InaGuddle: May 2023

Wednesday 31 May 2023

Sydney Writers' Festival 2023 - Day Three

On Friday 26 May 2023 I had tickets for three sessions but also saw two more on the Curiosity Stage.

Bringing the Past to Life

I really wanted to see Geraldine Brooks at SWF and tossed up between attending her solo session about her latest novel Horse, or attending this panel session on writing historical novels. I am so pleased that I went with the panel session, as it allowed me to learn more about the craft of historical novel writing and hear from authors I may not have seen otherwise.

This session was chaired by Kate Evans and featured Geraldine Brooks, Pip Williams (The Dictionary of Lost Words) and Sally Colin-James (One Illumined Thread). Evans asked each of the women to think of an object which sparked their interest in the subject of their novels. Brooks spoke about the skeleton of the racehorse Lexington which had been in the attic of the Smithsonian, for Williams it was a bone folder used in traditional bookbinding, and for Colin-James it was a black glass vial with a stopper.

They each told the backstory of their novels and what drew them to it. To be honest, prior to the session I wasn't really interested in Geraldine Brooks' novel Horse as I find all sports with animals abhorrent. But as she spoke about the book, I realised it was a far deeper story. Brooks said 'I thought it was just going to be about the horse' but she soon learned that slavery underpinned the horsing industry. Her story about the book was so interesting, I ended up getting a copy of the book after the session!

Both Williams and Colin-James wrote about women who were largely invisible. I had never heard of Colin-James or her novel One Illumined Thread, which is a sweeping tale that begins in King Herod's Judea and traverses time to Renaissance Florence and modern day Australia.

The panel spoke about their research process and agreed that sometimes you can go down rabbit-holes that may not be helpful. Brooks said 'I let the story tell me what I need to know. There is a risk you get lost in the research. I try and resist cramming everything in and follow the line of fact as far as it leads.'

After the session I met Pip Williams and she signed a copy of The Dictionary of Lost Words for me. I had met Brooks the day before at the book signing.

Eleanor Catton: Birnam Wood

Having finished Birnam Wood just days before the festival, I was thrilled to attend the session on the book with author Eleanor Catton interviewed by Beejay Silcox.

This was a fascinating session. Catton is erudite, articulate and accessible. Silcox asked such thought-provoking questions that added greatly to my admiration of both the author and the novel.

Catton was interested in irony. 'We often feel most ourselves when pretending to be someone else. I knew I wanted to write a Shakespearian tragedy.' She spoke about Macbeth and his addiction to prophecy and how any one of the novel's characters could be Macbeth as each has a blindspot which risks bring about their downfall and a Lady Macbeth character on their shoulder.

Silcox praised her writing and the complex themes across the novel, particularly as it was unclear where Catton stood on the topics raised.

Catton said she was influenced by Jane Austen's Emma and praised the way the reader is able to see things that Emma does not (like Mr Elton's desire for her), and as such the reader feels superior - 'the exact quality that Austen satirises'. Catton said that 'Austen is the heir to Shakespeare's comedy. There is not much difference between comedy and tragedy. Any book that takes human beings seriously needs to be a comedy.' I now want to re-read Birnam Wood and reflect on the Austen influence.

After the session I met Cattton at the book signing where she signed my copies of Birnam Wood and The Luminaries.

Raina MacIntyre: Dark Winter

Next up, I swung by the Curiosity stage to listen to UNSW Professor Raina MacIntyre, epidemiologist, speak about pandemics.

MacIntyre was the voice of reason I listened to throughout the pandemic and I was interested to hear what she was talking about. She has just written a book, Dark Winter: An insider's guide to pandemics and biosecurity (2022), and talked about the recurring pattens of denial and failure to learn from each outbreak.

She spoke about virus mutations, engineering, lab leaks, and cover ups - giving examples of historical and contemporary events. She also talked about insider threats and information warfare.

It was a fascinating session but one which turned my anxiety up to 11! By my reckoning, less than 10% of festival attendees wore masks despite the new wave of COVID and the bad flu season. I wore one throughout and after MacIntyre's session I am so glad I did!

Clementine Ford: The Myth of Marital Happiness

I stayed at the Curiousity stage to hear feminist writer Clementine Ford deliver a talk from her forthcoming book I Don't, due for publication on 31 October 2023. In this lecture Ford spoke about weddings and various traditions that have arisen in the recent past to further the objectives of the 'wedding industrial complex'. She spoke about bouquet tosses, virginity tests, white wedding dresses and more. She also spoke about the cost premium on weddings (venues, flowers, cakes etc). I have a real soft spot for Ford as a fearless and outspoken advocate for women. I enjoyed this session and will most likely read her book when it is published.

