Author: Whispering Gums

Al Campbell, The keepers (#BookReview)

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Al Campbell’s debut novel, The keepers, is a complex and ambitious novel about parenting, specifically about parenting children who are deemed too difficult by society, leaving their mothers, or carers, to survive, or not, as best they can. It’s confronting but, unfortunately, all too real.

That this is its theme is obvious from the novel’s opening page, which is titled “Scrapbook #12”, and comprises a news report from abc.net.au, 23 April 2018 (original here). The lead sentence reads, “special needs group pays tribute to 11yo boy with autism killed by train after escaping from respite care”. I remember this case.

We are then launched into the main storyline, which concerns Jay, a mother and full-time carer for her twin autistic sons, Frank and Teddy, and features a cast of other characters, some real, like her unsupportive husband Jerrik, and some imaginary, mainly her childhood “friend”, Keep (short for Keeper). Alternated with this storyline, which is told chronologically through time-stamped sections (like “Monday 2:06am” and, later, “4 days till extubation”), is the story of Jay’s childhood, in which she had experienced abuse and neglect at the hands of a grandfather and her dysfunctional mother. These sections are also time-stamped (such as “10 years old, autumn). Interspersed with these are scrapbook entries, like the one opening the novel. They are compiled by Jay, who clips and shares stories about the neglect and, even, murder of children with disabilities. As I said, complex and ambitious.

There is so much to like about this novel, starting with Campbell’s characterisation of Jay and her sons. It’s vivid and empathetic, which is not surprising given her own life experience. Write what you know, authors are told. These people are not her and her sons, but she knows them intimately, and the scenes featuring them shine off the page, even non-verbal Teddy who communicates via iPad, and especially patient, stuttering Frank. I’d love to share some of the interactions between Jay and her sons, because the warmth, the humour, the patience, the imagination make for some great reading and convey some of the joys in their relationship, but I’m not sure they’d work out of context, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Meanwhile, another strength of the novel is Campbell’s energetic, evocative writing. It starts with a bang and rarely lets up. The language is often breathtaking in its ability to capture a moment, a feeling. On the first page after the scrapbook entry, Jay refers to it as “the horror on the page a thing of thorns in my hands” and on the next page, the unsettled night outside is conveyed through a “lone plucky lamppost mooned by wanton whacks of lightning”. She’s talking in these opening pages to the mysterious and shape-shifting Keep, whose “latest incarnation” is “bald as bone and mouthless. No breath of course. Without ears … Some ancient mica, colourless and brittle? … His appearance is rarely the same”. The reader is immediately introduced to one of the meanings of the title, Jay’s “keeper”. Described later as her “poultice and protector, destroyer of others”, Keep has been with her since her difficult childhood. Another meaning is that her two sons, despite what the system might think or suggest, are “keepers” – at least until she is no longer around. What then? This question underpins all that Jay does and feels, and lies just beneath some of the uglier scrapbook items.

But, Campbell, does ask a lot of her readers. The structure is complex, which, on its own, would not be a problem, multiple storylines, after all, not being new. But, there is a lot going on. The exciting but idiosyncratic style, the switches in voice, the sudden appearances of Keep and later “the Other Things”, the shifts in storylines from mother-Jay to youthful-Jay, demand a level of attention that can sometimes get in the way of the story. I’m not convinced, in fact, that Jay’s childhood story – readable and interesting though it is – adds enough. Is it intended as another example of how the system lets children down? If so, I don’t think it’s needed, as Jay’s story with her sons, is powerful enough. Is it intended to contrast her own style of mothering with that of her mother, or to introduce the idea of child abuse? If so, these seem like different stories, and ones that potentially weaken what seems to be her intention to highlight the desperate situation families with special needs children find themselves in.

In other words, Campbell’s main story, as I see it, is a mother’s “warrior” style love for her “different” children, and the system that lets them – the children and the parent/carer – down, again and again. She tells of doctors who refuse to listen or heed, of the social welfare bureaucracy (through the NDIS) with its irrational rules, of schools which can be inflexible, of people in parks and shops who would rather not see her children – and so on. If it’s infuriating for the reader, imagine what it’s like for the parents.

Overall, The keepers is a powerful story that wants us all to understand the life of the carer, the very difficult questions confronting them as they and their children age, and the way the system all too often treats them as lesser or as too hard or as “types” to be slotted into rules and regulations. For Campbell, the personal is the political, and vice versa in fact. She would like to believe there is real truth and commitment to the idea that it takes a village to raise a child, but “some village we turned out to be”, she says to Keep at one point. And right there it occurred to me that this book, despite its flaws, is the sort of thing that should be selected for the Prime Minister’s Summer reading list.

Al Campbell
The keepers
St Lucia: UQP, 2022
336pp.
ISBN: 9780702265488

Monday musings on Australian literature: My favourite (Australian) fictional character(s)

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Over the last twelve months or so, The Conversation has published occasional articles titled “My favourite fictional character“. In each article the writer names a character and justifies their choice.

As far as I can tell, there have been six so far, and most have chosen non-Australian characters. The choosers and their choices have been:

Ethel Turner, Seven Little Australians
  • Carol Lefevre, whose Murmurations I’ve reviewed: Ivy Eckdorf in William Trevor’s O’Neill’s Hotel (1969), for her “crazed, compelling voice”.
  • Edwina Preston, whose Bad art mother I’ve reviewed: Judy in Ethel Turner’s Seven little Australians (1894), who was “wild … equipped to conquer the world, but not to survive it”.
  • Melanie Saward: Queenie in Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie (2019), who is “complex, funny, broken, fun”.
  • Jane Gleeson-White, whose book, Australian classics: 50 great writers and their celebrated works, is in my reference collection: Lyra in Philip Pullman’s Northern lights (1995) AND (she cheekily chose two) Lila Cerullo in Elena Ferrante’s My brilliant friend (2011), for being “half-wild, ‘too much’ heroines”.
  • Amy Walters, who was a blogger in the New Territory program: Esme Lennox in Maggie O’Farrell’s The vanishing act of Esme Lennox (2006), who “refuses to be the ‘perfect victim’ – even in an asylum”.
  • Alexander Howard: John Le Carré’s George Smiley (first appeared, 1961), who is “unattractive, overweight, a terrible dresser – and a better spy than James Bond”

If you are interested in their justifications, you can find all the articles at the link in my opening paragraph. I note that to date only Preston has chosen an Australian character. Also, her character is the only one from a bona fide classic, which surprised me a little. So far, there have been five female choosers to one male, and their choices have matched their genders. Telling?

