Sam Twyford-Moore on Emerging Writers, building community and finding time to write

I am headed down to Melbourne this weekend to fulfill my role as one of the Ambassadors for the Emerging Writers' Festival, one of the most important events on the Australian literary calendar.
Before I left, I thought I'd ask the director of this year's festival director, Sam Twyford-Moore, some questions:

Sam Twyford-Moore

 What is an “Emerging Writer” and who is the Emerging Writers’ Festival intended for?

The Emerging Writers’ Festival is the festival for writers – in that a great deal of the programming is focused around the creative and professional practise of writers. But there are plenty of events for readers to come along and check out the most exciting new writers this country has to offer. Events like Sweatshop Stories, Turn The Words Up Loud, Poet Café and Wild, Wild Life: An Evening of Animal Stories are intended as showcases of some exciting new work and thinking.

I like that everyone has a different take on what an emerging writer might be. The keynote address on our opening night – given by the terrific Astrid Lorange – is really going to look at an emerging writer is. I think it’s a writer who is engaged with the culture around them, constantly evolving their work and ideas, and striving towards something.

Why do you think the Festival has become so enormously popular?

It’s interesting being a first time director on the tenth festival – there’s been a lot of brilliant community building and the festival has provided so much terrific support for writers over the last ten years that the word spreads. I think the EWF is at the forefront of considering the everyday needs of the writer, and that’s why people keep coming back, or new people starting hearing about us.

Do you think it’s a good time to be a writer? Are the book industry changes good or bad for us?

I think it’s an exciting time to be a writer – the opportunities that have been opened up by digital spaces are just incredible. I wouldn’t want to be in another era – it can be hard to keep up with the changes, but it’s also a giant playground out there and there are new audiences out there everywhere, who are looking for something new themselves.

Can you maintain your own writing when you have such a busy job and high profile?

Peak festival times mean that I don’t have so much time for my own writing, but I know when I do get back to it – and I’ve got a couple of things I’m working on in the second half of the year – having come in contact with so many different writers is only going to be good for it.

What books would you recommend for someone starting out in writing?

The books you love the most. I think those will be the books that will make you want to be a writer, and you have to find them in your own way. But if you’re thinking about being a writer, go back and visit them and keep them close to you when you’re writing.

What advice would you give someone to free their inner writer?

Don’t put pressure on yourself to perform and don’t spend too much time comparing yourself to other writers – use the digital space as a place to practise and experiment and have fun.  Find other writers who have similar values and work towards a collective goal.

Pilgrimages: Memories of Colonial Macau and Hong Kong by Maria N. Ng

I am always reading things out of order.

When I am away in a foreign country I buy books about it, but while I am there those books always end up hidden in my suitcase and I spend my leisure hours reading the books, manuscripts (yes, I travel with manuscripts!) and magazines that I brought from home. Then, one wet winter’s day back in my dreary room in Australia, eighteen or so months later, I will pull out those glamorous foreign books and start reading about a place that is by now the merest memory. And all of those little details, those places I must follow up and research, are lost to me because who knows when I will be going back there?

Not this time. I was poking about in the Livraria Sao Paulo, the little Catholic bookshop run by the Sisters of St. Paul right near the Cathedral in Macau. It is actually one of my favourite bookshops in the world, a tiny little place staffed exclusively by Chinese and Indian nuns and filled with a surprisingly thorough collection of books. Perhaps not surprisingly, that collection leans toward the Catholic, but if you are anything like me you are always behind with your Catholic reading.

Anyway, it was here that I picked up a beautiful little book by Maria N. Ng called Pilgrimages: Memories of Colonial Macau and Hong Kong, published by the Hong Kong University Press. Something told me I had to read it now, though I also picked up some self-help books printed in India, Therese de Lisieux’s Story of a Soul and a little biography of the new Pope that the Sisters made me buy because it had been published in Macau.