Colson Whitehead: Harlem Shuffle

American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Colson Whitehead was interviewed by Michael Williams about his latest book Harlem Shuffle (2021) and his forthcoming sequel Crook Manifesto (2023).

Williams began by asking him why he changed genre from book to book. Whitehead explained that he admires filmmakers like Scorsese and Kubrick who push themselves to do something different each time. He said 'usually when I am done I want to do something very different.' After the success of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, he decided he wanted to do a heist novel.

He said 'I love the heist genre' and referred to great heist films like Ocean's 11, Rafifi and Asphalt Jungle. They spoke about the mechanics of a heist, bring a crew together. Williams asked him who he would be in heist. Whitehead suggested he would be the master planner or demolition expert. He said he wouldn't be the wheelman as he only got his driver's licence a year ago.

In Harlem Shuffle the protagonist is the fence, an unusual choice. The novel is divided into three capers, and is the first of a trilogy of novels. This one is set in the 1950s and 1960s, but the sequels will age with Ray through the decades.

After the session I met Colson Whitehead and he signed copies of The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle for me. While I haven't bought it yet, his zombie novel Zone One is also of interest.

Book Signings

Today I met Pip Williams, Eleanor Catton and Colson Whitehead and had the following books signed;

Pip Williams - The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020)
Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries
Eleanor Catton - Birnam Wood
Colson Whitehead - The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead - Harlem Shuffle

Tuesday 30 May 2023

Sydney Writers' Festival 2023 - Day Two

After a late night at day one of the festival, I had a later start on Thursday 25 May 2023. I only bought tickets for two sessions today, with the plan to get rush tickets in between and see where the day takes me. I ended up seeing six wonderful sessions and having a fulfilling day.

In Praise of Difficult Women

This sold-out session was all about women who do not adhere to expectations of their gender.

The panel featured authors Anne Casey-Hardy (Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls) and Fiona Kelly McGregor (Iris), interviewed by Sophie Cunningham (This Devastating Fever). There was a discussion about the title of the session and agreement that the women themselves were not difficult, but the context in which they found themselves was and that these women did not conform to gender expectations.

Anne Casey-Hardy's book is a series of short stories in which 'every girl is doing something slightly shady'. She described many of the short stories and the reason she wrote them. Hardy also listed some of the writers she admired including Edgar Allen Poe, Daphne Du Maurier and Tegan Bennett Daylight. Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls sounds really interesting and I will seek out a copy of the book.

I am familiar with Fiona Kelly McGregor's book Iris and look forward to reading it. The novel is a fictionalised story of a real person, set in 1932-37 when women could not have bank accounts or own property. Iris Webber made her living busking with an accordion. She teamed up with Maisie and had a bond of friendship and had to hide that they were queer. Iris went to work for sly-grogger Kate Leigh, a woman I am familiar with as she is featured in author Karlyn Robinson's book Remarkable Women of the Central West (2021). I was interested to learn that McGregor is planning at least one more book about Webber which will cover her later years.

After the session I met panel chair Sophie Cunningham and she signed a copy of This Devastating Fever for me.

Brigitta Olubas: Life and Work of Shirley Hazzard

I stopped by the Curiosity Stage to listen to a presentation by biographer Brigitta Olubas, Professor of English at the University of NSW, talk about her book Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life (2022).

While I have a copy of The Great Fire (2003) and have heard of The Transit of Venus (1980), I am not really familiar with Shirley Hazzard so it was great to listen to Olubas talk about her. Hazzard was born in Sydney in 1931 and had an unhappy childhood. Her father was a diplomat and in 1951 moved to New York City where a twenty year old Shirley took up a job at the United Nations as a typist. She was a terrible stenographer, but began writing stories. The UN sent her to Naples in 1956 where she fell in love with the city and with Europe - a stark contrast to her parochial upbringing in Australia.

Despite the vast amount of research Olubas had done on her subject, she had not intended to write a biography. But when Shirley Hazzard died in 2016 Olubas was concerned that no one else would, so she decided to write it and ensure that Hazzard's writing life was documented.

Beginnings: New Australian Fiction

Throughout the festival, the Curiosity Stage featured a short segment called Beginnings in which authors would come to the stage to read for five minutes from their work. I ended up attending the Beginnings sessions on and off over the next few days as there were many excellent authors featured.

