Author: Whispering Gums

Monday musings on Australian literature: Canberra Writers’ Festival 2025 recap

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Back in 2019, the Canberra Writers Festival sent subscribers a report on the event. I don’t think they’ve done so since, which is a shame, as I loved reading (and writing about) it. This year, thanks to Colin Steele, who runs the ANU/Meet-the-Author series, I was able to see a report on the Festival that was published in the paywalled Books+Publishing*.

The report included some stats:

  • the festival recorded more than 10,000 audience attendees, an increase of 55% on the 2024 festival. 
  • the 5-day program included 114 events, of which 50 sold out and 24 reached 75% of audience capacity.

CWF also presented its inaugural schools program, and a Kids and YA day which featured writers like Andy Griffiths, Jack Heath, and Craig Silvey. These were apparently successful enough that they see opportunities “to further develop programs for younger audiences”. Excellent, eh?

Books+Publishing quoted CWF festival director Andra Putnis, as saying:

“The Canberra Writers Festival continues to grow because it connects people through story – whether they’re exploring global issues and politics or their love of literature, poetry, crime, memoir or page-turning fiction. This year’s record numbers show that Canberrans have an appetite for joyful and challenging conversations…

Gathering to listen to each other’s stories is what art and humanity are all about, and this year Canberra truly showed up for it. We really can’t thank enough all the international, interstate and local artists that came together to truly shine and share their work.”

I did not attend most of the big note sessions, such as those featuring Trent Dalton and Heather Rose. Time available, cost and the inevitable clashes all affect decision-making. And I really wanted to attend some of what sounded to be meatier sessions, like Reckoning, Our worlds, our way, and Poems of love and rage (see my posts linked below).

For me, it was an excellent Festival. When, in 2016, Canberra “got” a writers festival again, many of us fiction readers were frustrated that fiction did not feature highly in the program. Gradually, and particularly through Beejay Silcox’s time as Artistic Director, the balance shifted, resulting in far more sessions feeding those of us who aren’t only interested in history, memoir, and crime written by journalists (all of which are fine, I hasten to add! It’s the balance that was frustrating, not the individual works and their authors.) This year, this balance continued, and I felt spoilt for choice, which brings me to…

The main challenge of this Festival, for festival-goers anyhow. I have written about this before – and it is probably not an uncommon issue – but it’s the geographic spread of venues, across both sides of the lake. This is largely because the venues are sponsored, and who turns down a sponsor? The Festival does a good job of theming the different locations, which helps, but choices still have to be made. My practice is to choose a venue for a day on the basis of one or two events I really want to attend and then plan my bookings around that. Last year, that meant one day at one location, and the other day at another. This year it meant both days at the same location. For those who did some venue-hopping, it was, luckily, a good weekend weather-wise.

A few more facts

The National Library of Australia Bookshop, which was one of the participating booksellers, reported their Top Ten sales during the Festival. These sales presumably drew mostly from those sessions held at the Library so may not reflect the Top Ten sold throughout the Festival’s multiple venues, but we all like lists don’t we:

  1. Trent Dalton, Gravity let me go (Fourth Estate)
  2. Heather Rose, A great act of love (A&U)
  3. Garry Disher, Mischance Creek (Text, bought for Mr Gums for Christmas – don’t worry, he knows!)
  4. Brigid Delaney, The seeker and the sage (A&U)
  5. Hannah Kent, Always home, Always homesick (Picador)
  6. Madeleine Watts, Elegy, Southwest (Ultimo)
  7. Kathleen Folbigg and Tracy Chapman, Inside Out (Penguin)
  8. Devoney Looser, Wild for Austen (Ultimo, bought an e-version so mine won’t have counted here)
  9. Lev Grossman, The bright sword (Penguin)
  10. Rachael Johns, The lucky sisters (Penguin)

As you can see, I didn’t contribute much to this list, but I did buy some other books including Evelyn Araluen’s The rot, and some as gifts (so my lips are sealed). I already had some books relating to sessions I attended, including Darren Rix and Craig Cormick’s Wirra Wirra Wai and Susan Wyndham’s Elizabeth Harrower: The woman in the watchtower.

Back in 2019, I listed my posts in their order of popularity (that is, by number of hits), so I thought I’d do that again:

  1. All Things Austen: Jane Austen Anniversary Special (with Susannah Fullerton, Devoney Looser and Emily Maguire)
  2. Reckoning (with Craig Cormick, Paul Daley, Kate Grenville)
  3. (Tied) ACT Book of the Year (with Andra Putnis, Qin Qin, Darren Rix and Craig Cormick) AND Our Worlds, Our Way (with Evelyn Araluen, Lisa Fuller, and Jasmin McGaughey)
  4. Finding Elizabeth Harrower (with Susan Wyndham)
  5. Poems of Love and Rage (with Evelyn Araluen, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Omar Musa)
  6. What happened in the Outback (with Garry Disher and Gail Jones)

The posts ranked from 3rd to 6th were closely bunched, with the top and second ranked posts well out in front and somewhat separated from each other. You can tell something about my readers though, when you see that the crime-related session was my least popular post, while its participant Disher’s book (and Looser’s) were the only ones to make the Top Ten from the sessions I attended.

In conclusion …

Whatever the reason – programming, the weather, the truly engaged volunteers, and/or the fact that the cafe at my venue (the Library) stayed open for longer this year – there was a real buzz at this year’s festival. It was a joy to attend – and, I came away with some new insights and things to think about.

* This post draws partly from the Books+Publishing report (with the agreement of the Canberra Writers Festival).

Teffi, The examination (#Review, #1925 Club)

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Mostly for the Year Clubs, I read an Australian short story, usually from one of my anthologies. However, for 1925, I couldn’t find anything in my anthologies, so turned to other newspaper-based sources, including Trove, but I mainly found romances or works that were difficult to access. And then, out of the blue, I found something rather intriguing, a story titled “The examination”. It was written by a Russian woman named Teffi, translated into English by J.A. Brimstone, and published in The Australian Worker, an Australian Workers’ Union newspaper, on 25 November 1925. I don’t know when it was originally written, nor have I been able to found out who J.A. Brimstone was.

Who is Teffi?

The Australian Worker ascribes the story to N. Teffi. This nomenclature is interesting. My research suggests that Teffi, not N. Teffi, was the pen name of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (1872-1952). Wikipedia gives her pen name as Teffi, but its article on her is titled Nadezhda Teffi. Curiously, the article’s history page includes a comment from a Wikipedian, dated 11 June 2014, that “Her pen name is only Teffi, not Nadezhda Teffi”. This Wikipedian “moved” the article (Wikipedia-speak for changing titles) to “Teffi”, but it was later moved back to “Nadezhda Teffi”. Seems to me it should be under “Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya” or “Teffi”. But, let’s not get bogged down. There’s probably more I don’t know about how she used her name over time.

The more interesting thing is who she was. Wikipedia provides what looks like a fair introduction to her life, so I won’t repeat all that here. Essentially, it says she was a Russian humorist writer who could be both serious and satirical, but whose gift for humour was “considered anomalous for a woman of her time”. However, she proved them wrong, “skyrocketing to fame throughout Russia with her satirical writings, so much so that she had candies and perfume named after her”.