Indeed, I headed straight to the steps of St. Paul’s Ruins – a most apropos place to be reading this book – and began at once. Maria N. Ng is a Canadian academic born in Macau and educated by the Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong. In this thoroughly original memoir she takes apart the various strands of colonialism that made up her childhood and holds them up for analysis. She also investigates the dysfunctional female line of her family, using the shortcomings of her grandmother and mother to analyse her own discomfort with traditional Chinese culture. She sources the problems of the anti-woman culture in which she was raised in the teachings of Confucius.

While the book works extremely well as a conventional memoir, it is also an affecting and quite enchanting travelogue, one of the very few in English that covers Macau. Of course, I wanted more of Macau, but Ng’s own strange relationship with the place of her birth stops her from feeling qualified to write extensively about it. For her Macau is as much a romantic memory as it might be for any foreign visitor.

While published by a university press (and very handsomely at that), Pilgrimages is in fact a very accessible, even charming book. Ng’s skill as a writer, and her incredible thoughtfulness, make even the academic exegesis that is affixed to the memoir itself a delight to read. In many ways it is essential to read this brief final chapter to realize that, along with struggling with the ghosts of family, youth and place, the writer Ng is struggling with an academic discourse surrounding postcolonialism which she feels she might be betraying by writing so warmly and affectionately of her upbringing.

So if you are headed to Hong Kong and, particularly, Macau, I do recommend you get a copy of this lovely book. A truly unique, honest and beautifully rendered look at a lost time that is now a part of the discourse of picturesque tourism in the region.



Details:

Pilgrimages: Memories of Colonial Macau and Hong Kong by Maria N. Ng
Published by Hong Kong University Press, 2009

Walking With Gods and Goddesses

You never really need an excuse to visit the always-fascinating Sydney Mind Body Spirit Festival.
But just in case you wanted an extra prompt, my pal and inspiration, the wonderful Modern Witch Stacey Demarco, will be there over the weekend, exhibiting at her stall, giving special readings and hosting talks and workshops.

Stacey Demarco

I am most excited about her Walking with Gods and Goddesses seminar on Saturday the 18th of May at 3.30 pm. Make sure you get to the seminar room nice and early, as there is sure to be a crowd for this one.
As you are probably aware, Stacey has created two incredible Oracle Card sets: the Gods and Titans Oracle

and the Goddesses and Sirens Oracle.

I should imagine she will be drawing from the wisdom of both of these exquisite decks for this seminar.

Details:

Stacey Demarco at the Sydney Mind Body Spirit Festival
Her permanent stand is #E82
Her seminar Walking with Gods and Goddesses is on Saturday the 18th of May at 3.30 pm at Seminar Room A (I advise you get there nice and early in order to get a seat). Seminars are free with entry to the Festival.

Novels that have inspired me

As we are moving into the season of the Emerging Writers' Festival (and what an incredible line up they have!) I have been thinking a lot about the books that have inspired me to be a writer.
So I thought I'd share with you some of the fiction that I have read many times, and which I turn to whenever I need to be reminded just how wonderful books are:

The novels of Nancy Mitford - Yes, it really is hard to single out one. I think they do have to be considered, and read, as a body of work. So, when I decided I wanted to introduce my sister to Mitford's genteel and very funny world, I had to buy her the complete collection of the novels in a paperback re-issue from Penguin. If you were to hold a gun to my head and tell me to pick one, it would probably be The Pursuit of Love. I've said it before and I will say it again: Nancy Mitford is one of the great masters of the English novel, and deserves a lot more serious attention than she gets.

The Lucia novels of E. F. Benson - These were, of course, the books that inspired a later generation of comic writers, principally Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh and Noel Coward. Exceedingly camp, excrutiatingly perfect and very, very addictive, Benson is the true master of the English comic novel (forget Wodehouse).

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - Ignatius J. Reilly is one of the great characters of American fiction, and this is one of those books that, once picked up, simply cannot be put down. Hilariously funny, bizarre and frequently very sad. I have to be careful with this book, or I'd read it over and over again in the course of a year.

