Retreat to the Castle

My printed copy of Australian Book Review for June may not have landed in the mailbox, but the cover, contents list, and selected free articles are online now, including my Calibre Prize shortlisted essay, which is available here

I want to thank Helen Garner...

... not because I admire her writing (although I certainly do) but because of her wise words about not-writing at the 2008 AAWP conference. I had the most hideous day on Monday (at the desk, straining, unable to produce anything) followed by such a productive morning on Tuesday that I was skipping during my 5km walk at lunchtime. It was rereading Helen Garner's keynote speech that got me through the not-writing stage and out the other side. It's enormously reassuring and can be found at www.aawp.org.au/files/keynote-Garner.pdf

Back in chilly Armidale

It was a bit of a shock to return to minus degrees after several days of island life here, sitting on a verandah with a view of palm trees and Keppel Bay, chatting to people about writing instead of doing it myself...
I went snorkelling a couple of times (didn't see much) and traipsed over Kanomi trying and failing to find the highest point (they need to do more maintenance on their walking tracks). And of course there were the workshops. Four of them - Introduction to Life Writing, Memoir and Memory, Morning Pages, and Polishing & Publishing. The twenty participants were all attentive and well-behaved and applied themselves to the practical work with diligence and enthusiasm. It was much less daunting than I'd expected and I got to hear some utterly fascinating stories.

Calibre 2010 announcement of winners

Congratulations to the joint winners of this year's Calibre essay prize,

DR LORNA HALLAHAN - ‘ON BEING ODD’
DR DAVID HANSEN - ‘SEEING TRUGANINI’

Dr Lorna Hallahan is a social worker and theologian working as an academic in the School of Social and Policy Studies at Flinders University. She is a contributor to national and state disability policy debates who also writes and speaks regularly on ethics in human and health services.

Dr David Hansen is Senior Researcher and Specialist in the Art Department of Sotheby’s Australia. He spent twenty-five years as a public art gallery director and curator, in Warrnambool, Mt Gambier, Melbourne and Hobart.

The judges – James Ley and Peter Rose – longlisted twenty essays and shortlisted seven essays, all of which are listed on the ABR website.

My shortlisted essay, 'Retreat to the Castle', will be published in ABR in June. It is a chapter of the creative nonfiction book manuscript I am writing for my PhD, about people's experiences of caring for someone with a terminal illness at home.

Literary agents - not as scary as you might think

Perilous Adventures has published the feature I wrote about literary agent Pippa Masson. It's in the second issue for 2010 at www.perilousadventures.net/1002/carey.html

Profile of Wendy & Rebecca James in today's Herald

My story about Wendy and Rebecca James, Armidale's writing sisters, is a two-page spread in the Sydney Morning Herald today (Spectrum, p.30-1). The photo of them is lovely but slightly misprinted. Never mind - the words are great!

swanning off to a tropical island

Yesterday, the school bus reappeared after two and a half weeks absence and whisked away my kids, leaving me free to sit at my desk and pick up the threads of my thesis. I read through the nine pages of fragments that constitute the chapter I need to transform into a coherent whole, and decided to start by filling in the bit at the top that said 'Insert brief introduction here'.
I'd typed two sentences when the phone rang.
It was Linda Hawryluk, one of the creative writing lecturers at CQUniversity in Rockhampton. Young (well, 30ish), an emigre from Sydney to her first academic appointment, Lynda has retained a trendy black look (clothes, hair, glasses) but is not as out of place up there as she might initially seem. She lives on the coast at Yeppoon and regularly flings off her inner city image and takes to the water with her board. She's become a passionate surfie and even presents on the topic at academic conferences. Somehow she's also snaffled the role of coordinating the writing retreats that CQU hosts on North Keppel Island and - unbelievably - that's why she's ringing me.
Her arrangements with the workshop presenter for a three day 'Memoir and Memory' retreat have fallen in a heap. Would I be interested in being writer-in-residence? It's quite relaxed, she assures me. Lots of free time built into the schedule, and a mixed-age group of people who fancy combining a holiday with doing a bit of writing on the side.
I'm alarmed on several fronts. I'm running out of time to finish my thesis - how many more side-tracks can I afford? I'd need to do a lot of reading up before I could spout about memoir - I actually wrote mine intuitively, applying the creative nonfiction principles I use in writing other people's stories. And although becoming a journalist has taught me to mask my shyness in order to get the job done, it's still there underneath and I'm not certain that even a tropical island will make standing up in front of 35 people for hour-and-a-half long sessions FUN.
But I'm unlikely to get this kind of opportunity dropped into my lap again, and who knows? I might like it. So from May 7-9 that's what I'll be doing. Impersonating a writer-in-residence.