to reach the readers who might like the work and come on those adventures with me – that is, because of the prize the book is marketed more diffusely as a premium thing, but there could be plenty of mainstream readers who buy it and are disappointed because they expected something like other premium titles; and plenty of soul-mates who don’t buy it because it’s been hyped as if it was mainstream. So it became about the publisher’s money and not the writer’s ideas.

In Lights Out In Wonderland Gabriel suffers terror of becoming trapped in an Ikea store. Did you have a terrifying childhood retail experience?

[Pierre] Childhood experience? That IKEA visit is a real experience of mine, 4 years ago, described in detail – and at the same store as in the book.

I went with a foul hangover to the IKEA at Tempelhof in Berlin, and it was my first visit to an IKEA, I didn’t know they physically trapped you.

I didn’t even think that was legal. You may or may not know that a certain stage of hangover is ‘the horrors’ – a generalised edginess and anxiety that kicks in briefly about twelve hours after your last social refreshment – and of course it’s invisible to others, you carry on your day – but if you’re in public it relies on knowing where the exits are, nipping in and out of places. And this store literally trapped me – and it’s true that the lift that carried me up to begin the rat’s maze didn’t have a button to go down again. So my whole experience is written in the book (minus the messy bit out by the hot-dog van!)

This article was previously published in Macquarie Adviser Services’ Forward Thinking magazine.

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The seduction of Germaine Greer

B

y a Bowerbird, no less! In December 2001, after two years of searching for a location in Australia to keep her archive, Germaine Greer was driven to view a derelict dairy farm that was offered for sale in the Numinbah Valley, South- East Queensland. While contemplating the desperate need of the forest to be rehabilitated and questioning her fitness for the enormity of the task, a Regent Bowerbird emerged from the chaos and danced. The deal was sealed. On Thursday 24 October at 6pm, Germaine will visit Byron Bay to celebrate the publication of White Beech: the rainforest years with a lecture at the Byron Community Centre at 6pm.

In her words: “This is the story of an extraordinary stroke of luck. You could call it ‘life changing’, if only every woman’s

life were not an inexorable series of changes to which she has to adapt as well as she can.” It’s a brilliant book, her voice permeating every phrase. Germaine speaks as she writes, which means the lecture will be substantial, accessible and full of the forthright intelligence that characterises this uncompromising and challenging author.

White Beech chronicles Germaine Greer’s discovery of the wonders that are the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia and her decision to return the ownership of 50 hectares of forest to itself. The farm was the last thing she thought she wanted, wildly unsuitable as a possible site for her library, but the rainforest that lay before her clearly required help. Battered, subtropical, tangled and malicious plantlife, but vibrant and bursting with fauna. In the decade that has passed since making her decision, she has spent every spare cent on rehabilitating the forest and set up a charity to continue the work after she has gone “to be recycled”.

In Germaine’s view, conservation is far too important to be left to politicians: ordinary Australians need to get involved at every level and do it for themselves. White Beech reveals how Europeanisation has devastated our

landscape and sets forth means to restore its biodiversity and uniqueness.

No activity, she believes, could be more rewarding. Restoring natural heritage is much easier than battling to raise exotic species of plants and animals.

This is a rare and irresistible opportunity to meet one of the most significant thinkers of the day in an intimate setting.

The book and the lecture will engage anyone with an interest in Australian history, in conserving our environmental heritage and in Germaine Greer’s writing.

Brendan Fredericks of Bloomsbury Publishing Australia says “White Beech is the story of a rainforest at Cave Creek in the Numinbah Valley, South-East Queensland, a biography of its botany and fauna, its biodiversity, and the rainforest’s role as a character in a larger narrative of nature, environment, and the wonders of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia. A history larger than any one person.”

Germaine Greer White Beech will be held Thursday 24 October, 6pm at the Byron Community Centre Theatre.

Tickets are $35 at www.nrwc.org.au and www.byronbaywritersfestival.com or 02 6685 5115. Bookings essential.

Wales – from New to Old – a Writing Retreat

by Annie Barrett

I

slept in the pink room at Ty Newydd, the house built in the 1700s, now the National Centre for Writing in Wales. It was rumoured that Lloyd George, Liberal Prime Minister of the UK from 1916 to 1922 died in this room. It was also rumoured he died in the library. No matter, there was no ghostly presence, but words hovered and hung in the ether, waiting to be plucked and played with.

As the 11 participants and two facilitators arrived on the first evening, for the threeday writing retreat, so did texts alerting us all to the death of Maggie Thatcher, Conservative Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990. Her death rumbled around for the next three days, people both curious

and relieved to be away from the media hype and screaming headlines, ‘She saved Britain’ and ‘She destroyed us.’

These two British Prime Ministers of the last Century were unavoidably with us in Wales.

I, the Aussie from New South Wales, stepped into a rich history and a celebrated group of writers, university lecturers in creative writing and facilitators of writing for wellbeing. The first morning we participated in a creative writing workshop, and then retreated into our chosen writing spaces.

Words staggered about on pages and screens. For some they effortlessly tumbled out, others made notes, scribbled fragments, walked, researched, and grabbed insights out of the still cold air to

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move their work on. Poems were worked and re-worked, and fictional characters became more substantial and led their writer to new places.

Mid-April and the trees were still unclothed; they exposed their shapes, round and stately, knobbly, tall and wispy. And I found myself writing about escaping into exposure.

I wrote at a pale old wooden desk in front of a small six-panelled window. The white painted wood framed patches of grass, whole bare trees, and a smudge of sea.

Birds swooped from one frame to another and disappeared into the faint rain. It was a small library room, one of three in the large white house imbued with words, with old and contemporary writing, English and

Christos Tsiolkas: Barracuda

T

he end of October is bristling with events. We can now announce Christos Tsiolkas in Bangalow A&I Hall Wednesday 30 October at 6.30pm six evenings after Germaine Greer at the Byron Community Centre Theatre.

Christos is long established as a respected writer of literary fiction, published globally and translated into many languages. It was his 2008 novel, The Slap, that catapulted him into uber author status and made him a household name, especially in the wake of the superb ABC adaptation, starring Jonathan La Paglia, Essie Davis, Alex Dimitriades and Sophie Okonedo, which screened in 2011. This was not his first outing on the screen: Christos’ debut novel, Loaded, was filmed as Head On, with Alex Dimitriades and 2006s Dead Europe was adapted for film just last year.

Now we welcome his fifth fiction work, Barracuda. If The Slap garnered massive media interest for the sheer volume of sales and for the controversial nature of its subject matter, (and who didn’t have conversations and opinions about the slap at the heart of the story?), Barracuda seems very much a story that’s right for its time. Think sports stars, behaving very badly. Daniel Kelly is the character at the heart of the book, an ambitious aspiring Olympic swimmer with the goal of winning the 100m freestyle at the Sydney Olympics. His nickname is Barracuda. For most of his life his eyes have been focused on the prize and his parents have complied with his single-

minded drive and sacrificed everything to further his progress. Jane Palfreyman, Tsiolkas’ publisher at Allen & Unwin, called Barracuda “an unflinching look at modern Australia. A sport obsessed country like ours is by definition a country obsessed with winning.”

Barracuda, like The Slap, is a steely, provocative and searing gaze turned toward the society in which we live. It is a novel which dissects our values, our friendships, hopes and dreams, our families. Is it right, is it healthy, is it sustainable, to be so determined to attain just one goal? For Daniel Kelly, nothing exists, not a thought, not a dream, not an action, unless it propels him closer to that moment of glory, the pinnacle of his entire life, when he is lauded as the fastest, the strongest, yes, the best.

The book asks whether teaching our children to win is the same as teaching them to live. It examines the ways in which we make and then reinvent our lives. What is identity? It taps into a theme dominating contemporary fiction and non-fiction: what does it mean to be a good person, to live a good life?

Meet Christos and discover his writing process, the way in which he views modern Australia, the big issues of class and race and politics and migration and education. And sport. The narrative is explosive, the writing superb, the effect brutal, moving and shocking by turn.

This is a writer at the peak of his powers, chronicling the life of a youth whose own powers are not as great as he had

believed.

This will be a big conversation, followed

by Q&A.

Welsh literary magazines, and old copies of revered writers. I plunged into Goethe, Raymond Carver and Carol Ann Duffy, distracted and inspired.

I walked too, in the Welsh woods by the local river, along grey sandy paths, into darker muddier patches, past smooth river rocks and flotsam, the dry debris left exposed from bigger river flows.

‘Hello’ ‘Hi’ ‘Beautiful day’ men and women said, as we passed.

Their dogs chased old tennis balls; halfcollapsed, slobbered, tasty, mouth-filling balls. There were small patches of yellow primroses amongst the grey, and I stepped through a gap in a dry-stone wall and found myself in a meadow of daffodils.