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers - Probably technically a novella, but I think it's still long enough to sneak in. This is the freak's manifesto, though in McCullers' world the freaks and misfits aren't necessarily the heroes. In fact, I adore all of McCullers' work, but I think this is her masterpiece. And Simon Callow's film version is one of the rare cases where the movies is as good as the book.

Aldo Busi

Sodomies in Eleven Point by Aldo Busi - This truly wonderful (homo)sexual romp is Aldo Busi's paean to unbridled promiscuity, most of it taking place in North Africa. Hard to categorise this book, really, but heavens it's good fun.

The Married Man by Edmund White - Clearly this is White's masterpiece. A long journey through Paris where a middle-aged gay American falls in love with a married Parisian and they attempt to form a life together. It's actually a good old-fashioned romance, but White has never written as well, before or after.

Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott - I wrote my Honours Thesis on Elliott, and I have loved this book since I was fourteen. An elegant and unique vision of Australia during the depression era, it is a largely autobiographical account of a young boy whose family is at war over his custody in a time when such things were quite uncommon. Really, really lovely. Elliott should be better remembered than he is, though I was happy to see they did a reissue of this a couple of years ago.

Sex, Drugs and Meditation - could you choose?

The 10 day silent Vipassana retreat is one of those spiritual rites of passage that I have always been able to avoid. Don’t get me wrong, I have done other long retreats, including an even longer Vipassana retreat at a rural monastery in Thailand. But they have never been silent and I have always managed to bend the rules a little. I used to sneak out for deep fried bananas in the evening, for example, and a bunch of drag queens and I set up our own little dormitory of outlaws.

But I have been tempted. A certain kind of personality seeks out these more severe forms of spiritual training. They appeal to us, perhaps to our internal state of self-punishment. Certainly in Mary-Lou Stephens’ simply superb new book Sex, Drugs and Meditation there is a frank recognition of the psychic demons that drive this particular retreant to submit to an incredibly punishing schedule.

In a hot and dusty meditation centre in southern Queensland, Mary-Lou embarks on the famous course set out by the Buddhist teacher Goenka. This particular retreat marks a retreat, as well, from certain unpleasant factors in Stephens’ own life: a psychotic boss, an awareness of the approach of middle age, and a dull loneliness resulting from a misspent youth.

Mary-Lou Stephens

While meditating in complete silence for hours every day, Mary-Lou Stephens, an ABC radio celebrity and ex-country music star, deals with some much more tangible limitations. These included the extreme physical discomfort - and even pain - caused by sitting for extended periods, the irritations of a snoring roommate and the odd little tensions that arise in the hothouse atmosphere created by so many people intent on self-awareness.

Each chapter of this unique book is a day of this rigidly-structured ten-day retreat, and deals with the demons that arise as she meditates. It is a kind of sustained spiritual memoir that is rarely published these days, which is why it seems so very unique and makes for utterly compelling reading. It calls to mind some of the great classics of spiritual memoir, and will certainly appeal to anyone who has ever picked up St. Augustine’s Confessions or Therese de Lisieux's Autobiography of a Soul.





In a book which is, by any measure, a dangerous exercise in literary solipsism, the author Stephens manages to walk the tightrope between mawkish self-regard and bathetic personal misfortune very skilfully. She is warm, self-deprecating and retains enough sweetness and optimism to make me believe in her journey and leave me wanting her to succeed. A history of drug abuse, sexual misadventure and quite bitter personal jealousies have left her somewhat world-weary, but she retains a praiseworthy and impish pride in some of her excesses. Explaining her seeming lack of achievement, but ample life experience, by her early 40s, she says:

“...it was because I said yes.  I didn’t hang back and worry about security, even though on reflection I sometimes wish I had. I said yes and plunged into another new experience. It’s as though I’ve lived three lifetimes already. I don’t need to believe in reincarnation.”