This one was on New Australian Fiction and features Kate Scott, Shirley Le, James McKenzie Watson, Robbie Arnott, Fiona McFarlane and Tim Flannery. These were great and I was particularly moved by Arnott's reading from Limberlost.

George Monbiot: Regenesis

I bought rush tickets to hear George Monbiot (live from UK) interviewed by Rebecca Huntley about his book Regenesis. I had never heard of Monbiot and did not know what this session was about, but I am so glad I went as it was fascinating.

Monbiot spoke about the harm farming is doing to the environment and called for a 're-wilding' of the landscape. He explained that farming is destroying habitats leading to wildlife reductions, species extinction and water pollution. He explained that people are not taught systems theory and do not understand the global food supply is at risk because we have created a non-resilient system.

Monbiot explained that we need to have six elements to create a resilient system:

Diversity - currently 4 companies control 90% of global grain trade)
Asynchronicity - different things happening at different times, seasonal varieties
Redundancy - spare capacity to absorb shocks
Modularity - separated compartments (e.g. different container ports)
Circuit breakers - regulatory constraints
Back Up Systems - can we default to other ways of doing things if something goes down - for example one of the key shipping choke points.

He argued that the biggest problem is the production of beef and the move towards pasture-fed meat which uses more land for less food. He said a plant-based diet would be preferable but it won't happen through moral persuasion. But he was hopeful through the use of substitute meat products. I am a life-long vegetarian so am already living a plant-based lifestyle but his presentation made me think about the sources of my produce and the need to ensure it is not air-freighted.

Stella Prize Winner: Sarah Holland-Batt

I then attended a session in which Beejay Silcox interviewed Sarah Holland-Batt about her Stella Prize winning poetry collection The Jaguar. Holland-Batt spoke lovingly of her father and her childhood memories. He was diagnosed with Parkinsons and dementia and about ten years after his diagnoses she started to write poems.

Holland-Batt spoke about how poetry 'is about not saying things, and in turn saying something profound'. She likes how poetry is written in lines and there is a sense of surprise as lines lead into one another. She said that when she pulled the collection together she didn't want to write about death and dying, but rather a celebration of living.

During the session Holland-Batt read several poems from the collection. I was so moved by the poems that I bought a copy after the session.

Richard Fidler and Peter Frankopan

My last session for the day featured authors Richard Fidler (The Book of Roads and Kingdoms) and Peter Frankopan (Silk Roads) in conversation about historical non-fiction and their love of all things Byzantine with historian Anna Clark.

Clark started the session by asking what was the first time they recalled living through history. Frankopan, growing up in the UK, spoke about the 1979 Iran Revolution and the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca. This was followed by the 1980s fear of nuclear holocaust. Fidler was in Australia and he recalled the nuclear tensions and the collapse of the Soviet States. This made me think about what my earliest recollection of living through history is. I was in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s and I recall the Air India terrorist attack in 1985 which killed over 300 people (mostly Canadians), the Ethiopian Civil War and the Live Aid concerts (1985), and Reagan's 'War on Drugs'. I also remember being terrified by 'acid rain' in the early 1980s.

Clark asked the authors about their works and how they chose to look globally rather than focus on a national angle. Frankopan spoke about how history is often fragmented and the stories are often siloed into specialised areas. He saw the need to connect these silos together and write expansive stories beyond borders.

Fidler spoke about the need to tell stories well, drawing on oral traditions as well as documents but understanding that written history is often privileged. Frankopan agreed and spoke about how histories are very metropolitan and that there is a need to look at other disciplines like archeology to learn about the past.

This was a really interesting session. I purchased a copy of Frankopan's book The Silk Roads (2015) and he signed it for me.

Book signings

I engaged in some strategic book signing today, attending signing sessions for authors I will see later in the week to balance out the load of books I need to carry around each day and to better manage my program.

For example, I am seeing Geraldine Brooks on Day Three but brought in some books for her to sign today. She signed an almost thirty-year-old copy of The Nine Parts of Desire (1994) that I have had since I was a the University of Toronto, and a copy of her Pulitzer Prize winning novel March (2015). I also met author Jane Harper and had a photo with her (as I did at the festival in 2019).