We ate sumptuously, the wine flowed

and Maggie Thatcher slipped in and out of intense conversations, before the evening’s rich entertainment began. We sat together in the main library and absorbed more words, readings, stand-up comedy, reflections, novel excerpts, performances and poems.

Another day I walked along the beach into Criccieth, on pebbles and more grey sand, under cliffs and towards the castle ruin on the headland. I stepped through my thoughts, exploring the outer rugged beauty, snow-capped mountains in the distance. I delved into my inner world too, and later my pen glided across the cream pages in my new writing book.

Back home now, I will try and make sense of my dream fragments, the poetry prompt ramblings, and personal reflections in my exploratory writing. And hope there are

also some gems to follow up, maybe just a phrase, a new thought, a few sentences, in the other writing that I dipped into, my creative non-fiction project.

I am grateful to NAWE (National Association for Writers in Education) and Lapidus (Words for Wellbeing) for facilitating this retreat, to the inspiring writers I shared these days with, and to Ty Newydd, the house itself which holds so many words, and its people for caring for us.

If you ever get the opportunity to attend a writing retreat, pack your pen and a new writing book and be willing to escape into your writing and let the words expose and unfold.

Photo: Cristina Smith

Christos Tsiolkas: Barracuda will be held Wednesday 30 October at Bangalow A&I Hall 6.30pm. Tickets $30 from www.nrwc.org.au and www. byronbaywritersfestival.com or 02 6685 5115. Bookings essential.

Annie Barrett facilitates creative reflective writing groups and writing for wellbeing. annievbarrett@gmail.com

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Pitch Perfect: Five Minutes of Mayhem

By Polly Jude

Sweaty palms, mild to severe palpitations, a jiggly left knee that refused to do its job. These are just some of the obstacles a pitchee has to overcome. As if pitching to a panel of great, powerful, mighty and gorgeous publishers (who knows, they may be reading this and there might still be a glimmer of hope!) wasn’t bad enough, the organisers of the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival decide to throw a live audience into the mix and why not put it on at a free venue so that even more spectators can watch the pitchees squirm under the pressure?

Five emerging and, let’s face it, desperate, authors, their hopes and dreams vulnerably exposed, five minutes to bare their souls to the world: what could possibly go wrong?

Well, this year, absolutely nothing. All five pitchees, with their vastly different manuscripts, backgrounds and stories to tell, presented strong pitches to the packed house. The responsive audience laughed at the right moments and,

politely, didn’t laugh at the wrong moments.

Before the pitch, Jill Moonie and Stephanie Dale helped us hone our pitches in a late night session at the Writers’ Centre, and then it was up to us (no pressure!).

Jol and Kate Temple were our MCs for the day and set a calm and relaxed tone. Hopefully the audience bought it, because none of us pitchees did! Laugh and joke all you like Jol and Kate, but facing a room full of people, trying to remember your pitch and focussing on not wetting your pants at the same time is no laughing matter.

From up onstage we saw a hundred odd faces (a hundred-ish faces, I mean, your faces weren’t odd at all) waiting expectantly; our brains remembered to send the right messages to our mouths and words came out. We even managed to present some fantastic pitches.

This year’s judges, Ingrid Ohlsson (Pan

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McMillan), Jane Palfreyman (Allen and Unwin), Catherine Milne (HarperCollins) and Madonna Duffy (University of Queensland Press), then had the difficult task of selecting a winner based on the pitch; and this year that was Claire Dunn, with her woman-gone-wild memoir.

Unfortunately for Ruth Bonetti, Doreen Parsons, Christine Tondorf and me, her pitch was great!

Afterwards, the publishers and crowd didn’t need to form an orderly queue to wait for our signatures. Sadly, there wasn’t a stampede of publishing contracts running through the door but we’re still here if you change your minds.

Thanks to Jill Moonie and Stephanie Dale for their insights and coaching, to the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre and the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival for letting us pitch, to the publishers for not rolling their eyes or catching up on their sleep during our pitches and to the audience for showing up and supporting developing writers. We really appreciated it.

The Metaphor is the Message

by Laura Jan Shore

Have you ever been snorkelling when a school of silver fish flickers by in formation and without a choreographer, arcs as one and flows in the same synchronised pattern in the opposite direction? They are “schooling” and that is similar to what happens when an audience is entranced by a performance, so that their breath and even heart beats entrain. The silence and depth of listening is palpable. This synergy connects a community of listeners and uplifts them.

A kind of ordinary miracle in fact…

The kind that occurred on that pristine Saturday afternoon at the Lakehouse at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, when poetry lovers and poets gathered to celebrate the winners of the 2013 Dangerously Poetic Byron Bay Writers’ Festival Poetry Prize on the theme, Ordinary Miracles.

We settled in to listen first, to the melodious songs of Mel Dobra and guitarist, Joshua Arent. Poetry and music are twin arts that complement one another which is why the local community group Dangerously Poetic makes a point of always combining the two.

The music helped the audience drop into themselves. We opened our ears, became receptive listeners.

“Would you stand here as I do, Sylvia,

dizzy with metaphor/watching the bees swooping on the breeze…” from Requeening, Cate Kennedy With her relaxed, soft spoken approach, Cate Kennedy wove a spell over the audience.

She talked about the power of metaphor to touch our intuitive brain, how metaphors are etched like pictures in our memories. So many metaphors were evoked as she read poems from her latest collection, The Taste of River Water, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Who else would see the connection as she did in her poem, Binaries, between computer programing and knitting? Outbursts of applause and sighs of satisfaction were heard as each poem skilfully eased to a final heartstopping line.

Cate Kennedy was utterly inspiring and deeply moving. The poetry made my whole Byron Bay Writers’ Festival worthwhile… was one of many similar comments afterwards.

As Judge of the poetry prize, Cate spent hours in front of her fire in Victoria sorting through, reading and re-reading the 251 entries from all corners of Australia. She described the process as an honour. To the audience, she read out the metaphors that touched her, creating a collage from all the entries she particularly loved and spoke of the near impossible task of

choosing only two winners. There was a highly commended and a number of commended poems as well. Her judge’s report will be posted in its entirety at www. dangerouslypoetic.com The winning poems will be featured in the upcoming Dangerously Poetic Press anthology on the theme. All local poets are invited to submit. Submission forms can be downloaded on the above website. You are welcome to resubmit poems that were previously submitted to the competition.

Published poems are also considered.

Then came the big announcement and handing over of prizes. First prize of $500 for Owen McGoldrick from Pottsville for his poem, Little Boy Muse, and second of $100 for Lisa Brockwell from The Pocket for Thirsty. These were beautifully read to great appreciation from the audience. We wound up the afternoon toasting our winning poets with champagne.

A richly satisfying event. More than one person was moved to tears. Most importantly, it fulfilled Dangerously Poetic’s ongoing mission of community building through poetry.

One thousand thank yous to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival for co-sponsoring the competition which inspired so many poets around Australia to respond.

About the Coffs Harbour Writers’ Group...

by Lorraine Mouafi, President The Coffs Harbour Writers' Group (CHWG) was established in 1986, placing our group into the category of one of the oldest writers' groups in NSW. Our core objective is to enable writing improvement in an encouraging and supportive environment for our members and visitors. This is achieved by holding monthly meetings on the first Thursday of the month and by providing learning opportunities in the form of workshops, guest speakers, seminars, study groups and of course readings.

We have an enthusiastic voluntary committee who are deeply committed to improving our writers’ group; this includes a Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Publicity and Social Secretary and an Editor for our monthly newsletter, which is either posted, emailed or downloaded from our website.

Over the past year we have held interactive skill development workshops covering

topics for example, memoir writing (beginners, intermediate and advanced), structuring world, character development and dialogue, interactive and thought provoking poetry and plot structure.

Guest speakers have included a vast array of authors, a lawyer speaking about IP (Intellectual Property) and me stepping in to assist the Coffs Harbour Library by interviewing a very interesting author, Mandy Sayer. Hopefully, we can bring her back to Coffs for a workshop session with our writers.

Our workshops are well attended and the attendees have found the interactive workshops extremely beneficial, with heaps of take away concepts to assist them improve their writing skills.

Some of these workshops were so popular we have had to schedule additional sessions.

Our first Thursday of the month meetings and workshops are held at the CeX, Vernon Street, Coffs Harbour. The third Thursday is an opportunity for a social gathering where

we meet at either members’ homes or a suitable cafe and share our written stories, poems or other written works.

In July 2012 we saw the need to develop our own website using one of the blog sites where we could control the type of content uploaded. This includes some of our members’ profiles, stories, poems, events and some of the group’s milestones achieved over the past few years, for example: our 25 Year Anthology Pens of Purpose, writing a play, Invisible Woman, for the Coffs Harbour Amateur Theatre Society (CHATS) play and our 20th Year Anthology Turning the Page.

We have also entered into the world of social media and now have our own Facebook page and some interesting followers globally.

