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Kristina Olsson

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<strong>Kristina</strong> <strong>Olsson</strong><br />

- Supporting writers<br />

ISSUE 255<br />

Amie Kaufman - Trends in YA<br />

December 2016 –<br />

February 2017<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 1<br />

Jackie French - Making a living


Buy Queensland books ...<br />

CHILDREN’S & YOUNG ADULT<br />

101 of the Best Kids’ Jokes Ever: V. 1<br />

Lily Burgess<br />

Buy: amazon.com<br />

wordsfromdaddysmouth.com.au<br />

print • eBook<br />

For many years, Lily has collected virtually every kids’<br />

joke shared with her, now released for the first time.<br />

Volume 2 also available.<br />

The Magic in Boxes<br />

Chrissy Byers<br />

Buy: chrissybyers.com<br />

Print<br />

Every child knows a box is more than just a<br />

box: inside tingles a hidden magic that can only be released when<br />

little fingers are touched by the power of play. Climb inside the boxes,<br />

travel to lands of fun and wonder, where anything is possible and new<br />

adventures are born. (Printed on recycled paper. Ages 2-5 years.)<br />

From Dusk: The Vampire Hunter<br />

Prophecy<br />

M G Ryan<br />

Buy: amazon.com<br />

authormgryan.com / print • eBook<br />

When Lexi O’Connor discovers Dunkeld Cathedral in<br />

Scotland, she meets the local priest, who believes<br />

that Lexi is part of an old church prophecy. When told of the part she<br />

plays within the prophecy, Lexi is unsure of what to believe. Does she<br />

stay or run away from her destiny?<br />

Island of Puffins<br />

Val Shooter<br />

Buy: amazon.com<br />

print • eBook<br />

A 5000-year-old dormant volcano on Iceland’s<br />

Westman Islands erupts spectacularly during a<br />

bitterly cold winter’s night, forcing Kria, her family<br />

and everyone on the island to evacuate to the mainland. Kria dreams<br />

of the carefree life she once led, but will she ever be able to return<br />

home?<br />

Liberated<br />

M.J. Stevens<br />

Buy: mjstevensauthor.com<br />

print • eBook<br />

Selestia has begun to recover from the war. For<br />

Mellea, however, things are only starting. If seeing<br />

the spirits of Livolism wasn’t bad enough, Doctor and<br />

her MECH army haven’t been destroyed yet, and her father is still<br />

missing. The final installment of the Guardians Series.<br />

NON-FICTION<br />

Relinquished, Returned, Rejected<br />

Jackee Ashwin<br />

Buy: balboapress.com.au<br />

jackeeashwin.com / print • eBook<br />

In 1974, Jackee Ashwin relinquished her baby boy as<br />

part of the adoption process in Australia during that<br />

era. In 1983, she lost her second son to stillbirth.<br />

Rebuilding her life after these incidents, she was reunited with her<br />

firstborn in 2012 after he found her online.<br />

The Power and the Possible<br />

Stephen Paul Chong<br />

Buy: jabirupublishing.com.au<br />

stephenchong.com.au / print • eBook<br />

The Power and the Possible is a life education<br />

roadmap for teenagers trying to navigate the<br />

magic, mystery, trials and challenges of the teenage years. Includes<br />

practical insights, humour, easy-going parables, and a wonderful<br />

narrative about a family of ducks.<br />

Ricky<br />

Yvonne Kirkegard<br />

Buy: zeus-publications.com<br />

print • eBook<br />

Ricky met her husband, a doctor, in a London<br />

hospital. They went to British Malaya and Singapore<br />

in 1938. Ricky and her two children had a miraculous and dramatic<br />

escape from the Japanese just before Singapore fell in 1942. The<br />

family immigrated to Australia in 1951.<br />

Finding Love<br />

Carolyn Martinez<br />

Buy: hawkeyepublishing.com.au<br />

print • eBook<br />

If doing what you’ve always done is not giving you the<br />

results you seek, it’s time to do something different.<br />

Finding Love is a collection of advice from a relationships expert, 21<br />

success stories, and self-reflection exercises for the reader looking<br />

for love the second time around.<br />

The Publican’s Wife<br />

Lori Patrick<br />

Buy: boolarongpress.com.au<br />

charliwinters.com / print<br />

Working and raising a family has its challenges.<br />

When you add running an outback pub and mix it<br />

with humour and tragedy, Lori Patrick’s life story, The Publican’s Wife,<br />

becomes a compelling read.<br />

The Cruising Dream<br />

Jenny Lawton<br />

Buy: jabirupublishing.com.au<br />

print • eBook<br />

Jenny and Doug Lawton were schoolteachers. As<br />

their sons were growing up, they could see a new<br />

era in their lives approaching. They took up the challenge of Doug’s<br />

dream to buy a boat and sail away. This is their story of cruising the<br />

South Pacific in their yacht, Swifty.<br />

Advertised books from QWC’s Books from our Backyard 2015. Browse the full catalogue at backyardbooks.com.au. Advertise in WQ - editor@qwc.asn.au.


ISSUE 255<br />

December 2016–February 2017<br />

3<br />

4<br />

6<br />

8<br />

10<br />

12<br />

13<br />

14<br />

16<br />

18<br />

20<br />

22<br />

23<br />

24<br />

26<br />

27<br />

27<br />

Editorial<br />

Like plumbing<br />

<strong>Kristina</strong> <strong>Olsson</strong><br />

Australian short story trends<br />

Craig Bolland<br />

Making a living from writing<br />

Jackie French<br />

Writing games<br />

Brooke Maggs<br />

New tools, timeless tales<br />

Simon Groth<br />

Milestones<br />

Trends in young adult writing<br />

Amie Kaufman<br />

Conjuring stories<br />

Melaina Faranda<br />

Writing on the road<br />

Claire Coleman<br />

Coming home – 25 years of QWC<br />

Craig Munro<br />

Events<br />

Open calls<br />

Competitions and opportunities<br />

About QWC Membership<br />

QWC Membership benefits<br />

Membership form<br />

GUEST ARTIST<br />

Kris Sheather<br />

Kris Sheather leads a creative life as a freelance graphic designer (twodecadedesigns.com), artist & textile<br />

designer (onetwoblue.com), blogger (krissheather.com), publisher/editor (ormistonpress.com), contributor<br />