Literary scholar Maria Bloshteyn, writing in the LA Review of Books in 2016, would agree. She starts her piece by describing Teffi as “once a Russian literary superstar”, and says that “Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya claimed that she took the comic-sounding and intentionally androgynous nom de plume for good luck”. Bloshteyn writes:

She began to publish in her early 30s and tried her hand in various genres, but it was her short stories, with their keen and hilarious observations of contemporary society, that were read by everyone from washerwomen to students to top government officials. They won her literary success on a scale unprecedented in pre-Revolutionary Russia.

My short story, however, was written post-Revolution, given we are talking 1925. But, I’m jumping ahead. Tsar Nicholas II was a big fan, Bloshteyn says, as was Vladimir Lenin “with whom she worked in 1905 at the short-lived New Life [Novaia Zhizn’] newspaper”. She left Russia in 1919, during the “Red Terror” when things started to turn sour. Her popularity continued in the émigré world. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, her books were read again and “celebrated as recovered gems of Russian humor”.

This potted history sounds very positive, but Bloshteyn explains that there was also darkness in her life, including the death of her loved father when she was young, difficult relationships with siblings, a failed marriage, mental health problems, and more. Also, “she became a victim of her immensely successful but severely confining brand”, meaning editors and readers “only wanted the Teffi they knew” and, worse, “they perceived all of her stories as funny, even when they were clearly tragic”. How frustrating that would be, eh?

She was inspired by – and has been likened to – Chekhov. Bloshteyn says:

Her appreciation of the absurd, of the comic minutiae of life, helps set off the darker or more transcendent aspects of our existence, but her main focus, in the tradition of the great 19th-century Russian writers, was always human nature itself: what makes us tick and why.

I’ll leave her biography here, but if you are interested, start at Wikipedia, and go from there.

“The examination”

“The examination” tells the story of a young girl, Manichka Kooksina, who is sitting for her end-of-year exams which will decide whether she moves on to the next grade. Important things ride on passing them, including staying with her friend Liza who has already passed and getting the new bike her aunt promised her if she passed. However, instead of knuckling down to study she fritters her time, trying on a new dress, reading, and finally filling her notebooks with a prayer “Lord, Help”, believing that if she writes it hundreds or thousands of times she will pass. Needless to say, she does not do well.

The story is beautifully told from her perspective, with much humour for the reader as she flounders her way through preparation and the exam itself. She feels persecuted, an animal being tortured, and resorts to the absurd solution of writing lines, while her nervous peers have at least tried. I wondered why this particular story of hers was chosen by The Australian Worker. Was it the only one available to them in English? Did the examination theme feel universally relevant? According to Bloshteyn, Teffi said that “even the funniest of her stories were small tragedies given a humorous spin”. This is certainly a “small tragedy” for the – hmm, foolish, procrastinating, but believable – Manichka.

Bloshteyn’s essay is primarily a review of two books that had been recently published, Tolstoy, Rasputin, others, and me: The Best of Teffi and Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea. The former includes sketches and some of her “best loved short stories”. GoodReads says of it that “in the 1920s and 30s, she wrote some of her finest stories in exile in Paris … In this selection of her best autobiographical stories, she covers a wide range of subjects, from family life to revolution and emigration, writers and writing”. I don’t know whether “The examination” is one of them, but Bloshteyn writes, of the child-themed stories she mentions, that all “show children in the process of getting to know the world around them and finding the means to cope with it”. Manichka, although showing some resourcefulness, has a way to go.

I was thrilled to find this little treasure in Trove, and will try to read more Teffi. Has anyone else read her?

* Read for the 1925 reading week run by Karen (Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Simon (Stuck in a Book).

N. Teffi
“The examination” [Accessed: 21 October 2025]
in The Australian Worker, 25 November 1925

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 15, Tarella Daskein

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I first came across Tarella Daskein back in 2021 when Bill (The Australian Legend) wrote a post about her as the result of her coming up in discussions and reading about Katharine Susannah Prichard. She then slipped my mind until a couple of months ago when I was searching around for a subject for my Australian Women Writers post that month. This post, like most of my recent Forgotten Writers posts, s a minor revision of the one I posted there.

Tarella Daskein

As with many of the lesser-known writers we research for this blog, Tarella Daskein (1877-1945) was somewhat challenging to pin down. It’s not that she wasn’t known. Indeed, Wikipedia and AustLit both have entries for her. However, there were conflicting details of her life. For example, both Wikipedia and AustLit had her death date as 1934, which was curious because Adelaide’s The Advertiser reported on her visiting that city in June 1935. How could that be? Further, The Advertiser also had her husband as Mr. T.S. Daskein while Wikipedia and other newspaper articles had him as Mr. T.M. Daskein. Compounding all this was her use of multiple names, including some confusion over her maiden name. The above-mentioned Advertiser, for example, reported it as Quinn. AustLit, however, resolved this by noting at the end of its entry that her name had been incorrectly spelled as ‘Quinn’ in Miller and Macartney’s Australian Literature: A Bibliography (1956). The death date issue was clarified by, strangely, Wikipedia’s article on her father, Edward Quin, which gave her death as 1945 and cited a newspaper notice as evidence. And a death notice for her husband confirms him as T.M. not T.S.

So, with all that resolved, who was this Tarella Daskein? Tarella Ruth Quin was born in Wilcannia, second daughter to pastoralist and one-time member of the New South Wales Legislature, Edwin Quin, in 1877. She is best known as a writer of children’s stories, but also wrote three adult novels – A desert rose (1912), Kerno (1914) and Paying guests (1917) – and many short stories which were published in contemporary newspapers and magazines. AustLit provides a good outline of her origins. She was one of eight children. Her father owned a dairy farm called ‘The Leasowes’, near Victoria’s Fern Tree Gully, and a sheep station called ‘Tarella’, after which she was named, in far western New South Wales near Wilcannia. ‘Ella’, as she was known, was educated in Adelaide, but spent most of her life on stations. She married Thomas Mickle Daskein, part proprietor of a station in far northwest NSW.

Cover for Tarella Quin Gum Tree Brownie

AustLit says that her first writing comprised short sketches of station life, which were published under the pseudonym “James Adare” in the Pastoral Review. At the editor’s suggestion, she also wrote some stories for children, which she sent to Ethel Turner, hoping to have them published in Sydney newspapers. However, Turner apparently recommended they be published as books. Her first book, Gum Tree Brownie, was published in 1910, with illustrations by Ida Rentoul whom Ella’s younger sister, Hazel, knew at school. This began a long partnership between the two, with Ida Rentoul Outhwaite illustrating many of her books for children. Wilde et al say she was “one of Australia’s most successful writers of fairy-stories for children” and that “humour, irony, a fluent, dramatic style and fantasy reminiscent of Lewis Carroll enliven her stories”.

Bill, as mentioned above, came across her, initially in Katharine Susannah Prichard’s autobiography, Child of the hurricane. Apparently, Prichard was governess for a year at Tarella Station in 1905, by which time Tarella, who was six years older than KSP, was already a published author. Prichard, says Bill, is “pretty dismissive” of Quin’s writing.

However, not all were. Several contemporary reviewers praised her adult novels, often singling out Kerno: A stone for special mention. On 10 April 1915, Adelaide’s Observer wrote:

Kerno, although similar in some respects, is nevertheless distinctly different from A Desert Rose. The latter is a novel – the former is a study – a keen analysis of human feelings and desires. One cannot well peruse the book without thinking deeply, and wondering what one would have done in circumstances like those in which the leading actors found themselves placed. Young people and those having a preference for light ephemeral literature may be inclined to consider the story rather tame; but all who have a true appreciation for human nature, and endeavour to probe into its many and varied qualities, will find in it compelling and absorbing interest.