For more information about CHWG, go to our website: www.coffsharbourwriters. wordpress.com or email me, Lorraine Mouafi at lmproject@bigpond.com or email our Social Secretary, Karolyn Gibson: grandmag@aapt.net.au

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Heading North

The Early

by Tessa Bergan

I lay staring through the dark at the ceiling. Any minute now, I think.

Brriiing! Brriiing! Brriiing!

Brriiing!

I finally roll over, indifferent to the high peals ripping through the silence, and stop my phone dancing on the bedside table. An alarm doesn’t have the same effect when you know it’s coming. I grab the edge of the doona and pull it up over my head, waiting reluctantly for my second alarm to call.

Right on cue, my door squeaks open.

‘You coming?’ I hear dad whisper.

I grumble incoherently.

‘Right, see you in a minute,’ he whispers back. Years of the same routine has developed a language of our own; we understand the subtle variations in each other’s mumbles and grumbles, and this time he’s correctly taken mine as an affirmative. I hear him lumbering down the stairs and know I have to get a move on.

In one swift motion, I throw off the doona. The cool air immediately descends on my body and there’s nothing to do but get up and get moving.

I shove my feet into my boots and grab the bundle at the end of my bed, thankful that I remembered to organise it last night.

I quickly shuffle through the dark corridor and down the stairs to the garage. The fluorescent light inside makes me squint for a moment. Dad’s just finished loading up the car and the boot shuts with a satisfied thud. I settle into the passenger seat as Dad gets in the driver’s side. A click of a button and the garage door rumbles awake. The sealed bubble of the car feels snug as we back out into the dark.

We’re the last people on earth, travelling around searching for the survivors of some kind of holocaust. It’s easy to imagine when the streets are empty and there are no lights on in any of

the houses. End-of-the-world scenarios seem so common now that I reckon I’d hardly blink if a zombie jumped out at us. But really, I don’t believe it would be anything like the cannibals and crazy pandemics in movies and TV shows. I think it would be like this. Still.

I feel like I’m the first person to see the world. Though I know as soon as dawn breaks, so will the spell.

The early exercisers will be up – a kind of zombie encounter in its own right – setting the pace for the day ahead.

Dad pulls into the car park at the top of the headland and we both immediately lean forward, peering through the windscreen at the open expanse below. It stretches on forever, merging with the sky; the horizon lost in this light. Long lines are just discernible running along the base, but that’s enough to keep us going.

‘Let’s do it,’ says Dad, opening the door.

I unfold my bundle, readying what I need. My routine is so perfected that I’m changed in less than five minutes. My rubber suit sucks comfortingly at my skin, fending off the cool air as I get out of the car.

Dad is squatting on the grass, in a suit similar to mine, rubbing his board in large circular movements, as if performing some kind of ritual. He stands and hands the white, unshapen block he was using to me. I bend and quickly do the same, though with less vigour, and toss it back into a tub in the boot. Dad locks the car and stashes the key in a crevice above the tyre.

We’re momentarily stunned by two beams of light as a car swings into the car park and pulls up beside us. Dad nods good-naturedly at the man inside. Still, we quicken our steps towards the track.

The track is thin and steep, but we know it so well that we move like mountain goats, quick and sure, dodging jutting rocks and avoiding slippery

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areas of mud. As we reach the bottom the sky is turning purple. Sunrise won’t be far off. Dad and I instinctively glance back at the car park.

‘Let’s get out there before the pack does,’ Dad says, like always.

We start jogging down the connecting gravel path, which runs along the bottom of the headland. The tiny rocks feel like glass under my cold feet and I try and stick to the edges where the grass has grown over.

We stop at our usual place to make the final adjustments. Dad jumps up and down to warm up but I head straight for the rocks. I just want to get in; it’s always warmer in. We step lightly down the rocks, slick with coatings of salt, as the surging water rushes up to meet us.

‘Don’t muck around down here,’ says Dad. ‘No hesitating.’ He tells me the same thing every time but I don’t say anything; the advice has become part of the routine and it makes me feel sure.

We wait patiently for the right time, then frantically scramble as close as we can to the water’s edge.

A small surge pushes in, bubbling over the rocks and around my ankles. I bend my knees and press my feet harder into the rocks, steadying myself as another wave comes toward us. It’s larger and pitches just before the rocks. I know now’s the time. I wait until the very last second, then leap forward as the wave crashes in front of me. For a moment I sail through the air, before landing with a slap on top of the water.

I dive under the next wave and come up feeling exhilarated from the cold water on my face. I make it out the back to meet Dad just as a set is coming through. The first lump grows larger, larger, until the crest pitches and crashes down. Lines of water rush up the wave’s face and white spray flies off the top. Dad looks at me and grins as we race out to meet the next one.

Heading North

Winners are Spinners

M

y entry into the 2013 Heading North Short Story Competition was quite covert. I submitted my story, The Early, under the pseudonym Louise Shelton (my middle name and mother’s maiden name) because I had been volunteering at the Writers’ Centre and I thought that, maybe, just maybe, if I was successful, I didn’t want anyone to think it had been rigged – as the voice in my head kindly suggested. And what if maybe, just maybe, you do win? said the voice. What then? They’re going to think you’re an imposter. And round and round in circles it went. All this for my first entry in a writing competition; you’d think it wasn’t worth the effort.

Well, it was.

When I got the call from Lisa Walker, who I had been working alongside in the office in the lead up to the Festival, I nervously revealed myself. Actually, it’s Tessa Bergan. I’ve been helping Penny out in the office... Thankfully there was no long, awkward pause on the other end. But there were cries of shock. I couldn’t help but laugh as I heard Lisa shout out that it was me to Jeni, Sarah and Penny and the surprised hoots

taken up in return. The voice in my head went and hid in disgrace.

I met the competition’s judge, Marele Day, at the Festival opening night and her kind words made my chest puff a little larger. A real writer of published books had read and liked my work.

That would have been enough. But of course there was the prize.

After I found out I had won, I immediately Googled my fellow panellists, Gyan, Miles Merrill, Lily Yulianti Farid and the session chair, Meg Vann, to try and gain some knowledge about them and their work. Needless to say I was impressed. Impressed and overwhelmed. They had all achieved so much. Too much, I thought. How on earth could I contribute anything useful?

Then a week before I was due to appear at the Festival I received an email from Meg with some points on what we might discuss in the session. As I read through them, dread settled in my belly like a Big Mac. They were so damn literary! I didn’t have the experience for this! What the hell did they want me up

Tessa Bergan, Jill McCann (ADFAS), John McIntyre (Bangalow Lions)

there for, I thought angrily.

But Meg, Gyan, Miles and Lily were all incredibly friendly when we met in the Green Room, and Meg reassured me she would make me feel as comfortable as possible on stage. She did, though I needn’t have worried so much anyway; I was so engrossed by the insights and performances from the other writers that I forgot about my anxieties, as well as everything I managed to fumble out – thankfully.

So I made it through, but the real kicker came afterward. I was browsing in the bookstore and one of the booksellers asked me when my book was coming out because everyone had been asking about it. The quip made me smile and the voice in my head said, maybe, just maybe, someday it will be here.

On one last note, I’d like to thank Bangalow ADFAS, Bangalow Lions and the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival for supporting the Heading North Short Story Competition and encouraging young writers, like myself, to pursue their passion.

Tessa Bergan

Meg Vann, Miles Merrill, Gyan Evans, Lily Yulianti Farid, Tessa Bergan

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SCU Page An Intern Reflects

by Adrianna Bonanno The 2013 Byron Bay Writers’ Festival has

before. I’d clearly spent too

scribbled in and scattered away.

long on my outfit when Jeni’s bubbling

Fourteen Festivals passed this way

voice welcomed me in and sent me out

before I finally learned what Byron Bay

to distribute programs across six local

hid. And since then, I’d never volunteered

towns – two weeks in a row. It’s all part

nor attended, submitting to the student

of the gig… but eventually I faced a

schedule. All too soon though, as a third-

Word Doc writing a personal letter to the

year Southern Cross student, I found

writers – a mild excitement attack.

myself the intern for the seventeenth

The office was just the beginning to

Writers’ Festival.

putting perspective on my under- and

I began my internship at the Northern

over- expectations of the writing world.

Rivers Writers’ Centre seven weeks before

With no preconception of what the Byron

the big weekend. Tiptoeing in on my first

Bay Writers’ Festival entailed, an inside

day, envelopes and packages for the July-

introduction slammed me with a grand

August northerly magazine swamped the

entrance. On site chasing Penny, Jeni

floor. I pin-dropped on the office at their

and the army of volunteers it seemed

peak season! A friend of mine told me the

everybody knew their instructions –

night before, to ‘intern your butt off and

except me. In the Macquarie Marquee I’d

hope for one step forward’. Her advice

landed myself in the right place, (which

made me more of a nervous wreck than I

was actually the wrong place because

already was. (Did I say was?)