Books signed by authors today:

Jane Harper - Exiles (2022)
Sophie Cunningham - This Devastating Fever (2022)
Peter Frankopan - The Silk Roads (2015)
Geraldine Books - The Nine Parts of Desire (1994)
Geraldine Brooks - March (2015)

Sydney Writers' Festival 2023 - Day One

My festival starts with two heavy hitters - back-to-back Booker Prize winners - on Wednesday 24 May 2023. I hadn't planned on starting my festival so early in the week, but as Evaristo was not on the weekend program, I wanted to make sure I was able to hear her speak. As a bonus, Shehan Karunatilaka was speaking right after her. It was an excellent evening which really set the tone for the festival that followed.

Bernardine Evaristo: A Writing Life

British author Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019 for Girl, Woman, Other. The prestige of this award saw many of her previous novels re-released to great acclaim and a wider audience. In 2022 she published her memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. She was interviewed on stage by the brilliant Sisonke Msimang, who asked intelligent and engaging questions.

Msimang began by asking Evaristo why she wrote a memoir. Evaristo said that after Girl Woman Other she 'couldn't face the idea of writing another novel'. She was under a lot of scrutiny with the success of that book and gave many interviews in which she talked about her writing process and her life. She then thought she could write a memoir 'about how life shapes my creativity and how my creativity shapes my life'.

Evaristo spoke of her early life as one of eight children. Her father was a disciplinarian who didn't trust tradespeople so their ramshackle house was filled with half-finished DIY projects, like an uninstalled bathtub erect in the corner of a room. Her mother was a white English catholic woman and her father was a Nigerian migrant. Her maternal grandmother loved her grandchildren but was racist, never accepting her daughter's marriage and never having photos of her grandchildren in the house. I loved how Evaristo described her grandmother's neighbourhood as being filled with 'curtain-twitchers'.

Msimang asked about racism and how Evaristo appeared to be incredibly hardy, experiencing racism without taking it personally. Evaristo explained that 'British racism is quite sophisticated.' She was seen as a 'half-caste' and didn't quite fit in.

They spoke about literature and how when Evaristo was growing up the only black authors available were American, but the experience of African-American women was different to her own. She loves Toni Morrison, and wishes she had a book like Girl Woman Other when she was growing up as it would have blown her mind.

Msimang asked how winning the Booker Prize changed Evaristo's life. She said it changed her career, but not her life. It also meant for the first time she was able to make a living as a writer and her back catalogue could now reach new audiences.

After the session I met Evaristo when she signed a copy of Girl Woman Other for me.

Shehan Karunatilaka: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Sri Lankan novelist Shehan Karunatilaka won the 2022 Booker Prize for his satirical novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In this session he spoke with Michael Williams about his work. I really enjoyed this session. Michael Williams is an excellent interviewer - quick witted, intelligent and engaging.

Williams began by asking Karunatilaka about the impetus for writing The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. He responded by saying that he was tired of writing about cricket - 'My fans were middle aged people who loved cricket'. He then spoke about how the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009) had ended about ten years before he started writing the novel and there was a lot of optimism in the country that things would be different. But the wounds we not healing.

Williams asked if the novel was intended to be allegorical. Karunatilaka said 'I thought I was writing a straight forward ghost story. I was not trying to do political commentary'. He said the character of Maali, a journalist, was inspired by the unsolved murders of many journalists that occurred during the time. He spoke about Richard de Zoysa, the Sri Lankan journalist who was abducted and murdered in 1990, his body dumped on a beach. No one has been held responsible for this murder.

They then spoke about Karunatilaka's portrayal of the afterlife which Williams described as 'like life but worse'. Apparently there is a lot of admin in the afterlife. Karunatilaka said 'when you have a ghost narrating a story, how do they spend their days?' He created a set of rules - ghosts can only go where they have been in life, they travel by the wind, and can go wherever someone speaks their name. Essentially, ghosts will cease to exist when they are no longer remembered by anyone living.

Williams asked why he decided to write in the second person. Karunatilaka said his initial draft was in third person. But 'the voice in your head is second person' and 'the voice in your head survives the death of the body'. When speaking about his beliefs about the afterlife, Karunatilaka said he doesn't know but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. He is open to possibilities.

They talked about the Booker Prize win and how in 2017 George Sanders won for his own take on the afterlife, Lincoln in the Bardo. Karunatilaka admires that book and said he thought he wouldn't win because they both were narrated by ghosts in the afterlife.

After the session I met Shehan Karunatilaka and he signed a copy of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida for me.

What a great start to SWF2023!

Book signings

I love having books signed by authors. It means so much to me to meet writers who made an impact on me as a reader, and to have a signed copy of a beloved book is greatly treasured.