(shebrisbane.com.au) and a speculative fiction writer. Her first picture book, The Green Goggles, is due for<br />

release in November 2016.<br />

Facebook.com/KrisSheather.page; Instagram WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU @artylifekris; Twitter @kris_sheather<br />

1


PUBLISHED BY<br />

ISSN 1444-2922<br />

About WQ<br />

WQ is the quarterly publication of the<br />

Queensland Writers Centre. It is not just<br />

a magazine for Queensland writers – it<br />

examines issues and topics relevant to<br />

writing and publishing in Australia and<br />

around the world. It also publishes member<br />

milestones and lists of workshops and<br />

events, competitions and opportunities.<br />

The WQ you get in your mailbox or inbox<br />

seasonally should be read in tandem with<br />

the magazine’s online counterpart:<br />

www.writingqueensland.com.au<br />

Editorial and production<br />

Sharon Phillips, Lauren Sherritt,<br />

Catherine Moller, TJ Wilkshire<br />

Editorial team<br />

Lauren Sherritt<br />

Social Media<br />

Sharon Phillips<br />

Advertising<br />

Kris Sheather<br />

Guest Artist<br />

Popeye Creative<br />

Design<br />

Paradigm Print Media<br />

Printing<br />

Submissions<br />

Information on how to include your<br />

Milestones or details for the Events,<br />

Competitions and Opportunities listings is<br />

available at qwriters.co/qwc-submissions.<br />

QWC reserves the right to edit all<br />

submissions with regard to content and<br />

word length.<br />

Advertising<br />

Advertising rates, deadlines, dimensions and<br />

other information on how to advertise in WQ<br />

is available at qwriters.co/qwc-ad-info.<br />

For advertising inquiries please contact<br />

Sharon at editor@qwc.asn.au.<br />

QWC members enjoy a reduced advertising<br />

rate. Before booking an advertisement<br />

potential advertisers should read QWC’s<br />

Advertising Terms and Conditions, qwriters.<br />

co/qwc-ad-terms.<br />

About QWC<br />

QWC is the leading provider of specialised<br />

services to the writing community in<br />

Queensland. Through its annual programs,<br />

QWC promotes creative and professional<br />

development of writers and advances the<br />

recognition of Queensland writers and<br />

writing locally, nationally and internationally.<br />

qwc.asn.au<br />

Staff<br />

Katie Woods<br />

Chief Executive Officer<br />

Sharon Phillips<br />

General Manager<br />

Jackie Ryan<br />

Program Manager<br />

Elliott Bledsoe<br />

Marketing and Communications Manager<br />

Lauren Sherritt<br />

Content Producer – Membership & Program<br />

Catherine Moller<br />

The Australian Writer’s Marketplace Project<br />

Officer<br />

Simon Groth<br />

if:book Australia Manager<br />

Samantha Schraag<br />

Customer Service Officer<br />

Stacey Clair<br />

Project Officer<br />

Terry Sheather<br />

Finance Officer<br />

Elizabeth Georgiades, Shastra Deo,<br />

Kimberley Smith<br />

Workshop Coordinators<br />

Management Committee<br />

Julie Barnett<br />

Chair<br />

Leanne Dodd<br />

Vice Chair<br />

Greg McBride<br />

Treasurer<br />

Stephanie Rowe<br />

Secretary<br />

Andrea Baldwin, Kylie Chan, Kathleen<br />

Jennings, Jock McQueenie, Jo-Ann Sparrow,<br />

Ian Walters<br />

Ordinary Members<br />

The Queensland Writers Centre Management Committee and staff present WQ in good faith and accept no responsibility<br />

for any misinformation or problems arising from any misinformation. The views expressed by contributors or advertisers<br />

(including advertising supplying inserts) are not necessarily those of the Management Committee or staff.<br />

Queensland Writers Centre is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and is assisted by the<br />

Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.<br />

2<br />

WQ


Editorial<br />

Lauren Sherritt<br />

For writers, the road ahead does not always take the form of a predictable<br />

path. We may start our writing journeys with an idea of where we’ll end up,<br />

only to find that we diverge as other stories take hold of us and other styles<br />

excite.<br />

Unforeseen changes within industry and audience may open up new roads<br />

or put obstacles in our path. We must be quick to adapt as we push forward,<br />

gathering resources along the way that will help us grasp opportunities as<br />

they arise.<br />

In this issue of WQ, we have asked our writers to peer into the future and<br />

reflect on the past, giving us their take on the writing journey and the<br />

future of writing in Queensland. Kris <strong>Olsson</strong> writes about the ways in which<br />

communities can foster writers on their journeys. Amie Kaufman examines<br />

the future of Young Adult fiction, while Brooke Maggs explores the realm of<br />

writing for virtual reality, more a part of the modern writing world than its<br />

futuristic name might imply.<br />

Claire Coleman talks about the physical journey she took which inspired her<br />

writing. Having successfully traversed the road, Jackie French guides us<br />

through the realities of making a living as a writer.<br />

Simon Groth of if:book Australia talks about the unchanging fundamentals<br />

of story-telling in a world of technological possibilities. Melaina Faranda<br />

gives us some ideas on how to conjure stories, while Craig Bolland<br />

discusses trends in Australian short story writing.<br />

We close the issue with the speech delivered by QWC’s first Chair, Craig<br />

Munro, at our 25th Annual General Meeting. As Craig reflects on QWC’s<br />

past, we plan for the future, thinking about what QWC and Queensland<br />

writers will want and need in 2017 and beyond.<br />

It is easy to wish that there was a Google map to a successful writing career,<br />

with a navigator telling us when to turn or rethink our route. But perhaps<br />

this would diminish the journey. After all, why would we be here if it weren’t<br />