Those who praise Kerno mostly praise it for its “real” characters and deep understanding of human nature. Indeed, the Observer says that it “richly deserves to rank among the best truly Australian novels”. Daskein was also praised for her understanding of and ability to convey life in the bush and, as the Observer says, for her “descriptive writing which … captivates the reader”.

Notwithstanding all this, Quin mostly wrote for children, with The Australian Women’s Weekly claiming, after the publication of Chimney Town in 1936, that

She has published more ambitious volumes, but her tales for children have a unique charm that makes one feel that this is her real metier.

Quin’s publishing career lasted from around 1907 to the mid-1930s, so it was no flash in the pan. AustLit lists over 20 works by her, but this may not be all. Regardless, she was well-known to readers of her time, and, according to Adelaide’s The Rouseabout, had some presence in literary circles, including being “a foundation member of the Melbourne centre of the P.E.N. Club and a constant attendant at its meetings”. She died on 22 October 1945, at a private hospital in Melbourne. The fact that I found little mention of this beyond The Rouseabout’s short article suggests that in the last decade of her life – after the death of her husband in 1937 – she faded from view.

The piece, “The camel”, which I chose for AWW, was published in The Bulletin’s Christmas issue in 1935. It shows a writer a writer who knows the outback, knows how to entertain her audience, and, who firmly belongs to the bush tradition. Life is tough, but our woman protagonist is resourceful.

Sources

Bill Holloway, “Tarella Down a Rabbit Hole“, The Australian Legend (blog), 16 December 2021 [Accessed: 9 November 2025]
The Rouseabout, “In Town and Out“, The Herald, 12 November 1945 [Accessed: 16 August 2025]
Tarella Quin, AustLit [Accessed: 16 August 2025]
Tarella Quin, Wikipedia [Accessed: 16 August 2025]
William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews, The Oxford companion to Australian literature. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2nd, edition, 1994

Sofie Laguna in conversation with Karen Viggers

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I don’t know how it has happened, but tonight’s conversation between Sofie Laguna and Karen Viggers is the first ANU/Meet-the-Author event I’ve attended this year. I did book one featuring Omar Musa a month ago, but I came down with laryngitis, as did, I believe, his interlocutor. (The show went on, with Karen Viggers, in fact). My problem is a busy schedule combined with regular trips to Melbourne and a couple of holidays. They get in the way of normal life!

Anyhow, the event – which was for Sofie Laguna’s latest novel, The Underworld – started as usual with Colin Steele acknowledging the traditional owners, introducing the participants and thanking supporters, before handing the floor to Karen Viggers. He thanked Karen in particular for turning up because last Sunday, while in Ubud for the Writers Festival, she was run down by a motorcycle and was somewhat bruised and battered!

The conversation

Now, I have seen Karen converse with Sofie Laguna before (back in 2017) and it was one of the most delightful conversations I’ve attended, so, I was looking forward to this one. It didn’t disappoint. Sofie Laguna is a joy and a hoot, in the open way she engages in discussions about her work. It’s a way that manages to feel fresh, as though the conversation is a journey for her, not the same-old same-old. Whether that’s Sofie or Karen or the chemistry they have, I don’t know, but it works.

On coming-of-age and young people

Karen started by introducing the novel as a coming-of-age story, which encompasses violence, love and transformation. She loved that Sofie takes the reader on a journey with Martha. The novel starts in 1973, with her protagonist Martha in Year 9 – at which point there was a little discussion between Sofie and Karen about how old that made her, and whether that was the same as Third Form. Whatever! The point is she’s around 13 or 14, is at an elite private boarding school in the Southern Highlands, and has parents who are ”trapped in a loveless marriage”. Here, there was another little discussion about whether they were in fact “trapped” and whether it really was “loveless”. As you can see, this really was a conversation.

Karen asked Sofie about the dedication, which she suspected implied a spark? It is an In Memoriam to her Latin teacher, who was both dedicated and elitist, but created a dynamic learning space. This led to a discussion about the role of teachers in guiding young people, and the fact that teachers are woven in different ways through most of Sofie’s novels. She doesn’t do this consciously, but realises teachers have had a pivotal role in her books. They have an incredible influence, they can draw out of students who they are. For Sofie, whose home was unconventional, school was a safe place, that gave her boundaries.

On the writing

We then moved on to voice, and the fact that Martha’s voice came to Sofie at a basketball gym where her son was playing. She began writing there and then in the voice of a women in her 50s, a woman who was funny, heartbroken, intellectual. She “knew something had happened”. She felt an urgency, and it was exciting because things were coming out that she didn’t know she knew. This sort of writing is easy to do because it wants to happen, but the book wasn’t easy.

She knew she had to go back and learn what Martha’s life was like at 14. It would be untidy. Puberty is messy, and she’d never properly written about it before. It’s a time of transition, challenging for everyone, as our bodies, ideas, sexuality change.

Karen then returned to why this book had been difficult. Was it because she was closer to Martha? Yes, but it was difficult in many ways – more difficult to get a sense of the whole, more difficult to get a straight line, more nuanced. And then as Sofie does, she asked Karen whether that made sense!

Karen noted that Martha attends a privileged private boarding school, which is a shift from the hardscrabble lives she usually writes about. This resulted in Sofie sharing another difficulty she’d had. Was she was “allowed”, in current times, to describe wealth, privilege? Was it permissible to describe pain experienced by a privileged white person? But, that’s who Martha was! So, she kept on, but she had to work hard to give herself permission to do this.

She wishes she’d kept a diary, that she’d captured this “dance” she’d had between the conscious and the subconscious as she worked through the issues.

On the Underworld

Next was the Underworld, Martha’s place of escape. Sofie explained that the Underworld, which comes from Greek and Roman mythology, is not the same as the Christian idea of hell. Everyone goes to the Underworld. We all know about Charon the Ferryman who takes souls across the river, but what is the Underworld? How did it work? Was it a watery place? There are many interpretations, but nobody knows, which gave Sofie – and Martha – the freedom to imagine it for themselves.

For Martha, suggested Karen, it is layered – mythic, sexual, academic, and more. Sofie agreed. It’s a metaphor for the darker parts of our psyche. Martha is obsessive, which makes it difficult to grow up, difficult to come to terms with her self, so the Underworld is a safe place.

On family and pets

Karen and Sofie then discussed Martha’s family. The opening paragraph describes the distance between mother and daughter. The mother, Judith, is aloof, remote, beautiful, tall, comes from old money, and is largely unavailable, though Martha remembers a time of closeness – underwater in a pool – when she was young.

Martha is more like her father, Andrew, but he is absent physically and emotionally. Her parents shared a love story. He was from the wrong side of the tracks, so why did Judith choose him? Was she rebelling against controlling mother, Babs, a snob who is the third party in the marriage?

They all love Martha, but they all fail her. Yet, Babs could be seen to save Martha. She’s an example of a character who starts as a role or function, but who becomes fully human with good traits and flaws.

Pets also play a role in the novel. They are like teachers. Martha’s grandmother has little dogs, but then Martha meets three big Irish wolfhounds, who ground her, who see her need. This scene at the farm was a joy to write. Sofie tries to write her novels from beginning to end, but if a scene needs to be written she will do it, and slot it in later. She returned to the idea of difficulty, and how surprising it was to find it so easy to write that scene but not the scenes before and after it.