Meanwhile, I’ll share a few (yes, I’m allowing myself a few) of my favourite Australian fictional characters. It’s a challenge not just because it’s always hard to choose favourites, or because “favourite” is a slippery concept, but because favourite characters don’t necessarily come from favourite books. Most do, but, for example, a longtime favourite novel of mine is Voss, but I wouldn’t say the characters were favourites.

I’m giving you my favourites in six random categories:

Favourite childhood character: Ethel Turner’s Judy in Seven little Australians. I’m with Edwina Preston. How could any red-blooded Australian girl not want to be the brave, warm-hearted, rebellious Judy.

Kim Scott That Deadman Dance

Favourite First Nations character: Bobby Wabalanginy in Kim Scott’s That deadman dance (my review). While not the only voice in the book, young Nyoongar boy Bobby is our guide, and he fulfils that role with wit, intelligence and honesty. But I have others, like the flawed Kerry in Melissa Lucashenko’s Too much lip (my post) and the motherly Odette in Tony Birch’s The white girl (my post).

Favourite older character: Kathleen in Thea Astley’s Coda (my post). Being a woman of a certain age, I’m interested in women traversing the closing decades of their lives. There are more around in our literature than you might think, and I’ve liked many of them, but Kathleen is a favourite because she’s a memorable, wily, acerbic, old woman, a self-styled “feral-grandmother”, who is not ready to be, as she says, “corpsed”. She knows the “four ages of women: bimbo, breeder, babysitter, burden” and she’s doing her darnedest to rise above it. I’m not really like her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love her.

Favourite nice guy: Russell Bass in Trevor Shearston’s Hare fur (my review). OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for “nice guys”, in fiction as well as in life. I’m not one of those (see below) who find nice guys boring or unbelievable. Fiction is full of unpleasant men, or, if not that, of dull, dithery, helpless, “dun-coloured” (to quote Patrick White) men. But there are good men too, like Will the doctor in Eleanor Limprecht’s The coast (my post). I’m going with Russell Bass, however, because of how, with humanity, he navigates the tricky human, legal and moral territory of supporting kids who are hiding from welfare authorities.

Favourite villain: Father Pearse in John Clanchy’s In whom we trust (my review). What makes a villain a favourite? Their villainy? Their redemptive qualities? Or, that they are only villainous because of their circumstances? For me, certainly not their villainy. I was never one of those girls who liked “the bad boys”, though “favourite” doesn’t necessarily mean “like” does it? Grenouille in Patrick Süskind’s Perfume could be a favourite character because he is pure villainy perfectly rendered, but I don’t like him. Father Pearse is not the worst character in Clanchy’s book, so is perhaps not, literally, a “villain”, but he is a weak man whose cowardice impacts the the children in his charge, until he is confronted.

Favourite independent woman (in a nod to Bill): Sybylla in Miles Franklin’s My brilliant career, of course. Like Ethel Turner’s Judy, she’s impossible to go past. She set the standard. But I must also give a nod to two femocrats, Cassie Armstrong in Sara Dowse’s West block (my review) and Edith Campbell Berry in Frank Moorhouse’s Edith trilogy. I’ve only read and reviewed the third, Cold light, since blogging, but she has energy and force that might land her in trouble at times but she keeps on going.

So, an eclectic lot, really, and I’ve sidestepped – because I can – the challenge of choosing ONE favourite character, but I hope I’ve got you thinking.

Would you care to share one or two favourite characters (and, if you are Australian, I’d really love to hear your Australian ones!)

Nell Stevens, Mrs Gaskell and me: To women, two love stories, two centuries apart (#BookReview)

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It’s a bit of a stretch, I admit, to submit Nell Stevens’ strange hybrid biography-memoir, Mrs Gaskell and me, as my second contribution to Bill’s (The Australian Legend) Gen 0. But, having read Elizabeth Gaskell’s two novellas, Lizzie Leigh and Cousin Phillis, for the week, and having had Stevens’ book on my TBR for a few years, I decided it was now or never to get it off the shelf. After all, as I wrote in my Two Novellas post, Mrs (Elizabeth) Gaskell (1810-1865) is a good example of a nineteenth century independent woman because, despite being a wife and mother, she managed to forge a career for herself as a writer.

So, let’s leap in. The reason this book is a bit of a stretch for inclusion in Bill’s week is not only because it is one of those hybrid biography-memoirs or bibliomemoirs, but because of Stevens’ statement in her disclaimer at the beginning of her book:

I have changed names, scenes, details, motivations and personalities. Every word has been filtered through the distortions of my memory, bias and efforts to tell a story. This is as true of the historical material as it is of the sections about my own life: studies, letters and texts excerpted here are not always faithfully quoted. This is a work of imagination.

So, it’s a work of imagination that tells two alternating stories. In first person, we have Stevens’ own story, which goes from 2013 to 2017, and encompasses her love affair with an American and the writing of her PhD on Mrs Gaskell. This is the memoir bit. In second person is Stevens’ story of Mrs Gaskell primarily covering the years 1855 to 1865 which encompass her three-months-long trip to Rome in 1857 and its aftermath. This is the biography bit.

Now, regular readers know my attitude to the fiction versus nonfiction question. I am more interested in truths than I am in facts. Facts on their own don’t always tell us a lot, and when we are talking a person’s life, they can be limiting. Knowing when a person married, for example, is far less relevant or interesting than how they felt about their marriage and the person they married, but, it is hard to get facts about those feelings. Even if the subject wrote letters and/or diaries, how truthful were they? And, did what they wrote one day in a fit of passion (positive or negative) reflect the truth of the relationship as a whole? And so on. All this is to say that I am happy to accept Mrs Gaskell and me as an imaginative bibliomemoir, but if you’re not, this book will not appeal to you.

Because of the reason I chose to read this book now, I’m not going to write the usual sort of review. There are several out there, if you are interested. Instead, I am going to focus on how it fits into Bill’s Independent Woman thesis, which is to look at non-Australian writers “whose work influenced, predated or paralleled the first wave feminists of AWW Gen 1”. This means, to me, that we can look at the works of these women writers and at their lives, and Mrs Gaskell had an interesting life.

“all of a sudden you had a career” (Stevens)

It was also, I think, though I haven’t read a true biography of her, a divided life. There was the traditional “Mrs Gaskell”, the well-brought up and educated wife and mother, but there was also this:

“Nature intended me for a gypsy-bachelor; that I am sure of. Not an old maid, for they are particular and fidgety, and tidy, and punctual – but a gypsy-bachelor.”