for the adventure?<br />

The<br />

Road Ahead<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 3


(well, most of us) nor touched by<br />

angels. That what most of us do is<br />

as workmanlike and productive and<br />

exhilarating as many other trades.<br />

Like plumbing<br />

<strong>Kristina</strong> <strong>Olsson</strong><br />

Here’s the writer in her garret,<br />

quill in hand, parchment at the<br />

ready, starving. She lives on bread<br />

and gruel and inspiration. The<br />

latter arrives punctually every day,<br />

courtesy of her muse, who alights<br />

on her shoulder and whispers in<br />

her ear. She, dutiful amanuensis,<br />

scribbles away, oblivious to her<br />

drear surroundings and unkempt<br />

hair, the fact that she has run<br />

out of bread, wine, chocolate and<br />

cosmetics. The essentials of a<br />

former life.<br />

Don’t laugh. This image of writers<br />

(replace quill and parchment with<br />

laptop) is still abroad, and it is about<br />

as real as the other stereotypes<br />

about the job: the writer as part of<br />

the leisured class, reclining on a<br />

velvet chaise in the style of Barbara<br />

Cartland; the writer as part of<br />

the under-class, forever bludging<br />

on the public purse; the writer<br />

as mysterious and noble being<br />

suffering for her art; the writer as<br />

drunken genius.<br />

It comes as a surprise to many<br />

that we don’t live in garrets but in<br />

ordinary flats and houses with often<br />

very ordinary plumbing; that we<br />

have children and mortgages and<br />

penchants for nice shoes; that we<br />

are neither whingeing egomaniacs<br />

With a crucial difference: in our<br />

trade, regardless of our seniority,<br />

we work for an apprentice’s wage.<br />

Most of us – and the exceptions<br />

prove the rule – earn just enough<br />

from our writing to keep us beneath<br />

the poverty line. We eat and we<br />

(occasionally) drink. We pay the<br />

rent. But if we want nice shoes, we<br />

have to get them some other way.<br />

Then why do we do it? Because<br />

each book or poem or play is<br />

a sharp-edged learning curve,<br />

and the lessons enlarge and<br />

enrich our minds and souls, in an<br />

extraordinary and non-fiscal kind of<br />

way. As Peter Carey once famously<br />

said, ‘When you’re writing at your<br />

best, what you write is better than<br />

you are.’ That’s what we write for,<br />

and I think that’s what we read for.<br />

To feel bigger than we are, one<br />

step further down the long road of<br />

understanding ourselves.<br />

It should be enough. But it isn’t. In<br />

the same way that bad shoes aren’t<br />

enough. Writers, like feet, need<br />

support.<br />

It’s not a new idea. For centuries<br />

many countries have acknowledged<br />

the importance of the arts and<br />

artists not just at the level of the<br />

individual and the community, but<br />

in nation-building. Iconic literature,<br />

paintings, architecture, music,<br />

theatre: they all reflect a culture<br />

back to itself and to the world.<br />

Sydney Opera House, the work of<br />

Patrick White and Eleanor Dark and<br />

Kim Scott, of Sydney Nolan, of Paul<br />

Kelly and Yothu Yindi, of Ray Lawler:<br />

they have informed not just our<br />

notions of ourselves, but the views<br />

of the rest of the planet.<br />

In some places, like the<br />

Scandinavian countries, this close<br />

link between the promotion of the<br />

arts and the making of national<br />

4<br />

WQ


identity has been accepted for<br />

more than a century. They have<br />

seen it as a worthy trade-off:<br />

support for artists and writers for<br />

a robust sense of nation and self.<br />

In one or two places that support<br />

isn’t as strong as it used to be,<br />

but still funding for the arts, for<br />

state and national libraries, for<br />

small publishers and for individual<br />

writers is seen as a priority. Writers<br />

of renown receive a guaranteed<br />

income until retirement, and others<br />

can apply for one- to five-year work<br />

grants.<br />

In Ireland, writers’ incomes are taxfree<br />

up to €50,000, and generous<br />

bursaries are available. In Norway,<br />

books are exempt from VAT or<br />

GST. In Finland, a psychologist is<br />

likely to write you a prescription<br />

for a season at the opera or a book<br />

rather than a course of drugs.<br />

It comes as a<br />

surprise to many<br />

that we don’t live<br />

in garrets but in<br />

ordinary flats and<br />

houses with often<br />

very ordinary<br />

plumbing.<br />

The above is important: support<br />

doesn’t always or only mean a<br />

hand-out to writers: a thriving<br />

literary culture also includes<br />

well-resourced libraries,<br />

assistance to ensure the survival<br />

of small publishers, and measures<br />

that ensure booksellers and<br />

independent bookshops are not<br />

destroyed by the mass discounting<br />

of books. That everyone learns to<br />

read, and read well.<br />

Interestingly, in most of these<br />

places, the private sector also<br />

contributes to the health of the arts.<br />

Individuals and corporations offer<br />

bursaries, cheap rent, houses for<br />

writers’ residencies. They sponsor<br />

chairs at universities with quality<br />

creative writing workshops. High<br />

levels of government assistance has<br />

not meant that individuals remain<br />