Books signed by authors today:

Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022)

Today's signings add to my collection of Booker Prize winning novels signed by the author at past Sydney Writers' Festivals, including:

Thomas Keneally - Schindler's Ark (1982)
Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries (2013)
Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2014)
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings (2015)
Damon Galgut - The Promise (2021)

Monday 29 May 2023

Sydney Writers' Festival 2023

Being immersed in the world of books and writers feeds my soul. So I took the past week off work to attend the Sydney Writers' Festival. I had pre-purchased tickets to to attended a dozen sessions over the five days, but ended up seeing twice that many - buying rush tickets on the day and spending time at the excellent free sessions on offer at the curiosity stage.

While I shared my festival experiences on Twitter (@inaguddle), I will blog about them here as I have done in the past (for example - SWF2022, SWF2019, SWF2018, SWF2016, SWF2015). It will take me time to write these posts as I process my thoughts on all that I have learned.

Before I get into the individual sessions, I thought I would reflect on my overall experience of the festival, the program, venue and experience.

Program

SWF Artistic Director Ann Mossop curated an incredible program - blending international and local authors who spoke on contemporary themes and issues. It was great to have international authors back in person. Over the course of the festival I saw an incredible line up of authors including: Helen Garner, Richard Flanagan, Eleanor Catton, Colson Whitehead, Pip Williams, Geraldine Brooks, Niki Savva. Margaret Simons, Peter Frankopan, Richard Fidler, Bernardine Evaristo, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sophie Cunningham and more. The panel chairs and session hosts were universally excellent.

The Curiosity Stage was much better this year - with improvements to layout (allowing more people to comfortably sit), acoustics and content. These were the free public sessions and I tended to gravitate here whenever I had a gap between sessions. I particularly liked the 'Beginnings' options were a group of authors would give a five minute reading from their books. This meant that everyone could participate and see big names at the festival.

I also appreciated the efforts to include people from across the country via livestream from local libraries and halls. The session chairs did a great job of including these participants, taking questions from Bunbury, Gosford, Bathurst and many places near and far.

SWF always feels really accessible - getting up close and personal with authors you admire. I enjoyed getting to talk with writers at book signings or while passing them as they walked through the venue. I even got to chat with journalist Annabel Crabb in the queue at the bookstore about what she was buying.

Ticketing

I pre-purchased most of my tickets. One of the challenges is that the program comes out at night and then tickets are on sale the next day - giving limited time to plan sessions. It would be great if there were a week or even a weekend between program release and ticket sales. In previous years there were discounted rush tickets for last minute bookings, but this year rush seats were full price. I always thought the discounted on-the-day seats were a great option, especially for students or others who found full price prohibitive.

Venue

I spent most of my festival at Carriageworks in the festival precinct. It is super handy for me as it is close to home, but it is also a great space - offering open areas, plenty of seating, and options for food and drink. Given its central location and openness, it was also easy to meet up with people.

My only quibble is with the seating in Bay 17 where I spent most of my time. The raked seats are comfortable and well spaced, but the floor seats are not and some have limited views (with cameras obstructing and neck-craning angles). On Friday and across the weekend they added two extra rows of seats (AAA and BBB), presumably for overflow, but these rows narrowed access in and out of the session creating bottlenecks.

I also attended a session at Sydney Town Hall which is always a glorious venue.

Volunteers and Staff

SWF has the best volunteer crew. They were everywhere - directing people to their seats, coordinating book signing lines, handing out programs, placing microphones. They really contributed to the friendly and inviting nature of festival. Having worked with volunteers, I know how important they are to the success of an event, and the SWF volunteers were great.

The SWF staff and Carriageworks staff were also amazing - troubleshooting and attending to the needs of participants. I also appreciated Ann Mossop's visibility and accessibility throughout the event. When one author did not show up for book signings, Ann Mossop came down the long line of fans and personally relayed the message that the author would not be present. She didn't need to do that herself, but I thought it showed leadership and saved the volunteers having to break the news.

Overall

As a whole, I thought the 2023 Sydney Writers' Festival was excellent. While I loved seeing favourite authors, I really appreciate being introduced to new voices and discovering new ideas. I came away from the festival with a long list of books to explore (and a groaning credit card bill) with plenty of titles to keep me busy until next year's festival!

Stay tuned for more posts about the sessions I attended.

Wednesday 24 May 2023

Guerrilla Gardeners

Author Eleanor Catton was thrust into the spotlight in 2013 when she won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries. At age 28 she was the youngest author to win, and only the second New Zealander after Keri Hulme won in 1985 (the year of Catton's birth) for The Bone People. In the decade since, Catton has been busy screenwriting, having a child, and crafting her latest novel, Birnam Wood (2023).