I was rostered for the Blue Marquee).

Initially, I felt like an imposter. But within

Understaffed and expecting Peter Carey

a couple of weeks I felt the most at home

in the next session, Louise pointing to

here since leaving Sydney three years

me, said ‘Thank God!’ and told me I was

ago. Other than the shoebox staffrooms

to usher Peter Carey over in half an hour.

stuffed into the back of the many café’s

I’ll only briefly mention how I stupidly

I’ve waited, I’d never been in a ‘real office’

stammered myself into appearance

before him – I’m sure he’s either forgotten me completely or committed to memory the irony of a sorry girl with a lack of words in a writers’ festival. I like to think I redeemed myself in personal conversation with Ben Law and Jennifer Mills at the Green Room.

Interning at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival has not been work, but an opportunity. I can only thank my Course Coordinator, Lynda Hawryluk, for pushing me in, and hope that many more SCU writers are equally privileged. But I wouldn’t be so grateful if it weren’t such a great experience! Sarah, always willing to give me some task, never lost her patience when something made no sense in my head. And Jeni, she’s not as scary as the director position might suggest; if a pixie were maximised, that’s her. Contradict me if you like.

Overall, I wish I could re-live or do it again. But I’ll hand it over to next year’s intern and be forever grateful to have worked with the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre.

Photo: Peter FitzSimons and Mick O’Regan in the SCU Marquee

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Book Review The Local Wildlife Robert Drewe

reviewed by Helen Bilston This delightful assortment of short stories captures unerringly the diversity of the Northern Rivers region and its inhabitants. It is a perfect bedside table collection as each of the stories is a racy 3 to 4 pages and each encapsulates perfectly the character of the particular form of wildlife it seeks to portray.

Robert Drewe strikes a gently satirical tone as he depicts the offbeat behaviour and habits of the human inhabitants of this corner of New South Wales. We can delight in his encounters as he describes such events as the dinner party at which he learns that the former occupant of his house had run a tantric brothel and had greeted dinner guests recumbent on her table naked but for a coating of chocolate dotted strawberries. We are fascinated and appalled by his visitors from the south: one sporting rampant pubic hair, henceforth hilariously named by his family as Priscillas, and another favouring budgie smugglers, silver neck chains and a “pierced 50-year-old male nipple”.

Drewe continues to surprise the reader as an endless variety of quirky characters are revealed in the most unexpected of circumstances.

Reading the stories is like viewing a series of highly apt cartoons whose details depict subtleties and, at times, a poignancy belied by the light tone. I could not resist, having read stories titled Brendan’s Bride (1) and Brendan’s Bride (2), sneaking a peek at Brendan’s Bride (3) and (4) just to check that all was well with Brendan. Drewe is unerring in his portrayal of the wide range of people who have settled and who continue to be drawn to this area.

The reader can delight in all manner of hilarious encounters with people from all walks of life from hippy sculptors

to professional beach wormers: a veritable passing parade of eccentricity appearing in one anecdote after another. Drewe’s deftness and apparent ease in depicting his subjects and their conversation at times provoked spontaneous outbursts of laughter in this reader. As a fellow North Coaster I recognised in his sketches behaviour and situations familiar to locals.

It is not only the human inhabitants Drewe paints so vividly but the wildlife from ants and dung beetles and toads to a neighbour’s pet camel about which the said neighbour is mysteriously reticent. All are depicted with a fascinating selection of offbeat detail and even at times scientific analysis.

The festivals, pastimes and customs peculiar to the area receive attention also. A devotee of the inevitably rain sodden Blues and Roots festival may be surprised to learn that Casino Beef Week, the Bangalow Show and a local rodeo also rate as highlights on the Northern Rivers calendar. Drewe describes their features and the participants with equal accuracy and perceptiveness. He does so with what seems to this reader to be a genuine warmth and empathy for his subjects and a cheerful acceptance, if puzzlement at their odd choices and habits.

A further appealing aspect of this collection is Drewe’s small revelations about his own family life. His interactions with his daughter as they discuss the possible origins of the names for

Ladyfinger and Cavendish bananas, their shared observation of Eddie the echidna and his attempts to break “Hollywood’s stranglehold on his daughter’s entertainment” are delivered in the same entertaining manner.

Drewe is not shy of directing the spotlight on his own moments of bemusement and even discomfort in the face of some situations. Even occasions such as those described in Thespian Activity and Australia Day which could provoke intense irritation in others he appears to treat with a wry shrug and self-deprecating humour.

His own personality and approach to writing this particular light-hearted collection weaves its way through all his encounters and has contributed to creating what is not merely a selection of anecdotes about “characters I have met” but a most entertaining and insightful representation of life in this region. A thoroughly enjoyable read for locals and visitors alike.

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Kids’ page Aaron Blabey in The Writer’s Studio With Tristan Bancks

Aaron Blabey is an artist, illustrator and author with a background in acting. (His website says that he has been a grape picker and video store dude, too). Here, Tristan Bancks takes a peek inside his process and workspace and discovers how Wu Tang Clan, dry textas and chaos collide to create Aaron’s much-loved picture books.

Where did you write your latest book?

How important to you is the space in which you write?

I used to have a truly magical writing space on an isolated property – incense, haunting view, utter silence.

And then I had kids. KA-BLAAAAM – tranquility GONE. Looking at three of my recent books, the first was conceived in a café in a spiralbound notebook intended for another purpose entirely, the next was written on my phone on the train over several bleary mornings and embellished in a cave by the sea over the Christmas break, the third appeared spontaneously in a grim franchise café in about three seconds after a fruitless four-day session of grinding away at another story.

In a nutshell, post-kids I write where I can.

However… I always paint in my studio but that’s because I can wear massive headphones and wipe out the world around me with a vast sonic explosion and I can do that because when I paint the last thing I’m thinking about is painting.

Writing doesn’t work that way. At least, it doesn’t work like that for me.

Do you transform your space in any way for each book? Do you ‘get into character’ at all?

At this point in my life, the space stays the same but my soundtrack is a constantly evolving and wildly eclectic creative influence that I cannot function without.

J.S.Bach, The White Stripes, Dolly Parton, The Beastie Boys, Miles Davis, Wu Tang Clan, Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams, The Stooges, Emmy Lou Harris, Tom Waits, Public Enemy, Arvo Part, Lou Reed and on and on and on. My book The Dreadful Fluff initiated a change of rhythm and energy because it’s entirely different from its predecessors. Accordingly, I switched from country and heavy rock to a steady diet of 80s & 90s hip-hop and it worked a treat. Different sonic aesthetic, different book. It’s ALL about music for me.

How has the place that you write evolved or changed since you first began writing and illustrating?

I never had a consistent home as a kid.

I suspect that’s informed my transient work patterns. But my current studio does make me happy. I’m interested in being irreverent towards the process at the moment so I’m currently working on mediums of impermanence – an iPhone notes app, a set of ugly whiteboards, napkins and scrap paper. I worked for years with gorgeous Moleskine notebooks that demand reverence but I’ve found that generally my best ideas have tended to pop up when I don’t have a pen and have to scrawl a thought on my arm with a dry texta. I’ve come to believe in chaos. I blame my kids.

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Do you have a morning ritual? Roald Dahl was said to sharpen pencils. What settles your mind for writing?

No. I write in the most random and scattered fashion that you can imagine.

And I won’t hear a word against it.

Do you keep regular writing hours? If not, when do you write?

I read music magazines, have seventeen shots of coffee, scrape paint palettes clean, do my tax, think of people who I absolutely have to email right this instant, go and buy more music magazines, skim them with an eighteenth coffee and then decide that I feel like there’s some good writing to be done somewhere else and I climb in my car, turn up The Beastie Boys and completely forget about writing for about an hour until I find myself sitting guiltily in a park somewhere with a notebook and a genuine chance of being the world’s leading procrastinator.

And then I scribble stuff. Sometimes I find a book. Sometimes I don’t. I’ve made peace with this. In fact, I’m being glib – I’m proud of it. Surrendering control has been hugely beneficial to me as a writer. It’s become a question of faith – I completely trust that if I remain open, something wonderful might just fall from the sky.

You have to believe. Like a child. And I do.

Most days, anyway.

This interview first appeared in The Writer’s Studio series at www.tristanbancks.com

From the reading chair Letting go Editor Laurel Cohn asks when is the right time to send your manuscript off into the world.

It is amazing how difficult it can be to let go of your precious baby and send your work into the wider world of professional readers, whether they be assessors, editors, agents or publishers. How do you know when the time is right? How can you be sure that your baby will be okay without you? That the work you have created is strong enough to survive the rigours of the publishing industry?

Well, perhaps the question really is, are you strong enough? Many writers go through separation anxiety at one stage or another. Letting go is easier if you have confidence in the person you are handing your work to; you accept that that person may not love your baby as much as you do, and you welcome constructive feedback.