Sofie said that Martha doubted herself, and this was what the writing was like. Some scenes would drag. She has depended all her writing life on her intuition, but with this book she needed an outside eye in a way she never has before. When she got that, she was able to write “with gusto”. That person gave her “permission”, reminding her that certain scenes can happen off the page, which is something she normally knows herself. This book she did the hard way, but she couldn’t give up on Martha!

On the 1970s setting

Sofie said there is some crossover between her life and Martha’s. This was a time when it was taboo to be gay, and feminism was growing but Martha could still cut off. Sofie found the research “thrilling”, and loved it when she found the extant female poet Sulpicia, whose authorship was contested by male academics. This was a great way for Martha to enact her own form of feminist activism.

During the Q&A, there was a brief discussion between Sofie and Karen re trauma, after Karen commented that there is trauma in each of Sofie’s books. Trauma, which comes from the Greek word for “wound” said Sofie, shapes people. All lives have “trauma”. You can’t avoid heartbreak, loss, acute pain. Karen observed, however, that trauma’s impact can depend on how and when it happens.

Before we went to the Q&A, Sofie apologised for being tired and getting tongue-tied, but we didn’t notice.

Q & A

On whether Martha represents Sofie (whom this questioner knew at school as a warm, passionate and curious girl) or a combination of girls: Both, she is a combination but also a “more true me”, said Sofie. She is awkward, prickly, can’t do eye-contact, until she meets horses and dogs. She’s a presence outside of Sofie, but is also “a soul twin’; she is both Sofie and separate.

On whether she had to kill any darlings: No, because whatever she killed were not darlings, as they were not working. Her aim is to find the structure, the shape, so she is always happy to lose things that are spoiling the shape, that are distracting from the story. Sofie laughed that she was using various metaphors – music, forest, sculpture – to answer this question, but essentially, once she has the path it’s a joy filling in the picture.

Vote of thanks

Features editor, Sally Pryor – who wore orange especially to coordinate with the book’s cover – gave the vote of thanks. Martha felt so much like a real person, she said, but is really just words on a page. How does that happen? Sofie replied that those marks on a page go from her soul to ours!

Another great meet-the-author event! We are very lucky, as Sally said.

ANU/The Canberra Times Meet the Author
MC: Colin Steele
Kambri Cinema, Australian National University
6 November 2025

Brian Castro, Chinese postman (#BookReview)

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Serendipity is a lovely word, and is even lovelier when it touches my reading. Such was the case with my last two books, Olga Tokarczuk’s House of day, house of night (my review) and Brian Castro’s Chinese postman. The connections between them are simple and complex. Both focus more on ideas than narrative, are disjointed in structure (or, at least, in reading experience), and draw consciously on their author’s lives. They also seem to be questioning the nature of fiction itself, a question that is true of two other books I’ve read in recent times – Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & practice (my review) and Sigrid Nunez’s The vulnerables (my review). None of these books are fast reads, but they are rewarding ones.

The other thing that connects these books is that, because narrative provides more of a loose structure than a driving force and because they blend that narrative with ruminations, memoir, essay, vignettes, anecdotes, recipes even, they exemplify the idea that every reader reads a different book. This is not only – or even primarily – because we are not all men in our mid-70s with mixed ethnicity, to take Castro (and his protagonist) as an example. Rather, it is because we all think about and weigh differently the issues and ideas these authors focus on.

In The vulnerables Nunez refers to Virginia Woolf (as does de Kretser) and her “aspiration to create a new form. The essay-novel”. She also refers to Annie Ernaux’s nonfiction book The years, describing it as “a kind of collective autobiography of her generation”. I’ve digressed a bit here, but my point is that these writers have things to say about their time, their generation, the state of the world – and they are looking for better ways to say it. They are suspicious of pure narrative, and yet I think they also recognise, to some degree at least, that “story” is a way to reach people. Therein lies the tension that each tries to deal with.

So now, Castro! There is a story, a sort of narrative, running through Chinese postman, and I’ll let publisher Giramondo explain it:

Abraham Quin is in his mid-seventies, a migrant, thrice-divorced, a one-time postman and professor, a writer now living alone in the Adelaide Hills. In Chinese Postman he reflects on his life with what he calls ‘the mannered and meditative inaction of age’, offering up memories and anxieties, obsessions and opinions, his thoughts on solitude, writing, friendship and time. He ranges widely, with curiosity and feeling, digressing and changing direction as suits his experience, and his role as a collector of fragments and a surveyor of ruins. He becomes increasingly engaged in an epistolary correspondence with Iryna Zarebina, a woman seeking refuge from the war in Ukraine…

The narrative arc, then, concerns this email correspondence with Iryna. It starts when she emails him:

Dear Professor, I am reading one of your books on the doorstep of war. You once wrote about war eloquently, so the critics said. I do not believe anyone can write eloquently about war. If you could find the time, could you please answer that question. (p. 29/30)

He doesn’t reply “of course”, because he suspects it’s a scam. But, the problem is, it’s got him thinking about his ‘”eloquence” in writing about war’. At this point, readers who have read the epigraphs will remember that one of them quotes John Hawkes*, who said, “Everything I have written comes out of nightmare, out of the nightmare of war”.

War – Ukraine, Vietnam, World War 2, and others – is, then, a constant presence in the novel. As is the aforementioned Iryna because, although she’s “probably a bearded scammer”, he does write back. He asks her about the “dogs in the Donbas”, hoping this “will shove aside the irritating accusation of eloquence”. And so a correspondence begins in which war and dogs, among other issues, are discussed. In other words, dogs become another thread in the novel, as do toilets, aging and its depredations, solitude, the writing life and more.

This is a “big” book, one that, as I’ve intimated, will be read differently by different people. Those concerned about where the world is heading will engage with the issues that mean something to them. Those of migrant background might most relate to his experience of discrimination and othering. Those of a certain age will relate to thoughts about mortality and managing the aging body. (To test or not to test is one question that arises.) Those of a literary bent will love the wordplay and clever, delightful allusions (and wonder how many more they missed. I loved, for example, the allusions to TS Eliot’s “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, a poem about anxiety and indecision which reflects Quin’s inner questioning about action and inaction. I also loved the wordplay that made me splutter at times.) And those interested in the form of the novel will wonder about where this is all leading!

“the unreliability of reason” (p. 232)

There is so much to write about this book, and I’m not sure I can capture the wonder of reading it, how ideas are looked at from every angle – inside out and upside down – in a way that illuminates and stimulates rather than confuses. It’s quite something.

I’ll try to explain something of this through two of the interweaving motifs – toilets and dogs. Both mean multiple things as Castro is not one to close things off. So, early on, toilets reflect the sort of cleaning work migrants must do to support themselves, as Abe does at University. Later, they are part of the aging person’s concern about bowel health. But, in between they could also symbolise feelings of disorder and helplessness, his “anxiety in the gut”, including just coping with “the difficult things of ordinary life”. Similarly dogs epitomise the instinctual, simple life, but, in stories like their being used for target practice, they could also represent innocent victims of war. Here of course, I’m sharing my personal responses to these motifs. There are many others.

No wonder Quin worries about the writing life. It’s something he, a writer, is driven to do, “it pushes fear into the background”, but does it achieve anything?

