Andra Putnis

Canberra Writers Festival 2025: 1, ACT Book of the Year

/ Whispering Gums / 8 Comments

A preamble

The Canberra Writers Festival is back in 2025, with a new Artistic Director, author Andra Putnis whose biography-memoir, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me I reviewed earlier this year. The Festival’s theme continues to be “Power Politics Passion”, albeit not as dominating in promotion as it used to be.

The ACT Book of the Year

The ACT Book of the Year is broad-based award, meaning that it encompasses fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry. It is presented by the ACT Government, and was first made in 1993. I have written on this award in a Monday Musings, so won’t say more here!

The winner announcement has been made in various ways over the years. In 2023, for example, I attended the presentation at Woden Public Library. This year it was announced during the first full day of the Canberra Writers Festival, which feels fitting.

But first, there was the shortlist, which was announced on 7 September:

  • Theodore Ell, Lebanon days: memoir, based on Ell’s experience when he accompanied his wife on her diplomatic posting to Lebanon and witnessed a country on the brink of collapse
  • Andra Putnis, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me (my review): biography/memoir about the author’s two Latvian grandmothers, their experiences during the war, their subsequent emigration to Australia and the family they built here.
  • Qin Qin, Model minority gone rogue: memoir, by a young high-achieving Asian-Australian woman and her break from suffocating expectations to find the life she wants to lead.
  • Darren Rix & Craig Cormick, Warra warra wai: history, focusing on First Nations people’s experience of James Cook’s exploration of the east coast of Australia in 1770, in order to ensure the complete story is told.

All shortlisted books this year, are nonfiction, three being memoirs.

The panel

The event comprised two parts – a panel discussion featuring the shortlisted authors followed by the winner announcement.

Cover

So, the panel. It was moderated delightfully by science fiction writer, Daniel O’Malley. His questions were perfect for the shortlisted books, and generated some enlightening responses. Unfortunately – or fortunately, for those of you who know how longwinded I can be – I had some technological challenges so didn’t capture some of the thoughtful ideas and experiences shared with us. Hmm, this has still ended up being long!

On their 30-second pitch for their books

Darren said it all when said he would tell people Warra Warra Wai was “a great read”. This is true, I think, for each of the books.

On whether the book they produced was the book they started out writing

Darren and Craig started travelling up the east coast of Australia gathering stories, wanting to contribute to truthtelling, to expose the history of dispossession and share the story of rebirth, to “record history in the right manner”, but it ended up being a much bigger story. Qin Qin said she always wanted to be a writer, but that her story started to take form and gel during COVID when Chinese people were being demonised. Andra was in Darwin and can pinpoint the time when she decided to write her story, when she realised that what she wanted to write was how her family came to Australia and become the people they were (are). Theodore probably had the most circuitous route. His book started as an essay that was more successful than he expected. (In fact, my friend, the writer Sarah St Vincent Welch, told me, that this essay, “Façades of Lebanon”, won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize). He realised he had more to tell. He could have writte more essays, choosing a theme at a time, but he realised that Australians know little about Lebanon – its history and its beauty – so a book it was.

On what they did and didn’t include

Theodore provided the most intriguing answer. His book is written in five parts, and he wrote it backwards, that is, he started with part 5 which covered the most recent memories. Then he worked on part 4, and he knew what was needed to set up part 5! Ingenious. Andra knew she wanted to include the arc of her grandmothers’ lives. What she cut was a lot about herself! She realised she only needed enough about herself to sustain interest in the grandmothers. Qin Qin spoke like the Type A person she admits to being. She kept a diary as a child, and this provided some content, but her publisher and editor helped a lot. When she submitted her draft, hoping it was pretty much done, she was told she could write good dialogue and that it read like something written to get an HD! That brought a laugh from the audience. However, with editorial guidance, she eventually produced something that broke open her heart. Darren and Craig talked about their process, which included Craig doing the archival research, and both interviewing First Nations people up the coast. Darren said they interviewed young people as well as elders, to get a full picture.