Gaskell wrote this in a letter in 1854. I checked its accuracy, given Stevens’ disclaimer, and it is, I believe, a true quote. Stevens goes on to write that Gaskell “played the role of wife and mother so very well, and so lovingly, but she was a ‘gypsy bachelor’ nonetheless”. So, while she was not one of those nineteenth century adventurers, like Isabella Bird and Flora Tristan, she was nonetheless independent. In her writing, this came through her “industrial” or “social novels” or what Stevens calls her “philanthropically motivated condition-of-England novels”. In these, she identified and questioned some of the significant social and moral issues of her era: in North and South, for example, she was among the first to explore conflict between employers and workers, and in Ruth (see Bill’s review), she preached compassion for “fallen” women. (I have read both of these, but before blogging.)

However, she also exhibited a level of independence in her personal life, despite its conventional trappings – and this is something that Stevens conveys (albeit with different motivations) in her bibliomemoir. Early in the book, Stevens writes, using her second person voice,

“You were always lucky, Mrs Gaskell; you were always grateful for what you had, and yet, all the same, you were restless” [my emph].

She then briefly chronicles Gaskell’s career trajectory from writing for herself, to sending articles and then short stories to magazines, to, finally, writing her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1853. Stevens writes that it “became the sort of book that people bought and reviewed and talked about, and all of a sudden you had a career”.

This is the background, but Stevens’ focus is Gaskell’s visit to Rome in 1857, when she was 46 years old, and what it meant to her. She went to escape, says Stevens, the potential fallout (of which there was plenty) from her Charlotte Brontë biography*. She found an energising community of artists (authors, poets, sculptors, painters, musicians) and met the seventeen years younger American author and critic, Charles Eliot Norton. They saw each other constantly, and remained in contact afterwards. It was, we believe, an unconsummated relationship, and not all agree it was a romance, though Stevens argues so. Whatever it was, it was clearly intense and significant, and given the (documented) ongoing years of contact that followed, it satisfied some of Gaskell’s intellectual yearnings and fed into her subsequent writing. Beyond this, Rome was, overall, argues Stevens, “transformative for her, to meet Norton, to be in Rome, to be treated as an equal by other artists”.

The other point I’d like to make is Stevens’ story that, at the end of her life, Gaskell bought and renovated a house in Hampshire without telling her husband. Sounds independent to me.

The Nell parts of the book, which chronicle Stevens’ own love affair and her struggles to write her PhD, mostly engaged me, particularly the academic life satire, but, I’m leaving it here because Mrs Gaskell was my theme. It’s an unusual book, but I’m glad I read it. I may not remember the details, which is fine given they may not all be exact, but I will remember how Stevens successfully transformed this intriguing author from her “Mrs Gaskell” persona to a living, feeling, independent woman.

* Wikipedia reports that in 2017 The Guardian named The life of Charlotte Brontë one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time.

Nell Stevens
Mrs Gaskell and me: Two women, two love stories, two centuries apart
[Published in the USA as The Victorian and the romantic]
London: Picador , 2018 (e-Edition, 2019)
256pp.
ISBN: 978-1-5098-6819-3

Elizabeth Gaskell, Lizzie Leigh AND Cousin Phillis (#BookReviews)

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This year, Bill (The Australian Legend) has framed his usual January “Gen” (short for generation) week, as Gen 0. Zero? How can that be? Well, let’s get it from the horse’s mouth. Bill says, “I am using ‘Gen 0’ as a designation for those writers – necessarily not Australian – whose work influenced, predated or paralleled the first wave feminists of AWW Gen 1”. In other words, we are looking at mostly 19th century writers – like Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Bill’s list is just a start. I would add Kate Chopin in there too, but more discussion and expansion of Bill’s list will presumably happen over the week, so I’ll get on to Mrs – or Elizabeth – Gaskell.

My Gaskell journey started in my teens when my mother, seeing my enthusiasm for Jane Austen, suggested I read Mrs (as she was on the book) Gaskell’s Cranford. From there I read North and south, Wives and daughters, and Ruth – all before blogging. I had hoped to read her first novel, Mary Barton, for this week, but when I saw how tight my reading schedule was this month, I decided to go for a novella (in the end, two novellas) instead. As it turned out, Bill has already posted on one of them, Cousin Phillis.

The Independent Woman

Bill’s AWW Gen weeks, which started back in 2018, draw from his thesis that “a case can be made for a parallel myth” to that of historian Russell Ward’s male-dominated Lone Hand. It features “the Independent Woman, who makes her way without, and often despite, men”. He is talking Australian women, of course, but for Gen 0 we are looking at what was happening elsewhere that may have affected, or simply parallel, what was happening in Australia. Elizabeth Gaskell is a perfect example, because, despite being a wife and mother of four daughters, she managed to forge a career for herself as a writer of novels, short stories, and biography.

She could do this for a few reasons, including the fact that the church she belonged to, and married into, was the dissenting, non-conformist Unitarian church, and that her minister husband William Gaskell was himself a writer and poet. He was also, according to Wikipedia, “a charity worker and pioneer in education of the working class”. It’s no surprise, then, that Gaskell’s themes, as Bill succinctly puts in it his post on Cousin Phillis, encompassed “dissenting religion and the plight of the poor, as well as strong women characters”, are all important themes in her work.”

Her fiction falls broadly into to main strands – the “ghost” stories, and the “social novel“. It is into the latter that Lizzie Leigh and Cousin Phillis fall.

Lizzie Leigh

Lizzie Leigh, published in 1855, is the simpler, shorter, of the two novellas, and its themes remind me of the 1853-published Ruth. It starts with the death of the “hard, stern, and inflexible” husband and father, James Leigh, who says to his wife on his deathbed “‘I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me!’” We soon learn that the “her” being forgiven is their fallen daughter “Lizzie” whom he’d disinherited.

With her husband gone, Anne decides to rent out the farm for a year and go to Manchester with her two sons, the 21-year-old responsible Will who sees things his father’s way and the much younger Tom. She wants to find Lizzie.

The rest of the novella concerns her search for Lizzie, and the difference of opinion between her idea of religion – a forgiving, New Testament-based one – and Will’s. He is prepared to support his mother, for a year anyhow, but he believes Lizzie is dead and, further, that her sin brings shame on the family. When he meets an angelic young woman, he’s convinced that her knowing about Lizzie will spoil his chances with her. But things are not as he sees them, and his mother, who had been a submissive wife, starts to express her own beliefs, and commands him to listen to her on tolerance and forgiveness:

She stood, no longer, as the meek, imploring, gentle mother, but firm and dignified, as if the interpreter of God’s will.

So, two independent women here – Gaskell the writer and Anne Leigh the character.

Cousin Phillis

This novella, originally serialised in The Cornell Magazine (1863-64), is briefly introduced in my Delphi edition with “many critics agree that Cousin Phillis is Gaskell’s crowning achievement in short fiction”. It is a longer, somewhat more complex tale, and is, essentially, a coming-of-age story in which 19-year-old Paul, and his 17-year-old second cousin, Phillis – both only children – learn some tough lessons.