I’ve always believed it is the novel that carries all the indirect notes of empathy. It may even be violence that brings empathy to war and its suffering. It may be anything. Yet, the plasticity of the novel bends to all the obtuse emotions and accommodates them. Then all is confined to the scrapheap of having been read, having been experienced, having been second-hand and second-read. Major libraries are throwing out paper books. (p.140)

Chinese postman was my reading group’s September book, and it proved challenging, but that is a good thing. We had a lively discussion during which disagreement was not the flavour, but a genuine and engaged attempt to understand what Castro was on about. Whether we achieved that, who knows, but I am glad I have finally read Castro. I won’t be forgetting him soon.

* Wikipedia des John Hawkescribesa (1925-1998) as “a postmodern American novelist, known for the intensity of his work, which suspended some traditional constraints of narrative fiction”. !

Brian Castro
Chinese postman
Artarmon: Giramondo, 2024
250pp.
ISBN: 9781923106130

Monday musings on Australian literature: on 1925: 2, fostering Australian sentiment

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During 1925, two sets of articles appeared which discussed the issue of fostering “Australian sentiment”.

Australian literature and labour

John Mckellar, 1929
Herald (Melbourne), 27 November 1929, p 16

During the year, John McKellar (1881-1966) gave lectures on topics relating to literature and labour or the working class. On February 12, a newspaper titled Labor Call advised that at the February 17 meeting of the Malvern Branch of the ALP, Mr McKellar would speak on “Literature: Its relation to working class progress.” I didn’t know John McKellar but he has an entry in the ANU’s Labour Australia site. He was an “engineer, trade union official, editor and author”. He unsuccessfully stood for Labor in both state and federal elections and was associated with the Jindyworobak movement which focused on promoting Australian culture. He published books of essays, and historical articles, including one on a Gippsland-based Christian Socialist commune. His political and cultural interests are clear.

Anyhow, on June 11, this Labor Call wrote on another address given by Mr J. McKellar to the ALP’s Port Melbourne branch:

The lecturer prefaced his remarks by instancing the deep and lasting pleasure to be gained from the cultivation of the love of books. He spoke of the wonderful wealth of literature in the English language, and said that a feature of modern literature was that it got closer to the lives of the people.

He said writers like Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and G. K. Chesterton “held the mirror of life by their works”, and recommended other works, including The Communist manifesto. But, reported the paper, he also said that

Too little appreciation was shown for our own Australian writers. One of the planks of the Australian Labor Party declared for the cultivation of an Australian sentiment. This was not, he stated, to be taken only in a political sense. The cultivation of an Australian sentiment was equally the work of Australia’s literary men.

And he apparently named some who had done just this, including Fernlea Maurice (actually Furnley!), R. H. Long, and Vance Palmer. (R.H. Long does appear in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. It says he wrote “wrote topical verse, prompted to do homage to Nature and to denounce capitalism …”)

A few days later, on June 17, The Australian Worker reported on the same lecture. They also wrote of his comments on the lack of appreciation for Australian writers, and on the fact that one of the ALP’s planks was “the cultivation of an Australian sentiment”. They continued:

He might have added that, generally speaking, Australian writers have to go to London for an audience that will appreciate — and pay for — their songs and stories of the land that froze them out.

Ouch!

Australian literature and art in schools

Quite coincidentally, the topic of teaching Australian literature in schools that came up in my 1925 Trove research also came up, briefly, in comments on a #Six Degrees post this weekend – on host Kate’s (booksaremyfavouriteandbest) post, in fact. She linked to David Malouf’s Ransom because one of her children had studied it at school this year (as they had, the American starting book, Shirley Jackson’s We have always lived in the castle). Rose (RoseReadsNovels) chimed in saying her children had, in the past, read another Australian novel for school, Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi. I remember being disappointed when my children were in Year 11 and 12 that there was little if any contemporary (or any) Australian literature in their curricula.

The inclusion of Australian books in school curricula was also mentioned, in passing, in a Canberra Writers Festival session I attended – Poems of Love and Rage – with both Evelyn Araluen and Maxine Beneba Clarke mentioning that their books, Dropbear (my review) and The hate race (my review), were taught in schools. I love that recent Australian books speaking to current lives and issues are being taught. I know it’s neither easy nor cheap for schools to teach recent books, but I believe it is important.

This is not, of course, a new issue. It was discussed in the newspapers in late 1925 – on December 17 in Sydney’s Evening News (briefly) and The Sydney Morning Herald, and on December 18 in Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (not then part of the SMH group) – after members of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) had met with Mr Mutch, the Minister for Education. They argued that “to foster a pure Australian sentiment” there needed to be “an increased study in the schools of Australian literature and art”.

The best definition of “pure Australian sentiment” came from the critic A.G. Stephens, who, said the SMH, declared that “our literature was the mirror of our lives, and naturally we desired to see reflected in it our own country, lives, and characteristics.” He argued, wrote the SMH, that it was better “for children to read of gum-trees and their 400 varieties than of oak and fir trees” but that children were only learning “scraps of Australian literature, the lives, personalities, and ideals of the writers”.

The AJA also said that “the Australian author and artist were not getting a fair show in their own country”. They wanted the Department to work towards a “proportion at least 50 per cent” of Australian works in the schools. The Minister, a political being of course, disagreed with some of their condemnation but generally agreed with their sentiment! However, he said that “The department suffered from a constant financial malnutrition, and the purchase of Australian books was restricted on this account”. (The NMH&MA described the money issue as “a chronic state of financial stringency”.) Then he offered them another tack. They could

also arrange with the grand council of the Parents and Citizens’ Association that at least half of the prizes purchased for distribution at the end of the year should be Australian-made.

Nothing like passing the buck! But, not a bad suggestion all the same. The Evening News had its own suggestion. It argued that “if Australian literature were used largely in the examination papers, it would be taught as a matter of course in all the schools” and suggested that rather than approach the Minister, the delegation approach the University! I presume examinations were set by the University at that time.

And so it goes … (to use my best Vonnegut).

Thoughts, anyone?

Six degrees of separation, FROM We have always lived in the castle TO …

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If you have ever been to Japan you will know that they are deeply interested in weather. Turn the TV on and more often than not you will get a weather report or a cooking program. This now old Internet article was written by a Canadian who, at the time, had lived in Japan for ten years. It explains it well. My American friend who lived in Japan for around 7 years has told me that the Japanese often open conversations with the weather. I;m telling you this as an excuse for my frequently opening my Six Degrees posts with the weather! Not that I’m Japanese … I will say no more about the weather this post, but next post … wait and see. Meanwhile, on with the meme. If you don’t know how it works, please check Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book, and this month she has given a nod to Halloween, given today is the day after that event. The novel she’s chosen is We have always lived in the castle, and it’s by America’s queen of gothic mystery and horror, Shirley Jackson. Of course I haven’t read it, though I have read her short story “The lottery” (my review).

Horace Walpole, The castle of Otranto

Jackson’s 1962 novel is set in a castle – or decaying mansion. The book commonly regarded as the first Gothic novel is also set in a castle, which is not surprising, given the tropes of the genre. It’s Horace Walpole’s The castle of Otranto (my review), and was written in 1764, two hundred years before Jackson’s novel. Horace Walpole has something to answer for if you ask me.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

You might have guessed from that comment that Gothic horror is not my go-to reading. What is my go-to reading, on the other hand, is Jane Austen. The reason I read Walpole was to familiarise myself with the Gothic from her time because, according to many, Austen’s Northanger Abbey (one of my posts) spoofs the genre. I, on the other hand, see it more as a spoof of readers of Gothic novels, than of Gothic novels themselves, but let’s move on. (This cover doesn’t really emphasise the Gothic does it!)