aloof; to the contrary, the success of<br />

government programs has spurred<br />

them to be part of a rich and diverse<br />

cultural life. Nor has it meant<br />

government interference in artists’<br />

independence: the general policy is<br />

to ‘support, but not to direct’.<br />

Over the past few years, right<br />

across Australia, the value of<br />

art and its products has been<br />

diminished materially and<br />

intellectually. State governments<br />

have slashed arts funding and<br />

literary prizes, the Australia<br />

Council has been eviscerated, and<br />

the traditional arm’s length policy<br />

around arts funding and promotion<br />

has been all but abandoned.<br />

Of course, these actions have a<br />

disastrous, three-fold effect on<br />

writers: they deprive individual<br />

artists of much-needed income,<br />

they deprive organisations like<br />

writers’ centres of their ability to<br />

provide effective support systems,<br />

and they plant a dangerous seed<br />

in the collective conscious: that<br />

writers, and literature, don’t matter.<br />

That those who complain are lazy<br />

and have an over-weaning sense of<br />

entitlement. That we should go sit<br />

in our garrets and eat crumbs, or<br />

do something useful, like plumbing.<br />

Most writers I know work incredibly<br />

hard to maintain their craft and<br />

their lives. Entitlement is not a<br />

word in their vast and colourful<br />

vocabularies. A living wage would<br />

be useful, of course, but just as<br />

important is the sense and the<br />

assurance that the job is worth<br />

doing. That, in the collective<br />

conscious, it does matter.<br />

In a straw poll I conducted recently<br />

among writers in my own circle,<br />

this emerged strongly. Several<br />

suggestions re-appeared on<br />

the wish list for change. They<br />

included: free or affordable<br />

childcare for writers with children;<br />

no tax on royalties, on grants,<br />

on awards; huge arts and review<br />

pages in newspapers; a modest,<br />

stable income in exchange for<br />

community involvement—a day a<br />

week spent at the local nursing<br />

home, school, child care centre,<br />

mental health centre (which might<br />

achieve multiple benefits). The<br />

encouragement of arts streams<br />

in schools. A national day of The<br />

Writer. More privately funded<br />

residencies, in the manner of<br />

Varuna, Bundanon, the Katherine<br />

Susannah Pritchard Centre.<br />

The strong and common thread,<br />

however, was this, from Brisbane<br />

writer Ashley Hay: ‘We just want<br />

time.’ (‘I’d happily pull weeds,<br />

mow lawns, trim hedges,’ said<br />

another writer, ‘in exchange for<br />

a room to write in.’) In the end it<br />

doesn’t come down to money itself,<br />

notwithstanding those nice shoes.<br />

It comes down to investment, in<br />

individuals, in culture, in identity. We<br />

happily invest in houses and cars,<br />

not just because of their utility but<br />

because they say something about<br />

us. An arts culture that celebrates<br />

literature by nurturing writers<br />

and writing, materially as well as<br />

publicly, that encourages reading<br />

and literacy for all and not the few,<br />

that views books as part of the<br />

national conversation: that might<br />

say something about us too.<br />

<strong>Kristina</strong> will be teaching a workshop<br />

on writing memoir at QWC on<br />

Saturday 11 March 2017.<br />

<strong>Kristina</strong> <strong>Olsson</strong> is a Brisbane writer and<br />

journalist. Her most recent book, the<br />

memoir Boy, Lost, won the Kibble Prize,<br />

the NSW and WA Premiers’ Awards for<br />

non-fiction and the Queensland Literary<br />

Award for non-fiction. Her other work<br />

includes The China Garden and Kilroy<br />

Was Here. She is currently completing<br />

another novel.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 5


Australian short story<br />

trends<br />

Craig Bolland<br />

It’s hard to pin down an Australian<br />

tradition, stylistic or conceptual,<br />

that reliably runs through our<br />

short stories. Lawson may have<br />

had an early influence, but for as<br />

long as Australians have been<br />

writing, our short stories have<br />

poked at the edges of convention.<br />

It’s fair to say that Australian short<br />

stories, notably those from the<br />

1970s onwards, have had concerns<br />

around our landscape, our culture,<br />

our isolation, our singularity. But<br />

we lack a national tradition in the<br />

same sense that America finds<br />

the lingering sounds of writers<br />

like Hemingway or Flannery<br />

O’Connor whispering through its<br />

journal pages. Combine this lack of<br />

orthodoxy with the changing ways in<br />

which readers are encountering the<br />

form, and it’s easy to understand<br />

why the Australian short story<br />

remains a constantly evolving space<br />

to write into.<br />

So what’s a short story writer<br />

wanting to break into one of the<br />

top tier Australian literary journals<br />

to do? One of the fundamental<br />

things to understand is exactly<br />

this – that the Australian short<br />

story remains a fluid space whose<br />

edges can be tested, a space that<br />

can be responsive to contemporary<br />

concerns, forms and styles, while<br />

still retaining something of an<br />

Australianness in setting and in<br />

focus. One approach into print is to<br />