The story is told first person by Paul, who speaks from later in his life about when, as a young man, he had obtained a job in a country town working to an engineer in a railway building company. He begins visiting some previously unknown relations, the aforementioned Phillis and her Nonconformist clergyman-farmer father and plain-thinking mother. You might be expecting a romance to develop between these two, but quite early on Paul decides that Phillis is not for him. Not only is she still, strangely, wearing a childish pinafore, but she is taller and, like her father, bookish, which makes him feel inferior. This will not do, so they quickly fall into a sibling-like relationship, and Paul slots comfortably into their lives whenever he can. Well and good.

However, there is another man in the story, Paul’s supervisor, Mr Holdsworth, whom he hero-worships. Paul describes him as “really a fine fellow in a good number of ways”, adding that “I might have fallen into much worse hands”, which of course makes us wonder whether this is an ironic hint. As it turns out, yes and no. Heartbreak does ensue, and Paul, with well-intentioned naïveté, plays a role in bringing this about. But, he should not shoulder the full blame because we, like guilt-ridden Paul and sensible servant Betty, have seen how much her parents have babied Phillis: ‘”the child” is always their name for her when they talk on her between themselves’, says Betty.

Most of the action takes place on Phillis’ family farm, with Gaskell beautifully rendering rural life, while also introducing readers to the increasing industrialisation, bringing hints of the social change she portrayed with more depth in North and south‘s exploration of rural tradition versus modern values.

Gaskell also conveys some of her progressive views on religion. Early on, Mr Holdsworth asks Paul about his cousins:

How do preaching and farming seem to get on together? If the minister turns out to be practical as well as reverend, I shall begin to respect him.

Towards the end of the story, when Phillis is critically ill, her father is visited by some local ministers who preach their punitive religion to him, suggesting he consider “what sins” had brought this trial upon him, and

whether you may not have been too much given up to your farm and your cattle; whether this world’s learning has not puffed you up to vain conceit and neglect of the things of God; whether you have not made an idol of your daughter?’

Our minister will have none of it. He will confess his sins to God, but, he says

‘I hold with Christ that afflictions are not sent by God in wrath as penalties for sin.’
‘Is that orthodox, Brother Robinson?’ asked the third minister, in a deferential tone of inquiry.

The ending, while not tragic, is open, which works well for me, though according to Wikipedia, she had considered adding two more parts to this four-part story. All up, another good read from the independent Mrs Gaskell!

Elizabeth Gaskell
Lizzie Leigh (1855) and Cousin Phillis (1864, available online)
in Complete works of Elizabeth Gaskell (illustrated)
Hastings (UK): Delphi Classics, 2015 (Version 5)

Monday musings on Australian Literature: the Story Factory

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In last week’s Monday Musings on Parramatta’s inaugural Laureate for Literature, I mentioned that Parramatta had been chosen as the second location for the non-profit organisation, the Story Factory. I said I’d do a separate Monday Musings on it, and have decided it might as well be now.

So, who or what is the Story Factory?

I love that like any good storyteller, and unlike many websites, they have a page on their history – and it’s a good one, the history I mean, because it has an inspiration that is truly inspiring. This inspiration comes from San Francisco, where, in 2002, the novelist Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Caligari founded something called 826 Valencia. This is “a creative writing centre for under-resourced young people” in the city.

Apparently, the idea spread quickly across the USA, “with seven more 826 chapters in places including New Orleans, Boston and Brooklyn, New York”. From here, the idea has spread internationally, with similar creative centres set up, some also by or with the help of successful authors. These include London’s the Ministry of Stories (with help from Nick Hornby); Dublin’s Fighting Words in Dublin (with Roddy Doyle); and Melbourne’s 100 Story Building, which started life in 2009 as Pigeons, becoming 100 Story Building in 2012.

The Story Factory was also founded in 2012 – in Sydney – after Sydney Morning Herald journalists Cath Keenan and Tim Dick had visited 826 Valencia in 2011. Their aim, says the website, was “finding a solution to the growing concern about writing skills rates and limited creative opportunities among marginalised children”. That year, a Board was established. Members included Michael Gonski, the Chair and “a solicitor and leading young philanthropist”; educator and well-known First Nations author to us, Professor Larissa Behrendt (my posts); and Professor Robyn Ewing, “an expert in creativity in education”. They launched in May 2011, but were not officially opened at the Redfern premises until July 2012. Their initial focus was the Redfern/Waterloo area, but increasingly they were asked to work in Western Sydney, resulting in Parramatta being opened in 2018. They make very clear on their website that they “only work with young people from communities that are under-resourced”.

They are part of over 60 organisations that form the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centres, which they describe as “a coalition inspired by 826 and united by a common belief that young people need places where they can write and be heard, and where they can have their voices polished, published, and amplified”. The organisations names vary, but there are places over the US, the UK, and in places like Chile, Argentina, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Iceland, and Pakistan. There is even a travelling program, Story Board, based in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales.

So, what do they do?

They offer a wide range of programs, which mostly sit under the following umbrellas::

  • Digital Programs: online interactive programs, across many age levels, run via Zoom and bookable by classroom teachers.
  • School Programs: face-to-face, “one-off, term-long, and year-long, curriculum-aligned writing programs”.
  • Special Projects: often run in collaboration with other arts organisation, and bringing students together from different schools.
  • After School and Holiday Programs: in-person and online.

Clicking on their Programs link and navigating around will give you a sense of the sorts of programs they offer – in different forms; for different age-groups, from primary to secondary; and exploring different ideas, from magic to cli-fi, from literary form to developing the imagination.

They also produce stuff! You can read some of the stories produced by young writers, online on the Stories pages. Or, you can buy books, because they also publish writings. For example, they run annual programs like Year of Poetry and Year of the Novella, and publish selected output. You can see 2023’s here, but to see all their publications, this link will take you to the first of NINE pages.

Maya Jubb’s I still remember the end of the world was one of the books published from the 2023 Year of the Novella program. This year long program aims for the participants to complete a novella. The page says that “Maya is a 17-year-old writer who loves to write fantasy novellas”. All the books look gorgeously designed, which is probably at least partly due to “the unstinting support of the editorial and production teams at Penguin Random House”. So nice to see a big publisher helping out.