Jane Austen was a clever and witty writer, as was Elizabeth von Arnim. As I wrote in my review of her novel, Vera, some critics and readers questioned how “playful, witty Elizabeth von Arnim, author of light social comedies” had become “a gothic writer of macabre tragedy”? Good question, the answer to which has origins in her own experiences of a controlling relationship with a narcissistic man.

Elizabeth Harrower The watch tower

Vera was written in 1921. Forty years later, in 1966, another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Harrower, published her own frightening novel about a young woman trapped in a controlling relationship. It’s The watch tower (my review). It has a third protagonist, the wife’s younger sister who lives with the couple and is caught up in it all. She is more conscious of what is happening, and its effect on her sister (and on herself)

Book cover

So, we are going to move on from coercive control to sisters, and Favel Parrett’s There was still love (my review), which is about two Czech sisters who lived through World War 2. One ends up in Melbourne, while the other remains in Prague. Parrett tells their story through the eyes of their grandchildren, Melbourne-based grand-daughter Malá Liška and Prague-based grand-son Luděk.

Cover

For my final book, we are staying with grandmothers, and a story told though the eyes of a grand-daughter. However, while Parrett’s book is a novel, albeit inspired by her grandmothers’ lives, my last link is a biography-memoir, Andra Putnis’ Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me (my review). Her grandmothers, who also experienced the War, were Latvian.

Hmm, five of my six selections this month are by women, but we have again moved across the globe – from the USA to England to Australia with forays in Eastern Europe. We have spent time in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And, unfortunately, we’ve met quite a bit of horror with the Gothic, coercive contol, and war. What can you expect, I suppose, with a chain whose starting book was inspired by Halloween?

Have you read We have always lived in the castle and, regardless, what would you link to?

Canberra Writers Festival 2025: 7, All things Austen: Jane Austen anniversary special

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Susannah Fullerton, Devoney Looser and Emily Maguire with Jonty Claypole and Sophie Gee.

The program described the session as follows:

Celebrate all things Austen at this major event! Over 200 years after Jane Austen’s works first appeared, her insights on life, love, and society remain timeless. Join popular Secret Life of Books podcasters Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole as they bring together an international panel featuring Wild for Austen author Devoney Looser (from the USA), Emily Maguire (Rapture), and Jane Austen Society of Australia president Susannah Fullerton. Join the community, and share your love – because, as Mr. Darcy says, “My feelings will not be repressed!”

Are you tiring of Jane Austen 250th anniversary events? Never fear, the year is nearly over, though her actual birthday is still to come. CWF could not, of course, let the anniversary pass without marking it in some way, and they did it with a five-person panel. The convenors’ aim was to steer away from the Austen of fluffy romances and never-ending rom-com (and other genre) adaptations to the disruptive, subversive, unorthodox Austen that we all believe she was.

The session was being recorded for Sophie and Jonty’s podcast, Secret Life of Books, so it had a particular flavour and style, and there was no Q&A. They started with an interactive game called “Never have I ever” in which the three panelists shared a statement that may or may not have happened to Austen or one of her characters and the audience had to vote true or false. That woke us all up, and then we settled down to the serious business!

The discussion was framed around three themes, in this order:

  • Disruptive Austen
  • Disruptive history
  • Disruptive readings

Disruptive Austen

Unfortunately, I had a technical malfunction with this first question, so I have to rely on memory. Essentially, the panelists were asked to share something they believe reflects disruptive (or subversive) Austen:

Emily chose Lydia from Pride and prejudice, noting that Austen never says the words, but we all know that the reason everyone was upset about Lydia was running off with Wickham was that they were having sex without being married. Once they were married, which of course was orchestrated, all was forgiven, and they went on to live acceptable lives. Lydia’s behaviour put her sister’s chances at risk. Austen shows, said Emily, the hypocrisy of her society.

Devoney and Susannah both read small sections from Austen’s Juvenilia (or teen writings), with Devoney reading the first four chapters of The beautifull Cassandra, and Susannah A letter from a young lady. These pieces exemplify the juvenilia overall. They are absurd, satirical parodies, and contain various scandalous acts, but are well worth reading for all sorts of reasons. (In my post on Volume the First, which includes Cassandra, I quote Looser a couple of times!)

The question put to the panel was, why did she leave this subversive writing? Unfortunately, I didn’t capture the full discussion, but one reason was that the Juvenilia was written to entertain the family, whereas the novels were written for a public audience. There was also discussion about Austen crafting her form. (You can wait for the podcast if you want to hear this and the whole event!)

Disruptive history

Susannah talked about Austen living during tumultuous times. Revolution and war in Europe, and England was unsettled, with changing laws. For example, duelling was illegal but still happening. There is a duel in Sense and sensibility. Austen mentions it briefly, with nothing like the detail a male author would use. But, there is a lot of female verbal duelling in the novel. Also, it is telling, she said, that the person who duels, who engages in illegal behaviour, is one of her most respectable characters, Colonel Brandon. Poaching is mentioned in Mansfield Park by Mr Rushworth, but he has no idea that Henry will poach his wife. In other words, illegal things happen in her novels.

Devoney also talked about the uncertain times. The French Revolution happened as she was coming of age, and then things shifted again in the 1800s. Critics often complain that Austen didn’t deal with war, but Persuasion is full of war, and Austen imagines a wonderful female character in Mrs Croft. However, Devoney said that during the 1800s society was clamping down, there was more censorship. Is that another reason why Austen damped down her Juvenilia? Devoney doesn’t think so. She thinks Austen blew up the form she toyed with in the Juvenilia and then put it together again. Devony saw both political and craft reasons for what Austen did.

Emily returned to her illicit sex argument, and that everyone knew it was happening. She shared the story of Lady Worsley (1758-1818), an Austen contemporary, who had a child that wasn’t her husband’s, was involved in a court case her husband brought against her lover, but ended up inheriting her husband’s estate. There was so much ambiguity in society during Austen’s time.

Jane eclipsed writers of her time, but Jonty and Sophie wanted know if the panel could recommend another writer.

Susannah suggested Fanny Burney. Her novels may not be books you go back to, but she was out there where the action was, unlike Austen, and she underwent (and survived) a mastectomy without anaesthetic. Her letters and diaries are worth reading. Devoney agreed with Susannah that no-one can match Austen, but if we widen our view there are women worth looking at, such as Maria Edgeworth (see my post on her Leonora), the Porter sisters (Jane and Anna Maria), and the Irish novelist Sydney Owenson.

Sophie suggested Mary Wollstonecraft, not only her A vindication of the rights of women but her Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. She had child out of wedlock, and died giving birth to Mary Shelley. We don’t know whether Austen read Vindication, but it was in her brother Edward’s library.

The conversation turned to related issues. For example, the first French translator of Pride and prejudice thought Elizabeth was too bold and feisty, so they flattened her.

Disruptive reading

How can Austen be read disruptively? Can she be read against the grain? (Aside: I think my Austen group does this regularly.)

Devoney said she can be read on different levels. Her novels document illicit sex, crime and criminality. She references contemporary issues, such as slavery. There is not enough information about where she stood. Austen was related to people who made money out of slavery, but Mansfield Park was likely named for the man whose judgement played an important role in England’s abolition movement. Not long after Austen’s death, her three brothers were involved in abolitionism. There’s reason to believe that she supported or was moving to supporting that view. Devoney also thinks that Austen did not want to be pinned down, but preferred to leave questions for us to think about. (This feels a modern idea to me, but her novels can support this theory, I think.)