push back at what is expected from<br />

the form. We see this edge-testing<br />

not only in the ‘attack magazine’<br />

pages of zeitgeisty journals such<br />

as The Lifted Brow, Kill Your<br />

Darlings and Sleepers Almanac,<br />

but also more and more commonly<br />

in the establishment stalwarts of<br />

Overland, Meanjin and Southerly. If<br />

a short story is a photograph rather<br />

than a film, a glance rather than a<br />

gaze, the contemporary Australian<br />

short story is a flashbulb that<br />

illuminates moments as unique and<br />

particular as they are well observed<br />

and voiced.<br />

It’s interesting, and I think very<br />

telling, that this year’s Overland<br />

Autumn fiction issue opens with<br />

editor Ben Walter writing, ‘I’ve been<br />

so bored with realist Australian<br />

fiction; sleepy stories that perhaps<br />

have one eye open, but aren’t<br />

looking at anything worth seeing.’<br />

Walter is calling out here one habit<br />

that does perhaps qualify as an<br />

Australian tradition – the ongoing<br />

popularity of minimalist, realist,<br />

frequently pastoral stories. The<br />

trope runs something like this – we<br />

are in a rural setting, the landscape<br />

is pervasive and oh-so-Aussie, and<br />

a sense of almost Gothic malaise<br />

(and perhaps the spectre of past<br />

abuse) hangs over us. The writing<br />

is pared back, with the occasional<br />

poetic filigree to describe a<br />

moment of beauty against the bleak<br />

landscape.<br />

6<br />

WQ


Walter might be bored with them,<br />

but this sort of story can, in<br />

fairness, be breathtaking. Consider<br />

Cate Kennedy or Melissa Beit, both<br />

of whom at times write within these<br />

tropes but whose works combine a<br />

sense of place and tone that show<br />

the power of Australian realism<br />

its very best. This type of story can<br />

also be unambitious, however. Toomodest.<br />

Too narrow in the scope of<br />

its thematic or stylistic ambitions.<br />

And it’s this latter kind of story that<br />

gluts the submission queues of our<br />

best journals. Don’t write Australian<br />

realism that isn’t ‘looking at<br />

anything worth seeing’ and expect<br />

to land in print.<br />

The writing is pared<br />

back, with the<br />

occasional poetic<br />

filigree to describe<br />

a moment of beauty<br />

against the bleak<br />

landscape.<br />

Innovations in style or idea stand<br />

out in those submission queues and<br />

will cause an editor to look twice.<br />

Consider what Ceridwen Dovey<br />

did conceptually in ‘The Bones’ –<br />

reinventing Henry Lawson’s ‘The<br />

Bush Undertaker’ through the eyes<br />

of an immigrant camel.<br />

A number of excellent recent<br />

pieces break apart the layout of<br />

the form in staccato moments of<br />

small, discontinuous, scenes. Ryan<br />

O’Neill’s Alphabet is an excellent<br />

example of this, but there are many<br />

others, stories that seek to curate<br />

startling moments rather than step<br />

us through a traditional narrative.<br />

When editing a journal last month,<br />

the poet Mandy Beaumont and I<br />

couldn’t help but commission a<br />

story, ‘The crucible’, by Vivienne<br />

Cutbush because as a multimodal<br />

piece it commented on the short<br />

story form more than it conformed<br />

to it. It was like nothing else in the<br />

submission pile. This was to its<br />

benefit.<br />

So be bold. Please. And on this note<br />

consider non-traditional lengths of<br />

the short story too. Fiction of under<br />

a thousand words is doing well<br />

and more and more markets are<br />

opening up to it. The Chinese idea<br />

of the “smoke-long” story that takes<br />

about as much time as finishing a<br />

cigarette is an intriguing one. There<br />

is something compelling about the<br />

idea of giving someone a complete<br />

artistic experience within one of the<br />

lulls modern society affords us, a<br />

bus trip, a queue at the bank. The<br />

story short enough to be read on a<br />

smart phone does itself no harm for<br />

that capacity.<br />

Looking forward, what can be<br />

suggested? In the short story,<br />

voice will long remain the king.<br />

Australianness, yes. Place and<br />

setting, yes. But also content that<br />

surprises. Multimodality will no<br />

doubt play a greater and greater<br />

part of the stories we see – blending<br />

in visual and technical elements<br />

as the reading platforms to deliver<br />

them continue to mature.<br />

There is one final contemporary<br />

trend that bears mention and that<br />

is the trend towards open endings.<br />

The twist-in-the-tale ending is<br />

decades out of fashion, and even<br />

endings that tie everything up neatly<br />

may be robbing the reader of one of<br />

the great pleasures of the form. The<br />

short story is an ideal place for an<br />

ending that opens up, that lingers,<br />

that lands on a note or feeling or<br />

impression rather than a plot point.<br />

Give your reader the pleasure of a<br />

story that opens outwards and you<br />

have given them a lovely gift indeed.<br />

Craig Bolland is a lecturer in Creative<br />

Writing and Literary studies at the<br />

Queensland University of Technology.<br />

He is an award winning playwright and<br />

short film maker, and the author of the<br />

novel I Knit Water (UQP).<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 7