As for how effective they are at achieving their goals, that’s harder to tell:

  • the University of Sydney wrote in 2016 about a formal impact evaluation that had commenced in early 2014. This was very early days, but they said that “focusing on case study methodology, the preliminary findings of the longitudinal evaluation suggest that some students have demonstrated substantial development in their creative writing and literacy skills, as well as improved problem solving, persistence, collaboration and discipline – all important indicators of creativity”. This is somewhat qualified, “some students”, but it’s indicative of potential.
  • Canterbury Boys High School was clearly so happy with the Story Factory’s role in their “literacy achievements” in 2017 that they continued the partnership in 2018. (They reference an independent evaluation which concluded the partnership had been “a huge success”, but the link is broken).
  • Better Reading shared some statistics in 2018, saying that the Story Factory had had “16,000 enrolments from young people, with 20% Indigenous and 40% from language backgrounds other than English”. 

But the best piece of evidence I can give readers is the achievement of Vivian Pham. Her debut novel, The coconut children, which is set in 1990s Cabramatta, was published by Penguin Random House in 2020 when she was just 19. Some of you might remember it as it made quite a splash. She was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Australian Novelists in 2021 (my post) and won ABIA’s Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year. The novella was also shortlisted for that year’s Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction and the Voss Literary Prize. In an interview for Writing NSW, she said that:

Every Sunday when I was in Year 11, I attended Story Factory’s Novella Project workshops at the local arts centre.

Her book was published as part of that year’s program, and she thought that was it. But through the intercession of others, it was picked up by Penguin and, after more editing, was published. There’s more in the interview, but I’ll just share her answer to the question about “marginalised voices in Australian society” and “the responsibility of fiction authors to explore diverse perspectives in their writing”:

I don’t think of this as a responsibility so much as an imperative.

How better to conclude a post on the Story Factory?

Do you know of other organisations like this? I’d love to hear about them.

Rebecca Campbell, Arboreality (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 24 Comments

Arboreality, by Canadian writer Rebecca Campbell, won the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. However, not being much of a speculative fiction reader, I didn’t discover this book through this award. Fortunately, some bloggers I follow, like Bill (The Australian Legend), do follow this genre, and his review convinced me that this climate change dystopian work fits into the sort of speculative fiction that does interest me.

Before I talk about the book, however, a little about the prize. It was established in 2022, in honor of Ursula K. Le Guin, and is currently worth $25,000. It has some specific criteria: it’s an English-language award for a single work of “imaginative fiction”, and intends to honour authors who “can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now”. This last bit is interesting – “real grounds for hope”. It reminds me of the Barbara Jefferis Award, which now seems to be in abeyance, but which was controversial because it stipulated that the winning work had to depict “women and girls in a positive way [my emph] or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society”. I don’t believe literature must offer hope or be positive, but I have no problem with awards sponsors making such stipulations.

So now, that out of the way, the book. It is set on Vancouver Island, a beautiful part of the world that I have visited. It’s novella in size, but, structurally, is best described as a collection of six inter-connected short stories:

  • “Special collections”
  • “Controlled burn”
  • “An important failure”
  • “Scion and root stocks”
  • “Pub food”
  • “Cathedral arboreal”

These stories are presented more or less chronologically, starting with the first two stories being set in the very near future (up to around 2050) with the last encompassing 2100. They are linked in various ways – by location; by characters (encompassing family and friends, ancestors and descendants, over time); and, as you’d expect, given the title, by trees, particularly but not exclusively, the arbutus and its mutant version, the golden arbutus. Each story focuses on a specific issue or idea and plays it out through personal stories, such as an academic saving books from a “crumbling” library (“Special collections”); a suburbanite trying to revive a devastated garden with local plants, as one-by-one his neighbours leave (“Controlled burn”); a luthier hunting for seasoned tonewood, via the black market if necessary, to make a Cremona-worthy violin (“An important failure”). These highly personalised stories are placed in context, through the addition of another voice – an omniscient narrator, in italicised sections – which conveys the wider ecological, economic and political picture. We see the land change through fire and rising sealevels; we hear of space colonisation; we learn of pandemics. It’s cleverly done, and although it requires concentration, I was more than willing to go with it because the vision Campbell presents is compelling in its awful believability. That, I think, is what telling a near-future story can achieve. It’s hard to pretend it won’t happen.

“What are we going to do?”

What makes this book so beautiful, however, is the way Campbell manages convey both absolute horror alongside a sense of hope born of human ingenuity, resilience, and sheer doggedness. Jude and Berenice, fighting a losing battle in their mission to save books, must constantly downgrade their expectations, which means becoming more and more selective about what is saved (and therefore also what is lost to human knowledge), but they don’t give up, and these books are seen in 2100. Similarly, Bernard, in his now empty suburb where gardens have died due to a watering ban, doggedly works to find plants that will live in his and neighbouring gardens, which we see, a few generations later in “Cathedral Arboreal”, has become a forest. And Mason’s “secret history” violin also appears in this last story in another generation. These people will not let go even though they are very aware of what has been lost, of what they have lost.

We’ve lived here for ten thousand years. Someone survived everything history threw at them, the fires and tsunamis, the earthquakes, the smallpox, the settlers. Empire. Capitalism. Someone’s going to survive this. (Benno, c. 2071, in “Scions and Root Stocks”)

The ecological story Campbell tells, alongside the human one, is fascinating, albeit probably more challenging to those of us who don’t know the plants of the region and their significance – the garry oak, the arbutus, the camas (lily), fireweed, Douglas fir, and so on. I know some of the plants she names, but I don’t know their particular role in the culture, their horticultural essence and value, or their symbolic meaning (if any any). Some I looked up, and some I didn’t, but certainly Campbell’s story is rich with interconnections here too, between past, present and future, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practices.

One of the meanings of “arboreality” is “of, relating to, or resembling a tree” which makes it a good literal title for a book in which trees stand for so much that is important to life – ecologically, culturally, and psychologically. But Campbell is also, perhaps, playing with the “sheltering” notion implied in “arbor” and “reality”.

The Ursula K. LeGuin Prize’s selection panel wrote:

Arboreality is a eulogy for the world as we know it. Rebecca Campbell’s extraordinary, deeply felt book explores the difficulties of the long hard project of survival. There are no heroes or villains here—only people making brave, difficult choices, out of hope and love for their community, for art, knowledge, and beauty. Arboreality imagines things that we haven’t yet considered about what can and will go wrong with our gardens, libraries, and archives if we don’t act now (maybe even if we do). In her masterful and profoundly ethical stories, Campbell asks us what might be saved, what must be saved, and what it will take to do so. 

‘What are we going to do?” asks Jude in the opening story, “Special collections”. Well might he ask. Arboreality is an astonishing book because of the way it imagines the dire, with all its attendant griefs, side-by-side with survival (and its attendant, hope). This makes it a bit discombobulating because we are constantly surprised by what happens next. The world is not beautiful, and life is tough, but people are surviving and working their way through what life has thrown at them. I don’t imagine Campbell intends us to think, “it’s alright then, let’s continue along our merry, destructive ways” but more that when (because we are, it seems, past “if”) we are confronted with the worst, humans can, and hopefully will, find ways through. The question is: is this the future we want?