Emily works with teenagers, and loves hearing what they pick up in Austen. They see tiny social signals – a look, a touch of hands – that suggest relationships. Young girls are alert. Looking through the lens of their own culture, they identify, for example, Austen’s “Pick-me” girls, like Miss Bingley.

Susannah spoke to Austen’s feminism, using, for example, Elizabeth’s statement to Lady Catherine that Mr Darcy “is a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal”. She mentioned Austen’s last poem, “When Winchester races“, written three days before she died. There is a line in it, “But behold me immortal!” Susannah would like to think she knew her own greatness.

And here we ran out of time … so the panel ended with Sophie and Jonty thanking all, and formally ending their podcast.

Not all in my Austen group loved this session, partly because the session was spread rather thin and we didn’t get to hear specifically about Looser’s book. But Mr Gums, my Austen-loving friend Kate, and I enjoyed what was discussed. It was lively, covered some interesting ground, and suited, I think, a broad-based Festival audience.

There will be no Monday Musings this week.

Canberra Writers Festival, 2025
All things Austen
Sunday 26 October 2025, 3-4pm

Canberra Writers Festival 2025: 6, Poems of love and rage

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Evelyn Araluen, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Omar Musa with Jacqui Malins

The program described the session as follows:

An electrifying highlight of this year’s program, our poetry panel features some of Australia’s most acclaimed and innovative poets putting love and rage on the page. Overland Poetry Prize winner Evelyn Araluen (The Rot) joins Maxine Beneba Clarke with Beautiful Changelings, and hometown spoken word artist Omar Musa. This session delves into the power of love, and the ongoing fight against oppression in its many forms. Don’t miss this powerful event. Moderated by Canberra author, artist and performance poet, Jacqui Malins.

For this event, we hardy festival attendees had to leave the warmth of the National Library building (or whatever building we’d previously been in), and walk through a little rain to a marquis on the Patrick White Lawns. It was worth the effort. Actually, it wasn’t that cold and wet, and the venue, with chairs on the grass and some lovely potted trees, made for a nice change.

As this session included poetry reading and performance, your scribe had a bit of a break from intense scribbling, but the notes I took have still ballooned. After acknowledging country, Jacqui asked each of the poets to choose a poem to read (or perform) that explores rage.

On rage

Evelyn explained that her collection is all love and rage, that it was written in the context of love of communities, network and solidarity, but informed by rage, by the futility of witnessing genocide from our phones while the government continues to provide material for weapons. She was thinking specifically about global capitalism. She read her poem “Girl work” from The rot. As I’m sure you all know, there’s something special about hearing a poem read by the poet. They know what nuances and rhythms they intended for their words. This is a deeply satiric and ironic poem about girls and work, girls and girly aspirations, set against “the machine” that will swallow them up. It’s confronting (“girly, you glisten in your soft tailoring … your coolgirl cleangirl chic”) and confrontational (“o girly, lift your head…”). The words are cleverly angry.

Jacqui commented on its exploration of how to live in the face of the onslaught while also trying to live day-to-day. She likes the thread in the collection of what to do with our hands, the twitching to act.

Omar, poet, novelist, musician and artist from Queanbeyan, “Palace of the Palarang, Venice of the Eden Monaro”, has published four books of poetry (the last being Killernova, see my post on its launch). A performance poet, he performed rather than read two poems, “To burning” (which you can see on YouTube performed with music by his wife Mariel Roberts) and an older one I’ve heard before, “UnAustralia” (on YouTube too). He too is enraged by politics which cares more about money than people (particularly brown, Muslim, and “other”) and the environment.

As Jacqui said, his poems contained an “extensive catalogue of rage” that hasn’t changed over the years since they were written.

Maxine, reading from her just published book, Beautiful changelings, took us to somewhat different places. Like Araluen’s book, her focus is women. Araluen’s is described as a “liturgy for girlhood in the dying days of late-stage capitalism” while Clarke’s is about “ageing, womanhood, motherhood” with “wrecking-ball revisitings of the myths, mantras and fairy tales fed to girls” (from back covers and promotional materials). The first poem she read, “A good wait”, was inspired by her role as chauffeur for teenage children. It is more humorous than overtly angry, but has a layer of anger all the same for parents, particularly women, who are expected to put their needs – including their work/careers – second to those of their children.

She then read a section from a longer poem, “Major complications”, which explores rifts in contemporary feminism. It was inspired by feminist witch t-shirts and the Salem witch-hunts, and draws on the story of Tituba, “the witch that would not burn”. I loved the line – I think I got it right – “Tituba made sure they got the complication they asked for”.

On writing poetry inspired by rage

Omar grew up angry. Ppoetry was is pressure relief valve. He talked about his Malaysian inheritance and a way of expressing yourself that alchemically transforms rage to a different state, that enables you to legitimate anger. (I missed the details because I didn’t catch the Malaysian word.) It’s reductive to delegitimise rage.

For Evelyn, rage was explicit to her project. Referring to the success of Dropbear (my review), she said what an enormous privilege it is for a poet to be read. It’s unusual. Her book is in schools, and she hears from teenage girls. This made her think about her responsibility to her audience. She feared she could be immobilising girls into despair. She was inspired by Revolutionary letters, a poetry collection by Beat poet Diane di Prima, who turned practical things into revolutionary action.

Maxine (whose memoir, The hate race – my review – is also in schools) related to this audience idea. She talked about being a woman and getting older, and the rage that brings. There’s poetry and reaching for poetry. Bigots, she said, aren’t going to pick up poetry. Further, more than with prose, people come to poetry with openness. An interesting point. How, she said, does she make sure that her rage is poetry.

Jacqui wondered about rage turning into polemic, and love into sentimentality. Are these risks ?

Omar said not necessarily. “UnAustralia” is a polemic poem. He hopes poems can work on different levels, such as rallying the base and educating others. Poets use their tools to smash open the door, using different weapons for different battles. Jacqui agreed that preaching to the converted has a role.

Evelyn commented that “people like shitting on sincerity”, that the elite will say they “hate slam poetry” but don’t go into those rooms and see the work. This is “cringe culture”, at work. We have a bad relationship with sincerity. (This idea spoke to me.) Performance offers a strong introduction to poetry, performance poets put their whole heart into their work. What is it that brings people through the door? How much affect is effective? Research suggests that the most significant trigger for engaging people is to activate emotional sensibilities.

Maxine added that in 2025 earnestness is not cool, but then people will perform emotions on Instagram!

On love

Jacqui asked the poets to end with a poem written through the lens of love. Maxine read her tribute to being an aging woman, her love letter to growing older, “I want to grow old”. It mentioned several older women models, like the late Toni Morrison, and included lines like “speaking slow and exact and only sense” and “I want to grow old spectacularly”. Omar read two poems, one to his cellist wife, and one to a childhood friend (noting that friendship can be our greatest love affair.) Evelyn, who at first feared she didn’t have one, read the last poem in her collection, “I will love”.

This event was in a small venue, but had a decent-sized audience. Poetry always moves me a little out of my comfort zone, but I’m glad I took the risk!

Postscript: It was notable that the three poets were people of colour, albeit from very different backgrounds. Interestingly, of the 7 sessions session I attended, five comprised only white (I believe) participants, and two comprised all people of colour. I did, however, only attend 7 of a large number of sessions, so mine may not be a good sample. Nonetheless, shaking it all up a bit – people’s backgrounds, genres, forms, and so on – could energise discussions.