On major challenges or any resistance they experienced

Qin Qin described her writing as “one continuous showdown” involving her constantly deprogramming herself from the limiting pressures and expectations she felt as the eldest daughter. She said anyone writing about race will get pushback, and at one stage she contacted the police about emails she was getting. Andra said she had been very afraid about how her story would be perceived, by the family and the Latvian community. The fear was so great she nearly gave up. But the response has been good, and the family has responded with such grace. Theodore did not face any real opposition or obstacles but there were ethical challenges. He’s not Lebanese, no one in his family is Lebanese, so he has no true stake in what happens to Lebanon. He wanted to avoid ventriloquising Lebanese points of view. The ethical core of the book is what people told him, in their words, but to protect their privacy he gave them pseudonyms. Also, as his wife is a diplomat – the reason he was there – he had to be careful about doing anything “unbecoming”. Even the simplest thing can be spun the wrong way, so he had a delicate path to tread. Fortunately DFAT was happy with the manuscript. Craig said the commonality between all the shortlisted books is that they are open to pushback, but books threaded with a respectful element of truth are protected. He and Darren said that some communities rejected their approach, but that with many, once they sat down and explained what they were doing – that they weren’t from “the government” or “a university” – they were accepted. This was then passed on, like traditional message sticks, to other communities. They explained they wanted to produce a woven black and white history. Also, many communities had not been asked these sorts of questions by an Aboriginal man.

On where they write and how (a writer’s question)

Andra can’t write just anywhere, but needs a place to base herself. She started with vignettes, like squares in a patchwork, which she then assembled. She was helped by the fact that Nana Aline had already started reflecting on her life. As for Qin Qin, it’s a lovely thing when, as you sit through panels like this, authors reveal themselves as the real – and individual – people they are. So, her response was not surprising. She said the writing process was an ongoing journey of becoming more aware of herself, but she finds it easier to let herself, rather than others, down. So, she needs deadlines, which her publisher gave her regularly. She then wrote anywhere, anytime, to meet those deadlines. She works best when there’s accountability. Darren and Craig spent lots of time together in planes and cars, during which they talked about what they were doing, their structure, the way they would incorporate different timelines (like dreamtime and white time). Once they got the structure, the writing was easy. Makes sense to me. Theodore said he must have a room. He has a room at home and one at the ANU. The latter is where he does the hard yards, the welding of the words.

On what was most satisfying

For Darren it was travelling country, particularly those he hadn’t been to before. Craig added that communities wanted their own stories in a form they could read, and their book has provided this. Qin Qin said that with each rewrite she felt she shed layers, she felt weight lifting. Her book is a spiritual memoir, one about deprogramming herself from living up to expectation. She was glad to find she had her own voice. Andra said getting to the end was satisfying, but she also related to the idea of shedding layers. What moved her most, however, was when Nana Aline told her that she had felt “seen” by her granddaughter. Theodore had two. One was that while much of his story is dark it also contains fun, because Lebanese people are witty and satirical. These scenes and those of real friendship mean a lot to him. Also, he liked, during revision, how much spontaneously came back in memory, enabling him to relive the many stunningly beautiful places.

On their next project

Craig and Darren are working on two books, which they call “batmen” (about the Aboriginal cricket tour of England in 1868) and “Batman” (about Treaty, involving Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales)! Qin Qin’s sole (deprogramming) journey is to have no goals, so she will see what comes up. Andra can’t wait to write something else but didn’t say whether she had a project, while Theodore’s main longterm project is a biography of Les Murray.

The announcement

Michael Petterson, ACT Government’s Minister for Business, Arts and Creative Industries, made the announcement, including sharing comments from the judges, but this is long enough. He did say, however, that there was a record number of 56 books entered for this year’s award.

The winning book was Darren Rix and Craig Cormick’s Warra Warra Wai, which the judges praised for providing a “unique lens on history, land and identity”. Theodore Ell’s Lebanese days was highly commended. I hope the ACT Government will share the judges comments on their website.

At the end of the announcement Craig said that he and Darren had decided that, should they win, they would pronounce it a four-way tie, which they did, and handed each author a medal to document it! The audience loved this spirit.

The session ended with afternoon tea served in the National Library foyer. A lovely treat for us who attended this free event!

Canberra Writers Festival, 2025
The ACT Book of the Year
Friday 24 October 2025, 2:30-4:30pm

Andra Putnis, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 10 Comments
Cover

Local writer Andra Putnis’ book, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me: Two women’s journeys from war-torn Europe to a new life in Australia, was my reading group’s February read. Not only was it highly recommended by two members who had read it, but we were told the author would be happy to attend our meeting if we chose it. That was an offer too good to pass up, so we scheduled it.

We’ve had a few authors attend our meetings over the years, and it has always been worthwhile. Yes, it risks constraining discussion if people have any reservations about the book, but that has never really been a problem, either because there haven’t been serious reservations or because the value of having the author present has far outweighed any perceived impact on free discussion. In Putnis’ case, the story is so powerful and so well-told that it was unlikely there’d be any reservations that wouldn’t turn into questions about why or how she wrote her story.