Rebecca Campbell
Arboreality
Hamilton, Ca: Stelliform Press, 2022
128pp.
ISBN: 9781777682330 (eBook)

What would you recommend?

/ Whispering Gums / 66 Comments

Last week, Mr Gums and I drove back from Melbourne where we had spent the holiday season with family. Having spent over two weeks in the city – very lovely because we saw family – I did want a little country respite before hitting our own (much smaller, admittedly) city. Bright, in Victoria’s Alpine Shire was our chosen destination and it was truly delightful. Mountains and rivers are my happy places.

However, it wasn’t all road-tripping and bushwalking. The township of Bright has some good restaurants and, I noticed, a lovely little independent bookshop called, yes, The Bright Bookshop. I mean, you’d have to wouldn’t you? It’s a small shop but its inventory was excellent and with much to tempt me. But I just bought one book, Shankari Chandran’s Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens, which is on my reading group schedule this year.

None of this, though, is the point of my post. There was one other person browsing in the shop while I was there, and I overheard her asking for advice from the bookseller. She told him that her 18-year-old daughter wants to be a reader. She didn’t like science fiction, fantasy or dystopian novels, she said. In fact, she didn’t like anything involving suspension of disbelief. But the book couldn’t be “too literary” either, as her daughter preferred a nice linear story. Oh, and she wouldn’t read any books her sister read! I didn’t ask about historical fiction or crime, which is a shame, but the conversation kept spearing off, and I was running out of time.

However, I had to go, we did throw around a few ideas, including the American Curtis Sittenfeld, the Australian Diana Reid, Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost (“no”, said the mother to the bookseller), Jack Kerouac’s On the road (the mother didn’t think so, and nor did I), and older American writers like Anne Tyler (which the mother thought a possibility). The mother also suggested Sally Hepworth, whom I don’t know, and I wondered about other Aussies like Toni Jordan, Karen Viggers and Irma Gold – to name a few – who have written young women well. By the time I left, a decision hadn’t been made. But, my question to you – my litblogging community brains trust – is, what would you have suggested to get a wannabe reader keenly reading?

Over to you …

Monday musings on Australian Literature: Parramatta’s inaugural Laureate for Literature

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This week’s Monday Musings is one I’ve been waiting to post ever since I saw the announcement a month ago. This time of year is so busy and I have my traditional little suite of posts that I wanted to keep to, so this post had to wait.

The announcement, as you have guessed from the post title, concerned the appointment of Parramatta’s first (or inaugural) Laureate for Literature. For those of you unfamiliar with Australia, or, with Sydney in particular, Parramatta is a suburb of western Sydney. It’s a big suburb, or, as Wikipedia describes it, “a big CBD”. It was home to the Dharug People for at least 30,000 years before the colonists started settling it in 1788, and was the setting for First Nations author Julie Janson’s historical novel Benevolence (my review). Set in colonial times, the ironically titled Benevolence opens in 1816, when a young motherless girl is handed over by her trusting father to the British to be taught English at the Parramatta Native Institution.

Parramatta is also the second location of a non-profit organisation called the Story Factory, whose aim is to “help Indigenous and disadvantaged school-aged children (generally 7 to 17 years old) to develop their writing and storytelling skills”. It started in Redfern in 2012, with the Parramatta site opening in 2018. Perhaps, though, I’ll leave this for another Monday Musings.

All this, however, is simply to set the scene for sharing the announcement made on 4 December 2023 that local Parramatta author, Yumna Kassab, had been made the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature. This role is the result of a partnership between the Sydney Review of Books literary journal, the City of Parramatta, and Western Sydney University’s Writing and Society Research Centre. Their aim was to “select a highly regarded writer with links to the Parramatta region”, and who is “making an outstanding contribution to literature”. The expectation is for this person to “help animate a vision for the future of Parramatta as it cements its position as the true heart of global Sydney”. I’m not sure about the “true heart of global Sydney”. That’s perhaps a bit of a reach that other parts of Sydney might quibble about, but I love their vision of a laureate in literature as able to make a meaningful difference to a place.

The announcement goes on to say that Kassab ‘will receive a stipend of $50,000 to write what she describes as “a dictionary of Parramatta”, grounded in the city’s complex histories and diverse communities’. She will also run some writing workshops with local participants, and “advocate publicly for writing cultures”.

You can read the announcement at the link I’ve provided above, but I will just highlight two things. One is the comment by the Editor of the Sydney Review of Books, Dr James Jiang, that “She brings to the role exceptional talent, and the cosmopolitan sensibility and civic-mindedness that are hallmarks of the city’s culture and ambitions”. And the other is that, reading between the lines, I understand that applications for the role were called for, and that applicants were asked to suggest projects they would undertake. The announcement also shares the rest of the shortlist, which comprised Gary Dixon, Eda Gunaydin, Bilal Hafda, Fiona Murphy and Vivian Pham.

Who is Yumna Kassab?

Some of you will know of Kassab as, although she’s relatively new on the literary scene, she has garnered some excellent critical attention. According to various sites, including GoodReads and Giramondo which published her first book, she was born and raised in Western Sydney, and completed most of her schooling in Parramatta, “except for two formative years when she lived in Lebanon with her family”. She studied medical science at Macquarie University and neuroscience at Sydney University. 

She has written four works of fiction:

  • The house of Youssef (short story collection, 2019, Giramondo): listed for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Queensland Literary Award, NSW Premier’s Literary Award, Readings Prize, and The Stella Prize (kimbofo’s review)
  • Australiana (novel, 2022, Ultimo)
  • The lovers (novel, 2023, Ultimo): shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction
  • Politica (novel, 2024, Ultimo)

She has also written for newspapers and journals, including The Saturday Paper, Meanjin, Griffith Review, Kill Your Darlings, and the Sydney Review of Books.

Kassab’s themes seem to be family and relationships; and migration, class, and othering. Critics describe her work with terms like “unsparing”, “unnerving”, “poetic”, “unobtrusive realism”. Promoting her latest book, Politica, which is due out this month, Ultimo calls it “a powerful new novel that asks again if it’s possible to ever measure the personal cost of war.” Oh my … how relevant is that.