as an author as it is from being a<br />

neurosurgeon or barrister. In other<br />

words, many people do it. But only if<br />

they are extremely good.<br />

Making a living from<br />

writing<br />

Jackie French<br />

Yes, you can do it.<br />

And like those two professions,<br />

being a writer means that you<br />

work extremely hard but don’t<br />

make any money for at least two<br />

years. You plot and research your<br />

book. You write it and then rewrite<br />

it. Trash it and begin a version so<br />

different from the first that there’s<br />

no point keeping more than a few<br />

paragraphs from each chapter.<br />

Rewrite once more. Submit ... and<br />

it’s accepted.<br />

You are given an advance based on<br />

the projected first edition’s sales.<br />

This may be enough to keep you<br />

in coffee, especially if you prefer<br />

tea, unless you are already famous<br />

and/or the book is seen as having<br />

instant best-seller potential.<br />

No, most authors in Australia don’t<br />

make $13,600 a year, despite how<br />

often you hear that discouraging<br />

quotation. I doubt there is a single<br />

author who makes $13,600 and,<br />

if they exist, they are extremely<br />

skinny. That’s the average that<br />

Australians make from writing<br />

books.<br />

My darling husband makes $56 a<br />

year from his more than a-decadeold<br />

book. A dear friend’s deeply<br />

revered academic text, in libraries<br />

world-wide, makes her about $400<br />

a year. Those figures are averaged<br />

with writers who make millions of<br />

dollars a year. And they exist too.<br />

‘Some’ (a highly technical statistical<br />

term meaning that, as far as I know,<br />

there are no surveys of who earns<br />

what, but I’ve counted up the ones I<br />

actually know) authors make about<br />

the same amount of money per<br />

annum as teachers. At least twenty<br />

writers, from personal knowledge<br />

and so undoubtedly there are far<br />

more, make hundreds of thousands,<br />

or even those millions, per year. It<br />

is as possible to earn your living<br />

It is as possible to<br />

earn your living<br />

as an author as it<br />

is from being a<br />

neurosurgeon or<br />

barrister.<br />

You rewrite again, on advice from<br />

the editor. You rewrite a third time,<br />

on the advice of the second editor.<br />

The book is published. If it is about<br />

the sex life of cricketers, it will sell<br />

100,000 copies in three weeks, then<br />

be severely discounted and never<br />

printed again. More likely – and if<br />

it’s not about cricket – it will sell<br />

a few thousand copies and, if it is<br />

good, sales will keep increasing for<br />

the next ten or twenty years.<br />

But no matter how well it sells, you<br />

won’t see any royalties for months<br />

– royalties are paid on sales three<br />

months after each six month selling<br />

period – for example, you will be<br />

8<br />

WQ


paid in late March for sales from the<br />

previous period of July – December.<br />

This may be enough<br />

to keep you in<br />

coffee, especially if<br />

you prefer tea …<br />

Financially successful authors are<br />

those who are either the writers of<br />

best sellers (the name of whoever<br />

said, ‘It only took me ten years to<br />

be an overnight success’ has been<br />

lost) or who have accumulated a<br />

backlist, a number of books that<br />

make a respectable though not<br />

flagrant sum of money every year,<br />

enough for the publisher to keep<br />

them in print and available to the<br />

book-buying public. The backlist<br />

is the backbone of a long-term,<br />

successful writer’s income.<br />

And while you are becoming<br />

established, how can you top up<br />

your income? Once authors were<br />

treasured as book reviewers. These<br />

days there are fewer reviews and<br />

fewer publications in which those<br />

reviews can be read. Most reviews<br />

are done online for nothing. And<br />

sites like Amazon do not approve<br />

of authors reviewing books, as they<br />

may be part of dubious reciprocal<br />

’You say my book is brilliant and I’ll<br />

say yours is too’ deals.<br />

If you write for young people, school<br />

visits pay well, though only if you<br />

can also speak well, and preferably<br />

not just about your book but also<br />

about the craft of writing and the<br />

contagious joy of being a reader.<br />

Add free-lance journalism, paid<br />

mentoring and possibly winning an<br />

award and you have … well, enough<br />

possibly to pay for your muesli, as<br />

well as coffee. In other words, you<br />

will need another source of income,<br />

from being a waiter to having a<br />

(financially) supportive spouse.<br />

The real questions are:<br />

1. Can you write well?<br />

2. Can you give six good reasons<br />

why your particular readership<br />

will want to read what you write?<br />

3. Do the words and themes nibble<br />

at your neck and not let go?<br />

And do you care enough about<br />

them to write and rewrite and<br />

keep rewriting? Amateurs write<br />

once and dabble at a rewrite. A<br />

professional is ruthless with the<br />

delete button.<br />

And then?<br />

1. Write.<br />

2. Write well.<br />

3. Rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.<br />

4. Only submit material that others<br />

will want to read.<br />

Amateurs write<br />

once and dabble<br />

at a rewrite. A<br />

professional is<br />

ruthless with the<br />

delete button.<br />

Brilliant writing does not<br />

necessarily mean that enough<br />

readers will want to read it for it to<br />

be saleable. If you have an IQ of 247<br />

you will only be saleable if you make<br />

your work accessible to those with<br />

an IQ of 125. Dilute that cognitive<br />

density …<br />

Do not take advice from anyone<br />

who is not an experienced editor or<br />

an award-winning or best-selling<br />

author. Your Mum does not count,<br />

unless she is one of the above. Any<br />

child will adore having the phone<br />

book read to them if you cuddle<br />

them at the same time and perform<br />

it with passion and expression (I’ve<br />

tested this) so don’t rely on their<br />

reactions either.<br />

… like barristers<br />

and proctologists,<br />

if you have talent,<br />

determination<br />

and allow yourself<br />

enough years in<br />

which to hone your<br />

skills, then the<br />

career of ‘full-time<br />

author’ exists …<br />

And do not give up. If you can get<br />

published once you can do it again,<br />

far better. And once more, heading<br />

towards brilliant.<br />

And believe that, like barristers and<br />

proctologists, if you have talent,<br />

determination and allow yourself<br />

enough years in which to hone your<br />

skills, then the career of ‘full-time<br />

author’ exists, just as I dreamed<br />

it might when I was twelve, and<br />

parents, guidance counsellors<br />

and teachers, all with the best<br />

intentions, discouraged me.<br />

It is slightly strange to have<br />

everything your twelve-year old<br />

self dreamed of. It is also far more<br />

fulfilling than even a daydreaming<br />

child could imagine.<br />

Jackie French is an author, historian,<br />

honorary wombat, dyslexic, 2014-2015<br />

Australian Children’s Laureate, 2015<br />

Senior Australian of the Year, and has<br />

won about sixty awards in Australia<br />

and overseas. A few of her books have<br />

been best sellers. Others were eaten by<br />

the wombats. But ever since a wombat<br />

helped get her first book published<br />

(See jackiefrench.com and sign up to<br />

newsletter) she has made her living as<br />

a writer.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 9


team. To do that, I would have to<br />

better understand their creative<br />

challenges.<br />

Writing games<br />

Brooke Maggs<br />

I remember approaching a writer of<br />

a game I love, Bioshock, and asking<br />

him: how do I write for games?<br />

He said, ‘Be a writer. Write a lot of things.’<br />

The Gardens Between is about<br />