“hidden pasts, still very much present”

Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me is a family biography centring on the author’s two Latvian-born grandmothers, her maternal Grandma Milda (1913-1997) and paternal Nanna Aline (1924-2021). Teenage Aline was separated from her parents around 1942 to go serve in Germany’s war-time labour force. Meanwhile, in late 1944, with the war ending and the Soviet army looking set to return, 7-months pregnant Milda left Latvia with her parents and 18-month old son, enduring a tough, desperate journey. Both women ended up in UNRRA-managed Displaced Persons camps in Germany, where they experienced years of hardship before arriving in Australia in late 1949/1950. Milda, and later Aline, settled in Newcastle in the early 1950s, and met there through its tight-knit Latvian migrant community.

That’s the rough outline, but of course their stories – what they endured – are far more complicated, and Putnis wanted to understand. She told us that as a young child she had a sense of Latvia as almost an unreal fairytale place with beautiful forests, music and dancing, but she had also sensed, through family murmurs, a darker side, one that encompassed sadness and pain not only about Latvia but also about the family’s own story. She likened it to being on a boat, where you can see the surface but have no idea of what lies in the deeps below. She feared, as a granddaughter, that it wasn’t her place to go there, and worried about upsetting people. However, she did go there because she wanted to know and because Nanna Aline was willing. But, she said, she was always cognisant of just how far a granddaughter – even an older one – could, or should, go.

“moving between darkness and light”

I have read several hybrid war-related biography/memoirs written by family members, and this one is as good as any of them. This is not only because of the power of the story, and the honesty with which it is told – but also because of the structure Putnis uses. It is told chronologically, which is logical, but through the voices of Milda and Aline interspersed with those of others including, of course, Putnis’s own. I wanted to know about this and Putnis was happy to explain.

The structure was driven by Aline who told her story chronologically. She had thought deeply about and “understood the arc of her life”, said Putnis. So, with this in hand, Putnis started to piece Milda’s story – which was gathered less systematically – along the same lines. The challenge came in making the “weave” work, in getting the balance right, between them and their stories, and the wider historical, community and family framework.

Putnis worked on her book for nearly 20 years – with the occasional gap when life took over. Aline lived a long life so Putnis was able to spend a lot of time with her. Aline had also had the toughest life, particularly in terms of her personal choices and circumstances. Our hearts went out to her. Milda, on the other hand, died when Putnis was 19 years old, before she started working on her book. However, Milda had lived for nearly a decade with Putnis’s family, so Putnis had spent a lot of time talking with her, getting to know her. Putnis enhances both stories with information gleaned from conversations with other close family members, from secondary reading, and from primary research through letters, in archives, and so on.

The result is a coherent story of these two women told from more than one perspective, which has the effect of varying the intensity as we read – of mixing the light and the dark – and of enhancing authenticity, because the perspectives reinforce each other. It’s sophisticated and highly readable.

“the world is in tears” (Aline’s father)

It is a powerful and often heart-rending story, and it is to Putnis’s credit that she is able to convey both the individual personalities of her very different grandmothers and the universality of their experiences. Their experience of living under multiple invasions is both personal but, as we know too devastatingly well, political and general. Same for their experience of living in camps for years – of having your life on hold while you just survive. And for their experience of being migrants – “reffos” – in 1950s Australia. The negatives abound, with any positives achieved being hard fought. It’s a lesson in how ordinary lives are changed irrevocably by political actions way out of their control.

So, the book raises many questions – about the past and about what is happening now. Putnis also specifically raises the issue of protecting children, and I wanted to know about this too, because, given our knowledge of intergenerational trauma, how do you protect children from horror without laying them more open to ongoing trauma within? There is no easy answer, we concluded, but awareness and consideration about where to draw the line can only help.

Finally, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me, is fundamentally a book about the importance – and limits – of stories. Early on Putnis talks to Aline about her project, and Aline is clear about her intentions:

Alright then, I don’t remember everything. But I have my own point of view. Some old Latvian women go on about how wonderful things were before the war … You heard these stories? Well, it was not always like that. Not all the boys were good and I was not as kind to my māte [mother] as I should have been. If you want that story, you are talking to the wrong grandma.

Aline was brave, and this is a brave book about survival that doesn’t shy away from the tough and sad stories. But, more importantly, it conveys something about stories, which is that individual stories are very important, but they are not the whole story. In other words, the more stories we have the better picture we have – of history, and of the complexity of humanity that makes us who and what we are.

Putnis concludes with Aline’s funeral, and shares the words she spoke, which also encapsulate this book:

Nanna taught me nothing less than what it means to be human, to earn the grace and wisdom that come from surviving darkness and celebrating light.

I’d like to tell more stories about the book, including about Milda and the strong woman she was, but this post is long enough, so I’ll just encourage you to read the book for yourselves.

Andra Putnis
Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me: Two women’s journeys from war-torn Europe to a new life in Australia
Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2024
292pp.
ISBN: 9781761471322