Canberra Writers Festival, 2025
Poems of love and rage
Sunday 26 October 2025, 12-1pm

Canberra Writers Festival 2025: 5, Our worlds, our way

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Evelyn Araluen, Jasmin McGaughey and Lisa Fuller with Casey Mulder

The program described the session as follows:

Join this exciting First Nations panel including Evelyn Araluen, Jasmin McCaughey and Lisa Fuller to explore how culture and Country influence each author’s writing. Spanning poetry, YA and children’s novels, how do Indigenous worldviews emerge? As First Nations writing and publishing thrives in Australia, this event offers a unique chance to look across genres and celebrate creativity and connection. Moderated by Ballardong Noongar educator and writer Casey Mulder, co-curator of Rivers Flow.

Casey Mulder asked Lisa Fuller to acknowledge country, which of course she did, and then introduced herself as from Noongar country but having been a high school English teacher in the East Kimberley, before obtaining a mentorship at Magabala Books. She is now a freelancer editor.

She then introduced the three panel members:

  • Jasmine McGaughey, Torres Strait Islander and African American writer who has written the YA fantasy novel Moonlight and dust and Ash Barty’s Little Ash series.
  • Evelyn Araluen, Goorie and Koori poet, editor and researcher, born and raised on Dharug Country and in the Western Sydney Black community; writer of two poetry collections, the Stella winning, Dropbear (my review) and The rot.
  • Lisa Fuller, Eidsvold Murri writer, now living on Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands; writer of children’s literature, short stories, poems and memoir, including YA fantasy novel Ghost bird, picture book Big big love (with Samantha Campbell, and winner in the 2025 ACT Literary Awards, my post), and the middle grade fantasy Washpool.

Then the conversation began … I’ll add first though, that I kept thinking this session was “our words, our way”. As it turned out, it was all about Worlds and Words.

On their experience of storytelling when growing up and how country speaks to their work

Lisa spoke of her origins in a small place inland of Bundaberg, brought up by a single mother and with no internet or mobile phone. She grew up with books. Washpool is fantasy, so she did not need go through the permissions and protocols which First Nations writers do when writing about country. However, she’s been told the book has a strong sense of country, which the panel agreed is because the First Nations worldview of country as alive seeps through it. The book was written for her “niblings”, and was intended as fun.

Evelyn started by commenting that her niece loved the pink cover of Washpool. She grew up within the diaspora Aboriginal communities between the Hawkesbury Valley and Blacktown in Western Sydney. Her great grandfather is from Bandjalung (near Clarence River). Her mother’s side is from Dirty Swamp near Molong in Wiradjri country but due to aggressive pastoralism (colonisation) they don’t know their clan name. Fragments of culture are coming back through oral traditions. The country she grew up on is being destroyed by industry, and she has lost family through mesothelioma. She, like so many, didn’t grow up on country, because of the colonial project. Many in her diaspora community do not know where they come from. People on missions learnt songs from each other, and are transmitting songs and stories that belong to other nations. It is a constant process of healing and repair, as oral traditions are shared and passed on. The biggest “place” in The rot is the Internet, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Bandjalung.

Jasmine grew up in Cairns, but with a father from Alabama, and a mother from the central islands in the Torres Strait (low lying sandy islands, which are dying because of rising water). She currently lives in Darwin, but misses Queensland, which she described as a “casual version of Australia”. That got a chuckle from the audience. (I loved hearing her story because of my recent trip to Cape York and the Torres Strait, and because I am Queensland-born.) She has a “love-hate” relationship with Cairns, but believes it doesn’t get enough “page-time”. There were no stories for her to read about TI when she was growing up. Storytelling is big in her family. Her mother would try to find books with people like her. Then she made the point of the session for me, which is that the stories told in fantasy and sci fi, with their plots of colonisation, of dispossession, are their lives. Lisa Fuller’s Ghost bird felt like her life, because it was about teen adventures, but they were still connected to family. (How lovely is that.)

She then referenced the State Library of Queensland’s black&write! program, which she described as best practice for First Nations publishing. Casey agreed, saying it is great having First Nations people involved in editing and publishing, rather than always having to educate white editors and publishers.

On their writing and story-telling practices

Jasmine spoke, somewhat laughingly, of being a millennial so was “a Twilight girl”. She mentioned Lisa Fuller’s article, “Why culturally aware reviews matter” (see here), which articulated the tension she was dealing with. She wrote a short story, “The breaker”, which became a novella, and then her novel. It is nothing like Twilight!

Lisa spoke to how culture is embedded in work. She was struggling with writing Ghost bird. She was in Canberra, surrounded by other cultures, and couldn’t write, so she had to go home. She wrote for the teenagers who want to see themselves in books. She talked about books in libraries, about romances set on stations in which First Nations people were either invisible, or idiotic station workers or the noble savage. Her niece asked for her book to be in the school library, but Lisa has never been asked to speak at the school. First Nations kids need to have books that show good things about their lives and cultures. Fantasy speaks to otherness and the post apocalyptic world they live everyday! (There’s that point again.)

Evelyn spoke to where “our world, our way” fits into her practice. Drop bear was all about colonialism, about things like May Gibbs’ little white bush babies getting about on First Nations lands. The Rot is about how young girls are configured socially, politically, economically; about the fetishisation of their deaths; about Palestine, and the constant documenting of the brutalisation of bodies on our phones; about the compulsion in western media to tell some stories and not others, to fixate on pain and violence. She talked about the glorifying of youth, the devaluing of women as they age, and that she is loving growing older as a woman. She wanted to understand the damage she felt, and the resentment she had (through reading things like Wuthering Heights at the age of 11.) She sees her role as doing analysis. We weren’t imagined as readers, she said. She wants to make First Nations people visible, and to make visible the impact of the erasure they’ve experienced.

The discussion turned to white writers asking about writing “Aboriginal characters” because they see a problem and want to fix it! Evelyn tells such writers is to read all the work they can by First Nations writers, and then they won’t ask the question. They’ll see that the best they can to is to lift and support First Nations writers. Casey added that white Australians need to go on the journey ourselves, and not ask them to do it for us.

There was some sharing of pet hates, such as being asked, “if we write Aboriginal characters, is it an Aboriginal story”, or describing a fantasy written by a First Nations person as allegory. First Nations editors and publishers don’t make these mistakes.

Q & A

I’d like to write high fantasy from different cultures, can I (or should I not) include First Nations cultures? The response was that the question to ask is, why do you want to do it? Without educating yourself, you will inadvertently write stereotypes. You would need sensitively readers. You need to think about what harm you might do, because you want to lift up, not put down. The panel admitted that even coming from a culture, there are things they don’t know. There are permission and protocol processes because First Nations cultures are community-based.

Is there an international community of First Nations writers supporting each other as there seems to be within Australia? The panel mentioned various initiatives and experiences, but noted that Australian is remote. There is Red Room Poetry’s anthology Woven, comprising poems from First Nations poets from around the world; and the Trans-Indigenous literary studies movement that started around 2012. There are communities and networks, and members of the panel had their own connections, such as Jasmine finding peers in the Oceanic region. Despite what we think about the US, they are ahead in what they are doing, publishing-wise.

This was valuable session, but hard to write up. I hope I have been respectful and accurate.

Canberra Writers Festival, 2025
Our worlds, our way
Sunday 26 October 2025, 10-11am