two friends who find themselves<br />

in a surreal world and must help<br />

one another find their way out. To<br />

understand storytelling in our game<br />

environment (small, terrarium-like<br />

3D gardens), I made levels out of<br />

Lego and wrote stories set in them.<br />

The key was to be visual, to always<br />

ask: how do we show this story to<br />

the player? This question concerns<br />

every team member’s discipline —<br />

art, tech, design — their creative<br />

vision and technical restrictions. I<br />

mapped the story to a traditional<br />

story structure, The Voyage and<br />

Return, and pitched two synopses<br />

using a visual presentation that<br />

included the artist’s concept work<br />

and ideas about game design.<br />

The simplicity of the advice<br />

shocked my younger self: become<br />

a storyteller, regardless of the<br />

medium, with a body of work. While<br />

I can’t profess it has been easy, in<br />

my case it has been true.<br />

I was working on a novel and some<br />

short stories and it was on the basis<br />

of one of these stories, a subversive<br />

fairy tale, that I was given my first<br />

game writing opportunity with<br />

The Voxel Agents. They are an<br />

independent game development<br />

studio who wanted a writer to<br />

help them with a brand new game<br />

project. It was to be their first<br />

narrative-driven game. The catch?<br />

It is an adventure puzzle game with<br />

no text or speech.<br />

To conceive of the story, I wrote<br />

character profiles, story bibles,<br />

short stories and poems. In<br />

meetings I used storytelling<br />

language like ‘drama’ and<br />

‘conflict’, which were seemingly<br />

at odds with the creative vision of<br />

the game design: to be slow and<br />

observational. I realised my goal<br />

was to first convey the story to the<br />

The key was to be<br />

visual, to always<br />

ask: how do we<br />

show this story to<br />

the player?<br />

This marked my growth from writer<br />

to narrative designer: one who<br />

creates and writes the story, and<br />

communicates the story to the<br />

team. They form the narrative by<br />

working with art, design and tech to<br />

communicate the story to the player<br />

and advocate for the story at each<br />

step in the development process.<br />

My second project, Earthlight, with<br />

Opaque Media Group, requires me<br />

to do all of this, yet the process<br />

is entirely different. Earthlight is<br />

a virtual reality (VR) game set at<br />

NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab and it<br />

follows the journey of an Australian<br />

woman training to be an astronaut.<br />

Gloriously, I’m not the only writer<br />

on this project. With experience in<br />

10<br />

WQ


games already, my role is to help<br />

create and write the story, and<br />

to facilitate discussions between<br />

us, the narrative team, and the<br />

other disciplines. I have written<br />

character biographies, narrative<br />

treatments and asset lists (a list<br />

of objects we request the art team<br />

to create to help tell the story, like<br />

photographs). I write scripts, sit in<br />

on voice actor auditions and ensure<br />

all narrative documentation is upto-date<br />

for the rest of the team.<br />

Creating a<br />

living, breathing<br />

experience is<br />

integral for the<br />

aspirations of<br />

Earthlight as a<br />

virtual reality game.<br />

The narrative team on Earthlight<br />

works closely with the design team<br />

to ensure we have all the dialogue<br />

we need, not only to tell a good<br />

story, but also to guide the player<br />

through their astronaut training. For<br />

example, if the player wanders off<br />

the path they are meant to follow,<br />

we must ensure we script dialogue<br />

that encourages them to get back<br />

on track. If they drop an object<br />

important to a puzzle, we must<br />

ask them to pick it up. These are<br />

called ‘fail-states’ in the gameplay.<br />

To make an immersive experience<br />

for the player, we try to capture as<br />

many fail-states as possible. Other<br />

characters around our protagonist<br />

would surely say something if she<br />

is moving away from her objective<br />

or dropping things. The trick is to<br />

write fail-state dialogue in such<br />

a way that it doesn’t feel clunky<br />

when mixed in with the rest of the<br />

narrative dialogue.<br />

I never imagined myself writing<br />

for virtual reality, but having<br />

experience with games made me<br />

aware of the storytelling power<br />

of a 3D space. Creating a living,<br />

breathing experience is integral for<br />

the aspirations of Earthlight as a<br />

virtual reality game. As a narrative<br />

designer and writer, it’s part of my<br />

job to place players in environments<br />

they can explore while stationary.<br />

From discussions with technicians<br />

and designers, I learn what is in my<br />

toolbox to tell story. For example,<br />

when I know it’s possible to trigger<br />

events such as a voice-over, or when<br />

the player looks at a key narrative<br />

object like an antique ring, I can script<br />

the dialogue related to that object.<br />

The challenge of VR is that, for the<br />

most part, it’s a passive, seated<br />

experience where the audience<br />

is an observer. Moving in the VR<br />

world is tricky until the technology<br />

allows us to move safely around<br />

our living rooms - and it’s on the<br />

way! The player in Earthlight can<br />

influence their environment to a<br />

certain extent, which isn’t always<br />

the case for VR experiences, such<br />

as those displayed at the Melbourne<br />

International Film Festival this year.<br />

Locating ways for the player to have<br />

meaningful impact in the virtual<br />

world is integral for those who<br />

wish to bring agency, the control a<br />

player has in the game world, to VR<br />

storytelling. How we go about doing<br />

this will vary from project to project<br />

and will evolve with the technology.<br />

In game development, there should<br />

be an ongoing dialogue between<br />

the narrative team and the rest of<br />

the team about what is needed,<br />

and technically possible, to tell a<br />

good story. From a dialogue system,<br />

to gameplay, to level design, and<br />

keeping in mind the creative vision<br />

of the project, I’ve learned to<br />

involve myself as much as possible<br />

in the early stages. My skills as<br />

a storyteller—pitching, writing a<br />

synopsis, scripts, character profiles,<br />

storyboarding, plot structure—have<br />

served me well on my foray into<br />

games. I’ve learned to execute<br />

them in different ways to suit these<br />

collaborative workplaces and<br />

interactive mediums.<br />

In game<br />

development, there<br />

should be an ongoing<br />

dialogue between the<br />

narrative team and<br />

the rest of the team<br />

about what is needed,<br />

and technically<br />

possible, to tell a<br />

good story.<br />

Writing for games is technical,<br />

iterative and collaborative. Writing<br />

for virtual reality is the same, and<br />

as a medium, is gaining some<br />

traction as it is on the way to being<br />

accessible by the consumer. I’m<br />

excited to see games use their<br />

power for immersion and empathy.<br />

I want to see them challenge<br />

constructed identities, the way we<br />

see ourselves and each other. I want<br />

stories, in any medium, to allow us<br />

to play and shift because I believe<br />

that’s what makes good storytelling.<br />

Write lots of things.<br />

Brooke Maggs is a freelance writer,<br />

narrative designer and producer<br />

working in games and writing fiction.<br />

Recently named in the top 100 most<br />

influential women in games, Brooke<br />

has talked about games and writing<br />

a bunch of panels at festivals and<br />

conventions. She loves brunch, the<br />

beach and succulents. She’s here:<br />

brookemaggs.com & @brooke_maggs<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 11