Set in 2017 in New Zealand, Birnam Wood is a collective of gardeners who plant vegetables on unused tracts of land and sell the proceeds. The founder of the group is Mira Bunting, a 29-year-old horticulturist, who has strong feelings about capitalism and property. These eco-idealists are passionate about their work, aiming for radical social change. Her friend Shelley has been with Birnam Wood since it started, but is thinking about leaving to get an office job. Shelley's relationship with Mira is starting to fray as she feels like a follower of Mira's plans rather than driving her own life. Another founding member Tony has just returned to Christchurch after several years overseas. He and Mira were once close, but have not spoken since he left. Tony wants to be a journalist and an activist.

The story largely takes place in the fictional town of Thorndike, near the ruggedly beautiful Korowai National Park. A landslide has occurred isolating the town. Recently knighted Sir Owen and Lady Jill Darvish own a magnificent property in Thorndike which is large, and largely uninhabited, making it ideal for Birnam Wood to harvest. While in Thorndike Mira meets Robert Lemoine, an American tech billionaire, who plans to build a doomsday bunker in this remote part of the world. Lemoine claims to want to invest in Birnam Wood so they can scale up their enterprises. But why would a man who made his fortune in drone and surveilllance technology be interested in a bunch of gardeners?

Birnam Wood is an entertaining, intelligent and well-crafted thriller. Catton has a real gift for dialogue, infusing the characters with a realistic, candid and heart-breaking conversation. Whether they are spouting their manifesto, joking or arguing, their communication is authentic. The characters also have believable relationships with one another - whether it is Mira and Shelley's fractured friendship, or the Darvishes interdependency through their long marriage.

Part social satire, part eco-thriller, Birnam Wood burns slowly at first, picking up pace once the action begins and racing to its page-turning conclusion. While the ending was rather abrupt, it is indicative of Catton's daring and playfulness, leaving the readers wanting more. Catton has crafted a brilliant novel and I look forward to hearing her speak about it this week at the Sydney Writers Festival.

Saturday 20 May 2023

Miles Franklin Award Longlist 2023

On 16 May 2023, the longlist was announced for Australia's most prestigious literary awards, the Miles Franklin Award, with twelve authors vying for the $60,000 prize. Richard Neville, Librarian from the State Library of NSW, said on behalf of the judges:

“The 2023 longlist is a reflection of the breadth and depth of contemporary Australian story-telling. The eleven longlisted novels define Australian literature as a transformative space where writers are singing the songs of the nation today. They reverberate with the cadences of this land where Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded, but also bring to us mellifluous sounds from far-away lands, weaving together literary traditions from around the world. The words of our novelists, grounded in personal experience, poetry and philosophy, are heralds of the new dawn of Australian fiction: they hum and hiss with language that is newly potent and styles that are imaginative and fresh.”.”

I have enjoyed many previous Miles Franklin Award longlisters, including the 2022 winner Jennifer Down (Bodies of Light), which was a highlight of my reading last year.

Let's check out the Longlist:

Kgshak Akec - Hopeless Kingdom

Eight year old Akita has sent her young life moving to survive. From Sudan to Cairo to Sydney and now Geelong, Akita just wants to find a place to belong. Told from the perspectives of Akita and her mother Taresai, Hopeless Kingdom explores trauma, resilience, gender, racism and migration. Kgshak Akec is a South-Sudanese writer and poet who migrated to Australia. Hopeless Kingdom was the winner of the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.

Robbie Arnott - Limberlost

Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott is no stranger to the Miles Franklin Award, having been longlisted in 2021 for his novel The Rain Heron. Limberlost is the story of teenager Ned. One summer, while his brothers are at war, Ned and his sister and father struggle to maintain the family farm. Ned wants nothing more than to escape so he sells rabbit pelts in the hope of buying a small boat. Arnott is known for his ability to capture landscape, accurately depicting the Tasmanian countryside.

Jessica Au - Cold Enough for Snow

I have been longing to read this novella since it was published but had a hard time tracking it down. In Cold Enough for Snow, a mother and her adult daughter travel to Japan as tourists. Told from the perspective of the daughter, the visit prompts memories of their life and stories of extended family. While they travel together, can the two connect, or is there a growing distance that they can never traverse.