My question for you: Does a city or place (not a whole country) near you have a Laureate for Literature? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Six degrees of separation, FROM Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow TO …

/ Whispering Gums / 45 Comments

After taking a break from Six Degrees in December, I’m back at the beginning of 2024 to take part in this fun meme again. I hope you have all had a good holiday season and are ready for another year of good reading and discussing all things books. One different way of looking at books is through this meme. If you don’t know how this meme works, please check host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. And, of course, we start the year with a book I haven’t read, though I have heard plenty about it, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. GoodReads describes it as follows: “two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design”.

I don’t remember reading any books about video games, but I have read quite a few about friends. However, I am not going in that direction either because, quite serendipitously, my Californian friend shared in her letter this week the current “top ten checked out books in the NY public library system”. Number 2 was Zevin’s novel, but it was number 1 that caught my eye, as it’s a book I’ve read, Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in chemistry (my review). How could I not make that my first link?

Peter Carey Chemistry of tears bookcover

For my next link I’m going with an obvious option – this is for you MR! – and linking on a word in the title. The word is “chemistry”, and the book is Peter Carey’s The chemistry of tears (my review). I commenced my review of that book by saying that when I think of Peter Carey, I often also think of Margaret Atwood, because both have quite varied oeuvres. Both take risks, trying new forms, voices and genres.

So, you won’t be surprised that my next link is to Margaret Atwood, and to the last work of hers I reviewed. This was The Labrador fiasco (my review), a short story I read for Buried in Print’s annual MARM event. It’s a story-within-a-story told in the voice of a son visiting his aging parents. But, I’m not linking on these ideas.

My edition of The Labrador fiasco was a little book, a Bloomsbury Quid. The first Bloomsbury Quid I reviewed for this blog was Nadine Gordimer’s Harald, Claudia and their son Duncan (my review). I could, though, have linked on the fact that both Atwood’s book and Gordimer’s feature parents and a son, albeit Atwood’s book is about a positive relationship while in Gordimer’s the son has committed a violent crime.

Margaret Merrilees, The first week

This leads us to my next link which is also a story (this one a novel) about a parent dealing with a son who has committed a violent act, Margaret Merrilees’ The first week (my review). In Merrilees’ story there is just the mother dealing with the aftermath, but, interestingly, in both stories there is also a race element.

For my final link, I’m sticking with parents coping with a problematic child, but in this case it’s a daughter who has been having an affair with a much older married man and who now appears to have run away. The book is Joan London’s The good parents (my review) and it deals, not just with parenting, but with the many choices we make in our lives, and their impacts.

I realised by the time I got to the end of my links that all six feature parents and children. In Lessons in chemistry, the main relationship is between mother and daughter, and The chemistry of tears hangs on a special gift commissioned by a father for his consumptive son. The rest you know from my notes on the links. We have travelled widely this month, though it may not be obvious here – from the USA to England and Germany, then to Canada and South Africa, finally ending up in Australia.

Now, the usual: Have you read Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? And, regardless, what would you link to?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Some New Releases in 2024

/ Whispering Gums / 41 Comments

This year we start with my first Monday Musings post appearing on Tuesday! This is due to conflicting new year traditions – my Blogging Highlights post on 1 January, and my first Monday Musings being New Releases for the coming year. When 1 January is a Monday, I’m in trouble! I could have left this until next Monday, but I already have a post that’s been waiting to go, and I don’t want it to wait any longer, so Tuesday it is!

As before, I have drawn from the Sydney Morning Herald, where Jane Sullivan and the team has again done a wonderful job of surveying publishers large and small. This year, I have also used The Guardian’s list put together by Canberra Writers Festival director, Beejay Silcox. As always, I have also sussed out a few of my own! Also, this is Monday musings on Australian literature post, so my focus is Australian authors in areas of interest or relevance to me. This means I’ve not included non-Australian writers, nor all the Australian nonfiction. To see those, click on the SMH link.

Now, there are many ways to do this sort of list. Kim (Reading Matters) has posted a list of new releases by publication month, but, as is my wont, I’ve arranged mine by author, under some broad form headings.

Links on the authors’ names are to my posts on those authors.

Fiction

As always, not every book listed last year, ended up being published that year so a couple appear here again. And, also as always, I have read a very small number from last year’s list, but a few more are on my TBR and will be read this year. Here’s this year’s selection:

  • Jenny Ackland, Hurdy gurdy (June, A&U)
  • Alan Attwood, Houdini unbound (May, Melbourne Books)
  • Shirley Barrett, Mrs Hopkins (June, A&U): posthumous 
  • Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion, The glass house (April, Hachette)
  • Donna M Cameron, The rewilding (March, Transit Lounge)
  • Brian Castro, Ruins and fragments (late 2024, Giramondo)
  • Shankari Chandran, Safe haven (May, Ultimo)
  • Melanie Cheng, The burrow (September, Text).
  • Chairman Clift, The end of the morning (May, New South): posthumous autobiographical novel
  • Miranda Darling, Thunderhead (April, Scribe)
  • Michelle de Kretser, Theory and practice (November, Text) 
  • Francesca de Tores, Saltblood (April, Bloomsbury): pseudonym for Francesca Haig
  • Brooke Dunnell, Last best chance (April, Fremantle Press)
  • David Dyer, This kingdom of dust (October, Hamish Hamilton)
  • Rodney Hall, Vortex (Picador, October)
  • Anita Heiss, Dirrayawadha (August, Simon & Schuster): First Nations author
  • Julie Janson, Compassion (March, Magabala): First Nations author
  • Gail Jones, One another (February, Text)
  • Melanie Joosten, Like fire hearted suns (March, Ultimo)
  • Yumna Kassab, Politica (January, Ultimo)
  • Malcolm Knox, The first friend (October, A&U)
  • Siang Lu, Ghost cities (May, UQP)
  • Catherine McKinnon, To sing of war (May, Fourth Estate)
  • Stephen Orr, Shining like the sun (March, Wakefield Press)
  • Liam Pieper, Appreciation (March, PRH)
  • Diana Reid, untitled novel (second half of the year, (Ultimo)
  • Alice Robinson, If you go (July, Affirm)
  • Jock Serong, Cherrywood (September, HarperCollins)
  • Jessica Tu, Honeyeater (July, A&U)
  • Karen Viggers, Sidelines (January, A&U)

SMH lists many books under Crimes and Thrillers, but this is not my area of expertise or major interest, so, do check SMH’s link if you are interested. I will, though, bring a few to your attention: .