HANDING OVER YOUR SOMEONE ELSE’S CARE

BABY

INTO

You may well recognise that your baby needs help to develop properly. Writers sometimes contact me because they know there are issues with their work (usually structural), but they just can’t see their way around them. They are looking for an outside, expert eye to help them find the way forward. Whilst it is important to get the manuscript as clean as possible (free from obvious errors) and as tight as possible, if you know that any more time you spend on the text is likely to confuse the issue, then leave it alone and seek advice from a professional.

Sometimes writers I deal with are like proud parents wanting to show off their beautiful, highly intelligent offspring.

They have polished and honed and redrafted and revised and have finally finished. That’s great. But it doesn’t mean that they are finished with the manuscript.

Close scrutiny by a professional will most likely result in an editorial report offering recommendations on how to further develop the work to give it the best possible chance with an agent or publisher.

It can be difficult to receive feedback suggesting changes if you thought your

work was done, but every writer I know who has faced the unwelcome news that the manuscript is not quite ready, has, in the end (and perhaps after a glass or two of red wine, or a week or two of putting the manuscript out of sight), been thankful for the opportunity to make their work richer, deeper, stronger. It’s about trusting the person to whom you have handed over your baby. If they are any good at their job, they will respect your work and treat it with care and consideration.

LEAVING HOME After multiple drafts, an editorial report, perhaps a second read through by an assessor, the odd workshop or course, maybe a mentorship or fellowship, your baby has grown into a teenager, with various hormonal surges and associated collateral damage along the way (that’s you, not the manuscript). It’s time he/she/ it left home. If you can’t seem to let go, is it your own lack of confidence rather than the manuscript’s ability to speak for itself? If you are pursuing a dream of publication, you must send your work out there. Be prepared, however, to find your offspring returning home at some stage.

where it is ready to hit the bookshelves.

Letting go begins when you are ready to allow someone else from the publishing community help you ‘raise’ your manuscript. And continues right through to the launch, where you have to let your work go all over again, this time in covers, into the world of readers.

And once you’ve let go, you can begin work on the next manuscript.

LAUREL COHN is an editor and mentor passionate about communication and the power of narrative to engage, inspire and challenge. Since the late 1980s she has been helping writers develop their stories and prepare their work for publication, and is a popular workshop presenter. www.laurelcohn.com.au

You will need to keep sending your work out to publishers or agents if you are not accepted first time around. If you get multiple rejections then perhaps think about reworking the manuscript yet again, or giving it some serious time out, or rethinking your publishing strategy.

Even if a publisher does say the magic words ‘we’d like to offer you a contract’, you still might find your baby back on your doorstep. A publisher’s editor will no doubt have some suggestions on ways to further improve the work.

THE PUBLISHING VILLAGE Think of the saying, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. This recognises the role that a whole community plays, aside from immediate family, in the development and maturity of a socialised individual.

The same could be said of a manuscript as it develops and matures to the point

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EVENTS

EVENTS

INAUGURAL GRASSROOTS WRITERS WEEKEND Friday 25 - Sunday 27 April 2014 Dorrigo The idea for this weekend germinated in the Dorrigo Writers Group in 2012. In March 2013, Lisa Milner, of the Nambucca Valley Writers held a workshop at the Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival, ‘Candles in the Dark, What Should Writers Groups Offer and How’ at which our idea was introduced to a wider circle. In August, members of the Nambucca, Bellingen, Coffs Harbour and Dorrigo Writers Groups met with Lynda Hawryluk (SCU), Marele Day, Lisa Walker and Jeni Caffin from the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre to shape the next step.

Now, we warmly invite all regional writers groups, individual writers and keen writing students to contribute to shaping the first Grassroots Writers Weekend, Friday 25th, Saturday 26th, Sunday 27th April, 2014, on beautiful Dorrigo Mountain. We will offer a very practical weekend of writing activities: workshops, focus/conversation groups and talks, a reading of works/open mic night and film night.

The weekend will begin on Friday evening with Keynote Address from Marele Day, NRWC Regional Mentor, after which participants will introduce themselves, their ideas, initiatives and projects.

Saturday and Sunday will offer a dual stream of workshops, conversation/focus groups and talks, concluding with group dinners, readings and where to from here?

We invite your suggestions of workshops you would like to attend or present. Marele Day will offer a seminar on developing critiquing skills, a talk on writing in different genres and a

session on skill development. Further ideas are: creating three dimensional characters, developing plot, editing/rewriting, writing genre (magical realism, fantasy, gothic, sci-fi, etc.), writing online, hardcopy publishing, collage poetry, illustration, oral storytelling, screenwriting, one-act plays (perhaps collaborating with the Dorrigo Drama Group).

We hope to: • generate enthusiasm and friendships between writers / groups throughout the region • form a network of writers’ groups that could offer constructive feedback to writers • share skills and know-how • create regional interest/genre hubs that transcend writers groups • explore how groups might pool resources/share costs.

We aim to keep costs very low; a flat fee of $25 will cover use of the High School. Attendees cover their own travel, meals, accommodation and material costs. We may offer some billeting. For accommodation, check www.dorrigo.com No sessions will incur a fee, nor will any presenter be paid.

Now we need you: add your ideas, offer your expertise and help create this event.

Please contact me at: an_lomall@bigpond.com Cheers for now, Iris Curteis, for the Dorrigo Writers Group

BOOMERANG FESTIVAL Friday 4 October – Sunday 6 October 2013 Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Byron Bay (the home of Bluesfest) For the full program visit: www.boomerangfestival.com.au “Boomerang Festival is the first of its kind”, says Artistic Director Rhoda Roberts. “This is a festival where audiences have the opportunity to be personally touched by the experience of connecting and embracing the social, cultural and the spiritual aspects of Australia’s First Peoples traditional lives and contemporary practices from across the globe” Boomerang Festival, a new world Indigenous Festival for all Australians, has revealed its full multi-arts program. A further array of exciting musicians, artists, films, speakers and workshops has been added and Boomerang Festival is quickly becoming a date on the calendar not to be missed.

There are 133 performances and experiences from music to workshops, fire gatherings, dance participations and conversations, with some unexpected surprises. Artists representing 11 countries (Australia, NZ, Chile, Canada, Scotland, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Rotuman, Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands) will come together to perform at the inaugural event.

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across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia.

The Bundjalung peoples play host and invite international First Nation’s artists to exchange through a variety of mediums.

No other Australian event quite matches the deep exchanges through the many oral and visual delights the audiences will experience. Elders Talks, a speakers program, various circles and activities including some of the world’s oldest instruments, dance and rituals will take place alongside traditional arts practices and workshops. The focus on mother tongues and first instruments will imbue the festival with a breathtaking richness and a capacity to touch deeply.

Limited three day and single day early bird tickets are now on sale through www.boomerangfestival.com.au or by phoning the Boomerang Festival office on 02 6685 8310.

EVENTS

Child Writes Tutor Training Spend three days, 6 – 8 September, in a stimulating and inspiring environment, with hands-on training to teach you how to create a children’s picture book… and how to teach the process to others!

Emma Mactaggart has guided over 260 children (and many adults) through the process of creating a children’s picture book from conception to completion and has captured each step to create the Child Writes program. These steps include ideas generation, writing, editing, proofreading, storyboards, dummy roughs and illustrating. For those who wish to generate an income doing what they love, completing the Child Writes Tutor Training opens the door to becoming a Child Writes tutor, presenting the Child Writes program to schools and organisations in your sphere of influence. For more information or to register, go to: http://www.childwrites. com.au/tutor-training/ballina-byron-baynsw 500 Words Here’s a chance to share your story. Be part of ABC Open 500 Words project, the monthly writing challenge that invites you to write a short non-fiction story and get it published on the ABC. We set a great new theme each month to inspire you. All you need to do is write 500 words on the theme, chose the perfect image to go with your story and publish it on the ABC. Go to abc.net.au/open for stepby -step instructions.

Or attend an ABC Open “500 Words” free workshop: September 7: Lismore City Library – (02) 6621 2464, 10.00 am until 3.30pm September 27: Casino Library - (02) 6662 6160, 10.00 am until 3.30pm To book or for more details speak to the library staff or email: marciniak.catherine@abc.net.au

EVENTS

The 2013 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival This year brings with it the spirit of coming home, and pulls together the best Indonesian, South East Asian and international voices as it celebrates its 10-year anniversary from 11 – 15 October.

This October, the Festival will welcome more than 170 brilliant writers, performers, artists, musicians and visionaries to the magical setting of Ubud, to speak across all forms of storytelling – from travel writing to songwriting, plays, poetry, comedy and graphic novels.