Shankari Chandran - Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens

From the title and cover, this novel looks like a lightweight, but when I read more about the book, it appears to have a much deeper story to tell. Cinnamon Gardens is a nursing home in Western Sydney which serves as a refuge for residents. Many of the residents hail from Sri Lanka and were traumatised by the Sri Lankan Civil War. When a local councillor lodges a complaint against the owners of the nursing home, accusing them of racism, tensions boil over and anti-immigrant sentiments surface. Author Shankari Chandran is a lawyer and writer.

Claire G Coleman - Enclave

Nyoongar writer Coleman is best known for her critically acclaimed novel Terra Nullius. In her third novel Enclave, Coleman has created a claustrophobic walled city where residents are surveilled by drones. Christine, a 21 year old university student, has grown up in the Enclave and has a growing awareness of the class and racial lines in her city. What happens if she is cast out of her community? As a lover of dystopian fiction, I quite like the sounds of this novel.

George Haddad - Losing Face

Joey is a young man drifting aimlessely around Western Sydney. One day he is arrested for an alleged involvement in a violent crime. His grandmother Elaine tries to save face, but past traumas surface with issues of addiction, abandonment, misogyny and cultural division. Author George Haddad is a doctoral candidate at Western Sydney University, known for his novella Populate and Perish.

Pirooz Jafari - Forty Nights

Habiba wants to bring her orphaned nieces from war ravished Somalia to Australia. She commissions Melbourne lawyer Tishtar to help her with this matter. As Tishtar hears Habiba's tales of her homeland, he remembers the atrocities he experienced in Iran following the Islamic Revolution. Author Pirooz Jafari hails from Iran, studied law and this is his first novel.

Julie Janson - Madukka: The River Serpent

Aunty June has done her Cert III in Investigative Studies at TAFE and has now set up her own business: Yanakirri Investigative Services. When an environmental activist goes missing, Aunty June is determined to find him. While she comes up against unreliable local cops, bikies, and the community, she realises corruption is preventing her from discovering the truth. Meanwhile, the sacred Barka Darling River is running out of water. Julie Janson is a Darug Burruberongal writer and playwright. This is her debut crime thriller.

Yumna Kassab - The Lovers

This is a fable about love, but it is not a typical love story. Jamila and Amir are the lovers at the centre of this tale exploring family expectations, class divides, cultural barriers, longing, fear and insecurity. Yumna Kassab is a critically acclaimed author of The House of Youssef and Australiana, who has been listed for many awards including the Stella Prize and Literary Awards in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.

Fiona Kelly McGregor - Iris

Set in Depression-era Sydney, Iris Webber arrived looking for work. She busks with her accordion, and scams to make ends meet. She meets Maisie, a young sex worker, but queer desire is hardly punished. Written in the vernacular of the time, Iris depicts sly-groggers, gangsters and good-time gals in Sydney's underbelly. Iris was longlisted for the Stella Prize. I will be attending a session with the author at the Sydney Writers Festival next week.

Adam Ouston - Waypoints

On 18 March 1910 in a paddock at Diggers Rest outside Melbourne, Harry Houdini sought to make a world record for aviation as the first person to fly an aircraft in Australia. In Ouston's novel Waypoints, narrator Bernard Cripp is obsessed with this tale. Cripp is grieving for the sudden loss of his wife and daughter on MH370, the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared without a trace. How can there be no answers to that mystery? This is Tasmanian author Adam Ouston's debut novel.

At this stage I have not read any of these novels, but I do have several of these titles in the queue to be read - including copies of Jessica Au and Fiona Kelly McGregor which I have on reserve at my mother's house! I also like the sound of the Claire G Coleman novel.

Despite my terrible track record of predicting shortlisters and winners, I will guess that the following authors will make the shortlist: Arnott, Au, Coleman, Janson, and McGregor.

The Shortlist will be announced 20 June 2023 and the winner will be revealed on 25 July 2023.

Friday 12 May 2023

Pulitzer Prize Winners 2023

The Pulitzer Prize Winners have been announced with awards for Journalism and Books, Drama and Music. Let's take a look at the book award winners and finalists.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The prize was shared this year with Hernan Diaz' novel Trust and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead recognised. Trust was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Demon Copperhead is currently in the running for the 2023 Women's Prize. Vauhini Vara was a finalist for The Immortal King Rao.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Sanaz Toossi has won for English, a play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in Tehran. Finalists were Aleshea Harris for On Sugarland and Lloyd Suh for The Far Country.