  • Steven Carroll, Death of a foreign gentleman (April, HarperCollins): a new genre for Carroll
  • Garry Disher, Sanctuary (April, Text)
  • Sulari Gentill, The mystery writer (Ultimo, March)
  • Louise Milligan, Pheasants nest (March, Allen & Unwin): her first foray into fiction

Most of the sources I checked identified Debut Australian fiction and I think it’s useful to separate them out, so we don’t all wonder why the names don’t seem familiar:

  • Sharlene Allsopp, The great undoing (February, Ultimo): First Nations author
  • Katherine Allum, The skeleton house (June, Fremantle): Fogarty Literary Award winner
  • Susanna Begbie, The deed (May, Hachette): Richell Prize winner
  • Amy Brown, My brilliant sister (January or February, Scribner/Simon & Schuster): adult novel debut
  • Amanda Creely, Nameless (March, UWA): Dorothy Hewett Award shortlist
  • Belinda Cranston, The changing room (May, Transit Lounge)
  • Winnie Dunn, Dirt poor Islanders (March, Hachette)
  • Kyra Geddes, The story thief (May, Affirm)
  • Melissa Goode, Ordinary human love (May, Ultimo)
  • Kirsty Iltners, Depth of field (May, UWA): Dorothy Hewett Award winner
  • Katrina Kell, Chloe (February, Echo): adult novel debut
  • Finegan Kruckemeyer, The end and everything before it (July, Text)
  • Abbey Lay, Lead us not (March, PRH)
  • Bri Lee, The work (March, A&U): fiction debut
  • Murray Middleton, The degenerates (July, Text): full length novel debut
  • Deborah Pike, The players (April, Fremantle)
  • Raeden Richardson, No Church in the wild (April, Macmillan)
  • Linda Margolin Royal, The star on the grave (February, Affirm) 
  • Jordan Prosser, Big time (June, UQP)
  • Helen Signy, Maya’s dance (March, Simon & Schuster)
  • Ruby Todd, Bright objects (May, A&U): 2023 Victorian Premier’s unpublished manuscript award shortlist.

Short stories

  • Georgia Blain, We all lived in Bondi then (January, Scribe): posthumous
  • Ceridwen Dovey, Only the astronauts (July, PRH) 
  • John Richards, The Gorgon flower (April, UQP) 
  • Mykaela Saunders, Always will be (March, UQP): First Nations author
  • Ouyang Yu, The white cockatoo flowers: Stories (April, Transit Lounge)

Non-fiction

The newspapers include a wide range – and a large number – of new non-fiction books, and I found more in my own research, so I’m sharing a few that particularly caught my eye. Click the newspaper links for more.

Life-writing (very loosely defined, and selected to those focused mainly on the arts and activism)

  • Wayne Bergmann with Madelaine Dickie, Some people want to shoot me (March, Fremantle): First Nations memoir, focusing on native title
  • Tony Birch on Kim Scott (April, Black Inc “Writers on writers”)
  • Brooke Bland, Gulp, swallow: Essays on change (November, Upswell): memoir-in-essays “about family and friends, life and mortality, memory and forgetting”
  • Hermina Burns, Barbara Tucker: The art of being (February, MUP)
  • Samantha Faulkner (ed.), Growing up Torres Strait Islander in Australia (August, Black Inc)
  • Peter Goldsworthy, The Cancer Finishing School (March, PRH): “shares lessons from his incurable cancer diagnosis”
  • Jeremy Hill and Ronald Millar, No singing in gum trees: The honest life of Max Martin (no date, Wakefield Press)
  • Robert Manne, untitled political memoir (December, Black Inc)
  • Brenda Niall, Joan Lindsay: The hidden life of the woman who wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock (October, Text)
  • Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham (ed), Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower: The letters  (May, NewSouth)
  • Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood, Black duck: A year at Yumburra (April, Thames & Hudson): First Nations memoir, about life on their farm
  • Magda Szubanski, untitled memoir (October, Text)
  • Tara June Winch on Alexis Wright (October, Black Inc “Writers on writers”)

History and other non-fiction (esp. social justice and environmental issues)

  • Larissa Behrendt, Weaving with words (November, UQP)
  • James Bradley, Deep water (April, PRH): eco-literature
  • Clint Bracknell and Kylie Bracknell, Shakespeare on the Noongar stage: Language revival and Hecate (May, Upswell): on Macbeth in Nyoongar language
  • Santilla Chingaipe, Black convicts: How slavery shaped colonised Australia (August, Scribner): examines the First Fleet, investigating the place of people of African descent in colonial Australia.
  • Simon Cleary, Everything is water (June, UQP): eco-literature
  • Anne Coombs, Our familiars: The meaning of animals in our lives (August, Upswell): “meditation on the awe-inspiring responsibility we take on with other living creatures”
  • Helen Garner, untitled nonfiction (July, Text): inspired by time spent with a grandson’s football team
  • Amy McQuire, Black witness: The power of Indigenous media (June, UQP)
  • Jasmin McGaughey and The Poets Voice (ed.), Words to sing the world alive (November, UQP): “leading writers discuss their favourite First Nations words”
  • Ellen van Neerven and Jeanine Leane (ed), Shapeshifting (October, UQP)
  • Amy Remeikis, The truth about nice (July, Hachette): on “the politics of civility – and its pernicious myths”
  • Clare Wright, The Yirrkala Bark Petition (October, Text): third in her Democracy trilogy

Poetry

Finally, for poetry lovers, I’ve sussed out a few more than were listed by the two newspapers, but even then haven’t listed them all. Poetry in Australian is flourishing, it seems:

  • Robert Adamson, Birds and fish: Life on the Hawkesbury (February, Upswell): posthumous
  • Alison Barton, Not telling (no date, Puncher & Wattmann): First Nations
  • Judith Beveridge, Tintinnabulum (August, Giramondo)
  • Judith Bishop, Circadia (May, UQP)
  • David Brooks, The other side of daylight (March, UQP)
  • Bonny Cassidy, Monument (February, Giramondo)
  • Nandi Chinna and Anne Poelina, Tossed up by the beak of a cormorant (Fremantle, July)
  • Robbie Coburn, Ghost poetry (January, Upswell)
  • Lloyd Jones, The empty grandstand (September, Upswell): New Zealander
  • John Kinsella, Spirals (March, UWA)
  • Jeanine Leane, Gawimarra gathering (February, UQP): First Nations
  • Nam Le, 36 ways of writing a Vietnamese poem (March, Scribner)
  • Kent McCarter, Fat chance (January, Upswell)
  • Kate Middleton, Television (February, Giramondo)
  • Jazz Money, The fire inside August, UQP): First Nations
  • Roslyn Orlando, Ekhō (February, Upswell)
  • Suneeta Peres da Costa, The prodigal (late 2024, Giramondo)
  • Nathan Shepherdson, soft meteorites (September, Upswell)
  • Elfie Shiosaki, Refugia (July, Magabala)
  • Anne-Marie Te Whiu (ed), Woven (February, Magabala/Red Room Poetry)

Anything here interest you?