Joining the line-up – and in his first Festival appearance in the region – is bestselling UK author Sebastian Faulks , Lionel Shriver , publishing entrepreneur and Lonely Planet cofounder Tony Wheeler, legendary Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, and Festival favourite Richard Flanagan returns. The Festival also welcomes 2013 Man Booker long-listed authors Ruth Ozeki as well as India’s ‘first literary popstar’ Amish Tripathi. Other international guests include David Vann, two-time Miles Franklin winner Kim Scott, American talent Nami Mun, and one of France’s most prolific writers Alain Mabanckou. Ticket available at: http://www.ubudwritersfestival.com/ buy-tickets/

Germaine Greer White Beech Germaine will visit Byron Bay to celebrate the publication of White Beech: the rainforest years with a lecture at the Byron Community Centre, on Thursday 24 October at 6pm at the Byron Community Centre Theatre.

Tickets are $35 at www.nrwc.org.au and www.byronbaywritersfestival.com or 02 6685 5115. Bookings essential.

Christos Tsiolkas: Barracuda Meet Christos and discover his writing process, the way in which he views modern Australia, the big issues of class and race and politics and migration and education. And sport. The narrative is explosive, the writing superb, the effect brutal, moving and shocking by turn.

This is a writer at the peak of his powers, chronicling the life of a youth whose own powers are not as great as he had believed.

This will be a big conversation, followed

by Q&A. The event will be held Wednesday 30 October at Bangalow A&I Hall, 6.30pm.

Tickets $30 from www.nrwc.org.au and www.byronbaywritersfestival.com or 02 6685 5115. Bookings essential.

A Mongolian Evening at Byron Bay Library Award winning adventurer Tim Cope will share insights into his journey from Mongolia to Hungary, following in the footsteps of Genghis Khan. Monday 9 September, 5.30pm. Free but please book on 6685 8540.

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WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS Bringing Your Story from the Page to Social Media with Emily Craven

Love on the Farm: writing rural romance with Karly Lane

Feature writing for newspapers and magazines with Anneli Knight

For: Ages 10-15 years When: Thursday 3 October, 10am - 4pm Where: SCU Room, Byron Community Centre Cost: $40 NRWC Family Members only/$50 non members

When: Saturday 19 October, 10am-4pm Where: SCU room Cost: $75 members, $95 non-members

When: Wednesdays, 23 Oct – 27 Nov (total of six sessions) 5.30pm – 7.30 pm Where: NRWC Office, Level 1, 28 Jonson St, Byron Bay Cost: $250 NRWC Members /$300 nonmembers

The time for writing stories the old way is over! In this new digital age you don’t have to stick with words in a book to tell your story, you can use social media, video, audio and images to tell a tale with a whole lot more oomph than a regular book. Join young writer Emily Craven in a workshop that will teach you how to take your story beyond the page and create an adventure! In this workshop we discuss how you can expand a story via video, audio and social media; how you can get different characters ‘interacting’ online and how you can take your stories into the real world with interactive projects. This workshop is aimed at young writers who love to tell stories but want to write and create in new, interactive and different ways to the regular books that line their school libraries.

For three years Em has talked to experts from around the globe, gathering all their combined knowledge and applying it to e-books, writing and publishing industry. This research resulted in the E-Book Revolution Blog where she talks about e-books and author marketing.

She has spoken on marketing, blogging and e-books for the Australian Society of Authors, If:Book Australia, the Queensland Writers Centre, the World Fantasy Convention and the National Young Writers’ Festival in Newcastle.

For the past twelve months she has been mentored by world renowned fantasy author Isobelle Carmody, and is blogging about the lessons she learns at http:// theoriginalfantasy.blogspot.com.au.

Rural literature is the dark horse of the publishing world. It’s one of the fastest growing genres of the last few years and its popularity continues to grow. So what makes a good rural fiction title?

Karly Lane, author of three bestselling rural fiction titles North Star, Morgan’s Law and Bridie’s Choice, will endeavour to pull the genre apart and show participants how it fits together.

The workshop will look at some of the genre’s main areas, such as setting, characters and rural issues. Participants will workshop ideas and storylines to give them a head start on writing their own rural fiction title. Karly will also discuss the process of publishing, share her journey to publication and answer questions that many new writers have about the process.

This workshop is suitable for both beginner and more experienced writers who are interested in tapping into the thriving market for romantic stories in country locations.

Karly Lane lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW. Proud mum to four beautiful children and wife of one very patient mechanic, she is lucky enough to get to spend her day doing the two things she loves most—being a mum and writing stories set in beautiful rural Australia. Her first rural romance novel, North Star, was chosen as one of ’50 Books You Can’t Put Down’ in 2011.

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There is much more to feature writing for newspapers and magazines than just putting words on paper. This six-week course takes you through the whole process from the spark of an idea until the finished article spools from your printer.

The course will cover coming up with ideas, interview tips and techniques, different styles of feature articles, structure and editing. Participants will learn how to pitch their story, how to stand out from the crowd and how to turn their writing into a career. As well as group discussions on each participant’s work they will receive individual feedback and have the opportunity to ask questions and share ideas on the process of writing features for newspapers and magazines. The course is structured so that participants will develop and sharpen feature articles to publication standard.

A detailed description of the course is available online at www.nrwc.org.au Anneli Knight has worked for the Sydney Morning Herald, taught journalism at the University of Technology Sydney and is now a freelance journalist for a range of publications.

WORKSHOPS WORKSHOPS Life writing with Jim Hearn When: Saturday 2 November: 10am – 4pm Where: SCU Room, Byron Community Centre Cost: $75 members/ $95 non-members

Life Writers, we need to be able to write compellingly about other peoples’ lives, as well as our own lived experience. Writing about other people is generally called biography. In this workshop, we will discuss who we really need to write about in relation to our own lived experience and why. None of us exist in isolation. Whether we end up writing about our work colleagues, school friends, children, parents, or siblings, each of us needs to develop strategies about how to represent other living people who we are emotionally connected to.

The lines between memoir, autobiography, and biography are often blurred. We will develop an understanding about the critical differences between these genres of life writing, and also analyse why most life writing today is published as memoir.

Participants should bring one paragraph of autobiography, and one paragraph of biography to the workshop, which they are keen to extend into a larger project.

Jim’s memoir High Season – a Memoir of Heroin and Hospitality was published by Allen & Unwin in 2012. His novella, River Street, was also published as part of the Griffith REVIEW Novella Project. As a screenwriter, Jim worked on the script for Chopper, did an adaptation of Andrew McGahan’s novel Last Drinks, and had four short films he wrote screen on SBS. Currently, Jim works as a lecturer and tutor in creative writing at Southern Cross University.

Creative blogging with Megan Kinninment

Travel writing in the 21st Century with Claire Scobie

When: Saturday 23 November, 10am-4pm Where: SCU Room, Byron Community Centre Cost: $75 members/ $95 non-members

When: Saturday 7 December, 10am-4pm Where: SCU room, Byron Community Centre Cost: $75 members, $95 non-members

We all have a story to tell.

Whether you are an emerging author looking to build a marketing platform; a creative with a passion you want to share with the world or a journalist-in-themaking, blogging is a place to start.

In this one-day workshop, experienced journalist, digital producer and blogger, Megan Kinninment will guide you through the basics of establishing a blog.

The workshop will cover storytelling techniques Megan has honed through years of news reporting, feature writing and blogging through to the technical side of online publishing, including visual storytelling methods that will have your readers coming back for more.

Blogging is not only an ideal tool for building a brand and growing a client base, it is also a powerful and fun medium to express and enhance your creativity, discover your writing voice and connect with a supportive community.

This workshop is suitable for those wanting to tell their creative, business, personal or community story in their own, unique voice.

By the end of the day you will have been shown how to develop and produce blog posts; introduced to the basics of designing, editing and customising your blog and shown how to develop an editorial/ content plan brimming with ideas to see you through the next leg of your blogging journey.

With the rapid evolution in online communication, travel writing is changing– and changing fast. Today, travel writers are thinking about their brand, their image, their next blog post.

Claire shows you how to navigate through this new world while crafting compelling stories, giving participants a broad understanding of travel writing in magazines, newspapers, blogs and online.

The workshop covers how to develop an idea and turn it into a polished piece of work, how to craft a story and evoke a sense of place, the use of photographs, revising, structuring and editing.

Megan Kinninment works as a journalist, digital producer and as weekend chief -of-staff with the Northern Star newspaper and she blogs on creativity, community and simple living at www.thebyronlife.com

Travel narratives: taking the next step, with Claire Scobie When: Sunday 8 December, 10am-4pm Where: SCU room , Byron Community Centre Cost: $75 members, $95 non-members

Whether you travel for business or pleasure, whether you’re a writing traveller – or a travelling writer – what’s important in literary travel memoir is learning how to craft a good story with credible characters, dialogue, atmosphere and revelation.

Filled with plenty of exercises this oneday course, taught by award-winning author Claire Scobie, teaches you how.

Topics covered include: how to structure your travel memoir, how to find the central idea of a place, ways to transform dog-eared travel journals into a mustread manuscript, popular genres of travel writing and advice on how to get published.