The Pulitzer Prize for History

Jefferson Cowie won for Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power a look at the evolution of white supremacy in an Alabama County in the 19th and 20th centuries. Finalists were Michael John Witten for Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America and Garrett M Graff for Watergate: A New History.

The Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Beverly Gage was recognised for her biography G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, about the infamous FBI Director. Finalists were His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa and Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans.

The Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography

New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu won for his memoir Stay True, about friendship and grief. Finalists were Chloé Cooper Jones for Easy Beauty: A Memoir and Ingrid Rojas Contreras for The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir.

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Prolific poet Carl Phillips was recognised for his collection of poetry Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020. Finalists were Blood Snow by Inuit author dg nanouk okpik and Still Life by the late Jay Hopler,

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa won for His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Finalists were Jing Tau for Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern, David George Haskell for Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, and Linda Villarosa for Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation.

While I am not writing here about the Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism, I do want to give a shout out to Canadian journalist Connie Walker for winning a Pulitzer for her podcast Stolen: Surviving St Michael's about the Saskatchewan residential school. You can read more about her achievements here.

Tuesday 9 May 2023

Revisiting Shirley

Continuing my #BigBronteReadalong2023 I grabbed my old copy of Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1849). While I was certain I had read it long ago, I found a bookmark at page sixty and a dog-ear at one-hundred and fourteen, from two previous failed attempts. Would I make it to the end this time?

Reader, I made it. But it was by no means certain, almost chucking the book across the room several times in frustration. Having loved Charlotte Bronte's previous novel Jane Eyre, why was Shirley such a hard slog?

Set in Yorkshire in 1811-1812, England is industrialising and the Napoleonic Wars are raging in Europe. Caroline Helstone is a young woman living with her uncle, Reverend Matthewston Helstone, having been abandoned by her mother when her father died. As a poor orphan, Caroline has limited options and contemplates work as a governess as her future path. Caroline learns French from her cousin Hortense Moore who lives nearby. She secretly pines for Hortense's brother Robert, a mill owner who is entirely focussed on his work.

Two hundred pages in, we meet the titular character Miss Shirley Keeldar. Independently wealthy, vivacious and whip-smart, Shirley can forge her own path. While she is wooed by many potential suitors (keen to get their hands on her and her estate), she has the liberty to decline and will not marry for anything short of love.

One would think that this is the 'story of two contrasting heroines and the men they love' (as stated on the book jacket), but to get to this the reader has to wade through 600 pages with an abundance of idle curates, luddite uprisings, pollution, sickness, and reunions. While I appreciated Bronte's empathetic portrayal of women and the limited choices they had at the time and her exploration of female friendships, I ultimately did not care for any of the characters. For me, the novel would have benefited from introducing Shirley much earlier - she is a breath of fresh air.

I appreciate that Charlotte Bronte had a lot going on while she wrote this novel, having lost her siblings Branwell, Emily and Anne in less than twelve months during 1848/1849. This explains the anger and grief that underpins the novel. I think Bronte was trying to do too much in this novel, rebelling against expectations following the success of her debut Jane Eyre.

Ultimately, I did not enjoy Shirley. I was hoping that it would be akin to Elizabeth Gaskell's wonderful North and South (1854) which also focuses on the impact of the Industrial Revolution, but which has an engaging storyline and memorable characters. My Shirley experience was made better by listening to the audiobook while I read along, providing more depth to the characters than I found on the page. While I managed to succeed on my third attempt, this is not a novel I will revisit again.

Pages

Wednesday 31 May 2023

Bringing the Past to Life

Eleanor Catton: Birnam Wood

Raina MacIntyre: Dark Winter

Clementine Ford: The Myth of Marital Happiness

Colson Whitehead: Harlem Shuffle

Book Signings

Read more about my SWF2023 here:

Tuesday 30 May 2023

In Praise of Difficult Women

Brigitta Olubas: Life and Work of Shirley Hazzard

Beginnings: New Australian Fiction

George Monbiot: Regenesis

Stella Prize Winner: Sarah Holland-Batt

Richard Fidler and Peter Frankopan

Book signings

Read more about my SWF2023 here:

Bernardine Evaristo: A Writing Life

Shehan Karunatilaka: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Book signings

Read more about my SWF2023 here:

Monday 29 May 2023

Program

Ticketing

Venue

Volunteers and Staff

Overall

Read more about my SWF2023 here:

Wednesday 24 May 2023

Saturday 20 May 2023

Friday 12 May 2023

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama

The Pulitzer Prize for History

The Pulitzer Prize for Biography

The Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

Tuesday 9 May 2023