I suppose it helps that this happens to fit in with my own personal philosophy, but I do believe that Mary-Lou Stephens speaks to so many people of a certain age who find themselves haunted by questions and uncertainties they had spent their youths denying. Throughout the book I was reminded too of Laura Dern’s exceptional HBO television series, Enlightened, though Stephens is a much more sympathetic character.

Sex, Drugs and Meditation has been my favourite read of the year so far, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who has attempted to create a more spiritual focus in their lives. Unpretentious, constantly recognisable and beautifully written, I think you should grab a copy, sit back and enjoy yourself. And wonder if you would ever have the fortitude to bear your own ten days of silence.

Cambodian Artist's Inspirational Story - Sydney Unitarian Church, May 5

‘Straddling 2 Worlds’ - a very special film and presentation
at Sydney Unitarian Church, Sunday 5 May

Cambodian cartoonist & activist Bun Heang Ung and his wife Phiny survived Pol Pot’s Killing Fields. But in the 30 years following they’ve had tough times surviving in Australia.

Bun Heang Ung

Tian Gerrand’s short film profile  ‘Straddling 2 Worlds’  will be screened to highlight  the heartaches and challenges that have tested the Ung family’s resilience and self-belief  since they landed here in the Lucky Country.

Cartoon by Bun Heang Ung

After all they’ve been through, ‘Cancer is a compliment,’ says Bun.       
So why is Bun so positive and accepting of his karma? And yet so angered by Cambodia’s fate since the end of Pol Pot ?

Monastery Verandah, Battambang, Cambodia

The short film and talk will be presented by James & Tian Gerrand
Sunday, 5th May 2013  at 10:30 am
Sydney Unitarian Church
15 Francis St., (off College St) ,East Sydney
Free entry.  

                                               Web site:  www.sydneyunitarianchurch.org

Walter Mason's appearances at Sydney Writers' Festival 2013

I am so honoured to be making three appearances at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival.
Here are the details:

Walter Mason

Book Launch: Jane Skelton - Lives of the Dead

Tuesday, May 21 2013         6:00 PM - 7:00 PM         Free, no bookings
Carrington Hotel, Katoomba, 15-47 Katoomba Street, Katoomba        
   
Universal Heart Book Club’s co-founder, Walter Mason, will launch Lives of the Dead, the haunting and lyrical debut short fiction collection by local writer and Varuna Alumna, Jane Skelton. Set in rural and remote farming areas, in the Blue Mountains bushland and on the coast, Skelton’s stories tell of characters captured by memories of the past, tied up inextricably in the Australian landscape. SpinelessWonders, Australia’s short fiction specialists, invites you to this entertaining hour of readings and refreshments.

Presented with Varuna, The Writers’ House.


Books to Live By

Thursday, May 23 2013         11:30 AM - 12:30 PM         Free, no bookings
Sydney Dance 2, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay       
John Purcell, Morgan Smith, Barbara Horgan, Walter Mason (facilitator)
  
A great book recommendation is indeed a wonderful thing. Booksellers, with their wealth of knowledge and eyes on the most exciting new books, are often the best people to tell us what to read. Getting the right books to the right people is their special skill. Three of Sydney’s most in-the-know booksellers and tastemakers, John Purcell (Booktopia), Morgan Smith (Gleebooks) and Barbara Horgan (Shearers), share some of their secrets with Walter Mason and recommend their favourite books.


The Power of Landscape

Thursday, May 23 2013         4:00 PM - 5:00 PM         Ticketed: $14/$10
Richard Wherrett Studio, Sydney Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay        
Melissa Lucashenko, Sue Woolfe, Walter Mason (facilitator)

BOOK NOW     $14/$10 Bookings 9250 1988, swf.sydneytheatre.org.au
   
Our relationship with our environment determines the identity of every individual and every culture. If we shift where we are, can personal or spiritual revelation come more readily? Melissa Lucashenko (Mullumbimby) and Sue Woolfe (The Oldest Song In the World), discuss the power and influence of the Australian landscape on their writing with Walter Mason (Destination Saigon).