Claire Scobie (pictured left) is an awardwinning journalist and author who has lived and worked in the UK, India and now Sydney.

Her first book, Last Seen in Lhasa, won the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2007.

Penguin published her first novel, The Pagoda Tree, in mid-2013. http://clairescobie.com

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Opportunities OPPORTUNITIES

HarperCollins Announces New Unsolicited Submissions Portal HarperCollins Publishers ANZ is excited to announce the launch of its new online unsolicited submission program, The Wednesday Post, which commenced on Wednesday 21 August. Their goal is to uncover, develop and promote the most outstanding voices writing today.

The new portal can be accessed at www. wednesdaypost.com.au.

Submissions are accepted every week on Wednesday only. Aspiring authors will be asked to present synopses of their work and the first 50 pages of a manuscript. They are looking for writers at every stage of their career, from closet scribes to those who have a history of publication.

Adult and YA books are the focus for this initiative, and they will be accepting manuscripts in both fiction and non fiction genres. They are particularly seeking exceptional contemporary women’s fiction.

The Wednesday Post will respond to authors within three weeks if they wish to see more work. All submissions will be considered for print and e-book publication as well as digital-only publication, which is an area they will be actively growing in the coming years through a dedicated e-only publishing model.

HarperCollins are eagerly looking forward to the intake of submissions and encourage all hopeful authors to apply. They love a good story, and if you have one to tell they want to hear from you.

For further information please contact: Sarah Barrett, National Promotions and Partnerships Executive, sarah.barrett@harpercollins.com. au or 02 9952 5002

NSW Writers’ Centre Indigenous Mentorship Program The NSW Writers’ Centre is delighted to

announce a major new program for emerging Indigenous writers. The program will pair five emerging writers from around New South Wales with an established Indigenous writer in the same genre for a structured year-long mentorship. It will be open to writers in any genre, including fiction, memoir, poetry and performance.

The successful applicants will receive feedback on their work in progress as well as general advice on writing and on getting their work published or performed. For more information, visit www.nswwc.org.au or call 02 9555 9757 Applications close: 15 September Expression of Interest: Emerging Aboriginal Writers Saltwater Freshwater Arts Alliance Aboriginal Corporation is calling for Expressions of Interest from emerging Aboriginal writers for our Storytelling to Design Project. The selected writers will need to be available for two x 3-day workshops at North Farm in Bellingen on the following dates: 18 –20 October 2013 and 15 – 17 November 2013.

For further information contact: jane@ aboriginaldesign.com.au Applications close: 16 September.

US Tax Law – Special Member Offer The Australian Society of Authors is running a workshop on ‘US Tax Information for Authors’ in Brisbane on the 26 Oct, 2-4pm. This is relevant to anyone publishing with Amazon or in the US and the ASA is offering it to our members for $25 (usually $75). For bookings contact: lisa@nrwc.org.au The David T. K. Wong Fellowship Award £26, 000 This is a year-long residential fellowship with an award of £26,000. Applications will be considered from established published as well as unpublished writers of any age and any nationality and will be awarded to a writer planning to produce a work of prose fiction in English which deals seriously with some aspect of life in the Far East.

Applicants must submit 2,500 words of unpublished work which they plan to undertake during the fellowship. Application fee is £10.00.

All application forms and full details are available at: http://www.uea.ac.uk/lit/ fellowships/david-wong-fellowship Applications close: 13 January 2014

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Competitions Cafe Poets Have you ever wanted to be a Cafe Poet but don’t want to be there all day reading your poetry to an audience? Alexandra Williams has put together a blog page for promoting your short written work to the cafe and restaurant diners in the Byron Shire towns outside Byron Bay. For further information contact williams.alexandra@ymail.com

COMPETITIONS Glen Phillips Poetry Prize Overview The Glen Phillips Poetry Prize has an open theme and entrants must be currently residing in Australia. Entrants may submit poems up to 50 lines in length with a maximum of five entries per poet. Works must also be unpublished (includes social media), not on offer for publication before the announcement of the prize winners, and not have been recognised in any other competition. Prizes: 1st $400, 2nd $200 and 3rd $100, with four x Highly Commended and four x Commended Certificates Entry fees: $10 for one entry, $25 for three entries and $40 for five entries.

Competition information: www.pcwc.org.au Closing Date: 27 September Rodney Seaborn Playwriting Award The Playwrights Award $20,000 is for the development of a play or other approved performing arts project and is intended to provide income support during the writing or development process or to assist with the costs of production, workshops, restaging, publishing or touring. It is not intended as a prize for a finished, produced work.

An early winner of the Award was Antony Waddington for the adaptation of The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White. Subsequent winners have included Katherine Thomson, Ros Horin, Debra Oswald, Don Reid, Rosalba Clemente, Rachel Brown, Reg Cribb, and Finegan Kruckemeyer. Last year’s winner was Campion Decent for his play Unholy Ghosts which is planning to tour regionally in 2014 and to have a Sydney season. Forms available from the SBW Foundation website www. sbwfoundation.com Closing Date: 2 October

Competitions

City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards Entries are now open for the 2013 City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards, with more than $2000 in prizes.

Authors can submit up to three stories of 1000 - 3500 words in length. Entered stories must be inspired by, drawn upon, or use the theme of the artwork “Brothers” by Cherry Lee (1999), which can be found on their website. Individual stories cannot be entered in more than one category, and must be original, unpublished, not have received an award in another competition, and not be under consideration elsewhere from the time of entry in awards until the official announcement of winners. http://www.rockingham.wa.gov.au/Leisureand-recreation/Art-and-craft/Writing-andLiterature.aspx#Short Fiction Awards Closing Date: 11 October Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers Australia’s leading organisation for young writers, Express Media, are delighted to partner with Scribe, a Melbourne-based independent publishing house on a new developmental award. The Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers is open to writers who are working on a long-form piece in any nonfiction genre, such as memoir, journalism, essay, biography, and creative nonfiction.

Submissions must be between 5000 and 10000 words. The award will offer young writers aged 30 or under the opportunity to enhance their work-in-progress. In addition to a cash prize of $1500, the winner receives a meeting with a publisher or an editor at Scribe, and up to 10 hours of editorial time to work on developing the piece to Scribe’s publication standard or to developing it into a book-length project.

For more information on the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers please email awards@expressmedia.org.au or visit www.expressmedia.org.au Closing Date: 11 October The Malicious Mysteries Short Story Award 2013 Stringybark Stories is pleased to announce its latest short fiction award. The Stringybark Malicious Mysteries Short Story Award will be presented to the author of the best entry related to a mystery. Nearly anything goes. It is only limited by your imagination. Murder most foul. Ghostly images. A stumped detective. A missing treasure. A secret

Competitions

relationship. A lost diary. Writers have 1500 words to produce a short story that will delight and mystify the judges. International entries welcome.

There is a total value of over $810 worth of prizes in cash and books available. Stories must be sent via email. Details at: http://www.stringybarkstories.net Closing Date: 20 October The Mornington Peninsula Prize 2013 Poetry Competition Poems up to 30 lines – open theme and genre. First Prize $200, Highly Commended and Commended certificates.

Entry fee is $5.00 per poem. All enquiries should be directed to: Competition Coordinator, FAW Mornington Peninsula Prize, PO Box 574, Mornington, Vic, 3931, or peninsulafaw@mail.com Closing Date: 28 October The Southern Cross Literary Competition Short stories of up to 3500 words are welcome from all writers. The competition is a biennial event run by Ballarat Writers Inc. This year the prize money has increased to $1500 for the winning entry.

Entry fee is $20 per story and there is no restriction on the number of entries each writer may submit.

Results will be announced at the final Ballarat Writers reading night for the year on 5th Dec at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute. The full details and entry form are available from our website www.ballaratwriters.com Closing Date: 30 October The Best of Times short story competition #16 For humorous short stories (any theme) up to 2500 words.

First prize: $500, second prize: $100.

No entry form is required. Include a cover sheet with your name and address, story title and word count, and where you heard about the competition.

Entry fee is $10 per story. Competition website: http://spiky_one.tripod.com/ comp16.html Closing Date: 31 Oct ober Odyssey House Victoria 3rd Annual Short Story Competition This competition is open to writers of all ages and experience. Each submission must be no more than 1500 words and follow the

theme “From a Distance”. It will need to make a reference to alcohol and/or drugs. There is a limit of three entries per person, and the entry fee is $10 per story. First prize is $750 and a one year membership to Writers Victoria; 2nd prize is $200 and 3rd prize is $50.

For more information or to download an entry form, go to www.odyssey.org.au Closing Date: 1 November EJ Brady Mallacoota Prize for Short Stories 2013 The EJ Brady Mallacoota prize for writing short stories is contested Australia-wide and this year the Mallacoota Arts Council has increased the major prize to $2000 for the winner, with $200 for the runner up, and the prize of $500 for the shorter story category.

