Information, inspiration and insights into the writing life
Lost and naïve, traipsing through the wards
I listened to a chest and heard
A harsh rasping whisper
Blowing between beats and breaths
All but intangible from the outside
Yet I hear rumbling beneath my steth.
Behind all this was a person
Patiently waiting while I fumble.
Why do we write memoirs? Memoir tutor Sian Prior says that humans have a powerful urge to tell, listen to, and learn from true stories for all sorts of reasons – just don’t write them if you’re looking for revenge.
In her powerful and candid memoir, ‘Eggshell Skull’, Brisbane-based writer Bri Lee recounts her year working as a judge’s associate in the Queensland District Court. During this time, she witnessed numerous instances where victims of sexual offences were denied due justice.
Ahead of our Ask... about YA Publishing seminar in November, The YA Room's Sarah Robinson-Hatch writes Why YA?
Five years ago I would never have expected to be working full-time in publishing, let alone supporting two amazing agents at Australia’s largest literary agency. Every day is different and as an assistant you get to see the nuts and bolts of publishing – from reading first drafts and giving editorial feedback to being privy to overseas rights and film deals and the nitty gritty of contract negotiation and royalty statements. I feel really lucky to do the work I do and be paid for it, which means I can genuinely look forward to going to work every day.
About a decade ago, Writers Victoria held a little competition: ‘Send us two-hundred words of non-fiction and we’ll give the winner a book.’ At the time I’d been tootling around with a non-fiction project for a couple of years. I had young children and a day job, but every now and then, in the cracks of my life, I’d do some research, do some writing, then do some more research.
Benjamin Law's work draws on the personal, whether he’s tackling subjects such as growing up Asian-Australian in Queensland, exploring the LGBTQI experience throughout Asia, or taking on the critics of the Safe Schools program. He speaks to Nic Brasch about his uncanny knack for writing life.
How does anything happen? A little over twenty years ago, a good friend of mine told me she'd always wanted to put out a book of her own writing but didn't think she could do it alone. She had heard, from a mutual friend of ours, that I had written some poetry, and suggested we could team up – weave our short poems and prose pieces together into a self-published book. I hadn't planned on making anything I wrote so public, but sure, why not? Maybe I, too, had things to say.
It was a Saturday night in Sydney, and twelve of us Asian playwrights were wandering around looking for a place to drink after the Lotus workshops, sponsored by Contemporary Asian Australian Performance and Playwriting Australia. A drunk white man teetered between us. He looked in at one Chinese girl’s face and said, ‘You’re Asian.’ He then looked at the rest of us, ranging from a dark-skinned Singhalese to a pale-skinned Vietnamese to an Indonesian Muslim wearing the veil, and exclaimed, ‘You’re all sorts of Asian!’