The competition offers a choice of entering a work of 700 words limit, or a major story of under 2500 words. Further details are on the website www.artsmallacoota.org Closing Date: 15 November Busybird’s Great Novella Search The novella form includes such classics as Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, The Old Man and the Sea, and A Clockwork Orange. It’s also a form of storytelling that Busybird is keen to re-popularise, and your novella could be next! The winner will receive $1000 and their book will be published in both hardcopy and digital formats. Entries must be from 20,000-40,000 words, in any genre. Entry fee: $25. Entries open 1 August and close 29 November.

This competition is open only to residents of Australia and New Zealand.

Closing Date: 29 November Calibre Prize 2014 Australian Book Review seeks entries for the eighth Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, the country’s premier award for an original essay. The Calibre Prize is intended to generate brilliant new essays and to foster new insights into culture, society, and the human condition. We welcome essays from leading authors and commentators, but also from emerging writers. All non-fiction subjects are eligible.

Full details about how to enter and eligibility can be found on the ABR website at: www. australianbookreview.com.au/prizes/ calibreprize First prize: $5000 Closing Date: 2 December

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WRITERS’ GROUPS

Alstonville Plateau Writers Group. Meets 2nd Tuesday of the Month. 10am to 12pm. All genres welcome. Contact Christine 66288364 or Kerry 66285662.

Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing Contact ph. Jan 0404 007 586. Meets at 12.00pm every second Wednesday, Fripp Oval Ballina.

Bangalow Writers Group Contact Alexandra Williams williams.alexandra@ymail. com. Meets 9.45am- 12.00pm, first Thursday of the month, Scout Hall, Bangalow.

Bellingen Writers Group Contact David Breaden (president) on 02 6699 3888 or email davidmb@wirefree.net.au. Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2.00pm. All welcome.

Baywrite Theatre Inc. Contact Udo Moerig on 02 6680 9698 or go to www. baywrite.com. Reading and comment on new scripts 1st Saturday each month.

Workshopping of selected scripts 4th Tuesday each month.

Casino Writers Group Contact Brian Costin 02 6624 2636 or email briancostin129@ hotmail.com. Meets 3rd Thursday of the month 4pm at the Casino Library.

Cloudcatchers Contact Quendryth Young on 02 6628 3753 or email quendrythyoung@bigpond.com. For haiku enthusiasts, a ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement.

Coffs Harbour Writers Group Contact Lorraine Mouafi on 02 6653 3256 or email lmproject@bigpond.com . Meets 1st and 3rd Thursday of month, 10.30am–12.30pm. www.coffsharbourwriters.wordpress.com Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group Share your memoir writing for critiquing.

Monthly meetings. 0409 824 803. Email coastalmermaid@gmail.com Cru3a River Poets Contact Pauline Powell 02 6645 8715.

Meets every Thursday at 10.30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Email kitesway@ westnet.com.au.

Dangerously Poetic writing circle. Meets second Thursday of every month 12.302.30pm, at the Brunswick Heads RSL Hall, Fawcett St. Contact Laura – 6680 1967 or visit www.dangerouslypoetic.com Dorrigo Writers Group Contact Iris Curteis on 6657 5274, email an_lomall@ bigpond.com or Nell Hunter on 6657 4089. Meet every second Wednesday from 12.00pm - 4.00 pm Dunoon Writers Group Writers on the Block Contact Helga on 02 6620 2994 (w) or email: /heg.j@telstra.com/. Meets 2nd Tuesday of month, 6.30pm–8pm, at the Dunoon Sports Club.

Federal Writers Group Contact Vicki Peterson on 02 6684 0093 or email ganden1@ gmail.com. Meets 3rd Saturday of month in Federal.

FAW Port Macquarie–Hastings Regional Contact Bill Turner (President) on 02 6584 5342 or email wjturner@aapt.net.au. Meets 1pm on last Saturday of month, Historic Museum, Clarence Street, Port Macquarie.

Gold Coast Writers Association Contact 0431 443 385 or email info@goldcoastwriters.org.au. Meets 3rd Saturday of month, 1.30pm for a 2.00pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads, Qld. Kempsey Writers Group Contact Carma Eckersley on 02 6562 5227. Meets 1st Sunday of month at the Railway Hotel.

Kyogle Writers Group Contact Brian Costin 02 6624 2636 or email briancostin129@ hotmail.com, meets 1st Tuesday of the month 10:30am at the Kyogle Bowling Club.

Lower Clarence Arts & Crafts Ferry Park Writers Group Contact Di Wood on 02 6645 8969 or email diwood43@bigpond.com. Meets 1st Thursday of month,10.00am–12.00pm.

Memoir Writing Group Contact Diana Burstall on 02 6685 5387 or email diana. burstall@gmail.com. Meets every month at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Mullum Writing Group Contact Lisa MacKenzie on 02 6684 4387 ah or email llatmac28@gmail.com. Meets fortnightly on Tuesdays, 7.30pm.

Nambucca Valley Writers Group Contact 02 6568 9648, or nambuccawriters@ gmail.com . Meets 4th Saturday of month, 1.30pm, Nambucca.

Poets and Writers on the Tweed Meet weekly in the Tweed Heads Library, Tuesdays 1.30pm to 3.00pm. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers all welcome. Fun group meets for discussion, support and constructive criticism. Free membership.

Phone Lorraine 07 55909395 or Ken 02 66742898.

Taree–Manning River Scribblers Contact Bob Winston on 02 6553 2829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com. Meets 2nd Wednesday of month, 9.00am–11.30am in Taree.

Call first to check venue.

UKI Writers meet last Sunday of most months to share and encourage our literary endeavours. Contact Elspeth on 0266797029 or email windelwood@bigpond.com WordsFlow Writing Group Contact Rosemary Nissen-Wade 02 6676 0874, Pam Moore 02 6676 1417. Meets Fridays in school term, 1.00pm–3.30 pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Visit http://wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com

26 - northerly magazine | september - october 2013

NORTHERN RIVERS WRITERS’ CENTRE 2013 MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNTS BOOK WAREHOUSE 107-109 Keen Street Lismore 02 6621 4204 BOOK WAREHOUSE 26 Harbour Drive Coffs Harbour 02 6651 9077 BOOK WAREHOUSE Shop 6 Ballina Fair Ballina 02 6686 0917 BOOK WAREHOUSE 70 Prince Street Grafton 02 6642 6355 BOOK WAREHOUSE Settlement City Port Macquarie 02 6584 9788 BOOK WAREHOUSE Yamba Fair, Treelands Drive Yamba 02 6646 8662 BYRON BAY LONGBOARDS 1/89 Jonson Street Byron Bay 02 6685 5244 CLIX COMPUTER CENTRE 3/3 Marvel Street Byron Bay 02 6680 9166 COLLINS BOOK SELLERS Unit 3. 9 Lawson Street Byron Bay 02 6685 7820 CO-OP BOOKSHOP Southern Cross University Lismore 02 6621 4484 CO-OP BOOKSHOP Coffs Harbour Education Campus, Hogbin Drive Coffs Harbour 02 6659 3225 DOLPHIN OFFICE CHOICE www.officechoice.com.au Cnr Fletcher & Marvel Streets Byron Bay 02 6685 7097 DRAGONWICK PUBLISHING www.dragonwick.com 02 6624 1933 EARTH CAR RENTALS 18 Fletcher Street Byron Bay 02 6685 7472 EBOOKS NEED EDITORS www.ebooksneededitors.com 15% discount to NRWC members Call 02 6689 5897 for further details HUMBLE PIES Pacific Highway Billinudgel 02 6680 1082 KEEN STREET COMMUNICATIONS www.keenstreet.com.au 50 Bulmers Rd Hogarth Range 02 6664 7361 MARY RYAN’S BOOKSTORE Shop 5, 21 -25 Fletcher Street Byron Bay 02 6685 8183 NORPA www.norpa.org.au PO Box 225 Lismore 02 6621 5600 PAGES BOOKSHOP Park Beach Plaza Coffs Harbour 02 6652 2588 THE BOOKSHOP MULLUMBIMBY 39 Burringbar Street Mullumbimby 02 6684 1413 THERE’S ALWAYS MORE HAIRDRESSING Shop 5, 14 Middleton Byron Bay 02 6680 7922

Degrees to help U pursue your passion Are you seeking a career in writing or the media?

At Southern Cross University we have creative and inspirational courses designed to suit you, from our Associate Degree in Creative Writing, which can be completed in two years of full-time study, to our Bachelor of Media and Bachelor of Arts.

You can also enjoy your study without compromising your lifestyle, by choosing to study full-time, part-time, on campus or by distance education. Explore our range of study options and discover how you can turn your passion into a rewarding career.

Apply now for 2013 at scu.edu.au/arts

School of Arts and Social Sciences

It’s all about U scu.edu.au/arts

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