New tools, timeless<br />

tales<br />

Simon Groth<br />

For the last few months I’ve<br />

been working with a small tech<br />

start-up company with big ideas.<br />

Called oolipo—a nod to the<br />

oulipo movement that pioneered<br />

experimental constrained writing<br />

techniques—this company is taking<br />

the nineteenth century idea of<br />

serialised storytelling and bringing<br />

it to a contemporary audience via<br />

that most twenty-first century<br />

device, the smartphone. Stories for<br />

oolipo aren’t just existing narratives<br />

repackaged for a handheld screen,<br />

they are stories written specifically<br />

with the device in mind.<br />

One of the stories I am working on<br />

is called Valhalla. It’s a very modern<br />

take on Norse mythology, combining<br />

fantasy, history, humour, and a<br />

whole lot of arse kicking.<br />

I’m not the writer of Valhalla; I’m<br />

the producer. This is a new kind of<br />

role, somewhat akin to an editor,<br />

but expanded into taking a text<br />

and translating it into something<br />

a designer and engineer can work<br />

with in producing a work unique to<br />

reading on a phone.<br />

Just think about the reading<br />

experience on a phone. Forget<br />

any other device. Just concentrate<br />

on the phone. What can you do?<br />

You can combine text and images.<br />

Animation and video is a possibility,<br />

as are sounds that complement<br />

the story. But that’s just the<br />

beginning. Phones have GPS and<br />

accelerometers. A phone knows<br />

where you are on the surface of<br />

the earth, your coordinates on the<br />

map and even your altitude. Most<br />

importantly, a phone is networked. It<br />

has a live connection to servers and<br />

other devices proliferated around<br />

the planet. It is not simply a passive<br />

device for consuming content; it can<br />

help create and share.<br />

That’s a lot of additional tools<br />

available. So how does a story for<br />

such a container come together?<br />

As a writer, you may be tempted to<br />

turn your story into a multimedia<br />

assault. Or maybe you fall into<br />

another camp that sees nothing<br />

wrong with sticking to long, elegant<br />

blocks of text. A story for the phone<br />

might work at either of these<br />

extremes, but more likely you’ll<br />

want to navigate a path somewhere<br />

between larding up the narrative<br />

with distractions or creating an<br />

impenetrable wall of text that brings<br />

nothing to the reading experience<br />

beyond what ink and paper does.<br />

This is where the producer comes<br />

in. Use the possibilities of the<br />

platform, imagine how the features<br />

of the device can bring something<br />

unique to the story. And at the<br />

same time never lose sight of the<br />

reading experience. The producer’s<br />

job, like the editor’s, has much<br />

to do with balance and restraint.<br />

The writers of Valhalla have built<br />

their story around a narrative voice<br />

that relies on short but evocative<br />

strings of text. When released,<br />

Valhalla will combine this voice with<br />

background textures, black and<br />

white illustration and the subtle<br />

use of animation, sound loops and<br />

three-dimensional parallax effects<br />

into a kind of ‘hand-made, hightech’<br />

aesthetic.<br />

For much of this year, I’ve been<br />

grappling with the question of<br />

what skills and capabilities writers<br />

will need in the future. We can’t<br />

know for certain how our devices<br />

and media may evolve, but we can<br />

assume that the fundamentals of<br />

good storytelling will remain. The<br />

choice of medium must always<br />

serve the story. And the reading<br />

experience must always serve<br />

to take a reader deeper into the<br />

story world. All the cool ‘features’<br />

in the world will add nothing to<br />

a story if they’re not relevant.<br />

And all the beautiful prose in the<br />

world will never reach a reader<br />

if it’s frustrating to access. More<br />

than anything, what writers will<br />

need is not that different to what<br />

writers have always needed: an<br />

understanding and appreciation of<br />

how their stories are experienced.<br />

In the meantime, I need to get<br />

on with turning Valhalla into a<br />

database-readable spreadsheet.<br />

Yes, being a producer has its<br />

glamourous moments too.<br />

The oolipo app is available to<br />

download now from the App Store.<br />

The first season of Valhalla will be<br />

released in January.<br />

Simon Groth’s books include<br />

Concentrate and Off The Record: 25<br />

Years of Music Street Press. His two<br />

novels have been shortlisted in the<br />

Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards<br />

and the Text Prize and his short fiction<br />

has been published in Australia and<br />

the United States. Simon is director of<br />

if:book Australia, a leading developer of<br />

experimental publishing and exploration.<br />

His work and reporting on how readers<br />

engage with digital publishing has seen<br />

him travel the globe to discuss and<br />

explore the challenges and opportunities<br />

for writers in a digital space. He<br />

tweets at @simongroth and blogs at<br />

simongroth.com.<br />

12<br />

WQ


Milestones<br />

Adele Jones’ young adult novel Activate<br />

was released on 1 November 2016 by<br />

Rhiza Press.<br />

Anita Heiss has published and released<br />

Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms with<br />

Simon and Schuster Australia.<br />

Ann Harth received a highly<br />

commended prize in the 2016 Children’s<br />

and Young Adult Writers and Illustrators<br />

Competition for the picture book You’re<br />

Doing It Wrong!<br />

Bette Guy has launched her latest<br />

independently published book Riding the<br />

Fate Train, available from Amazon.<br />

Anna Jacobson has been shortlisted for<br />

the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for her work<br />

entitled How to Knit a Human.<br />

The Illusion of Islands by Andrea<br />

Baldwin has been included in the 2016<br />

Richell Prize longlist for Emerging<br />

Writers.<br />

Cheryl Fagan has published Murder &<br />

Misconduct, the historical true crime<br />

prequel to Murder & Misconduct – The<br />

Complete Files.<br />

Damen O’Brien was highest placed<br />

Queensland entrant in the Val Vallis<br />

Award with his poem Sand.<br />

Elizabeth Smyth has been longlisted<br />

in the 2016 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short<br />

Story Prize for Will it leave a scar?<br />

Hazel Barker will publish The Story of<br />

a Conchie with Rhiza Press. Her other<br />

publications this year include Chocolate<br />

Soldier and Heaven Tempers the Wind.<br />

The Beach House by Janelle Nucifora<br />

has been included in the 2016 Richell<br />

Prize longlist for Emerging Writers.<br />

Janet Lee has won The Australian<br />

Funeral Directors Association Award in<br />

the Grieve Project competition for My<br />

Mourning.<br />

Jessica White’s short story Black Soil<br />

has been longlisted for the 2016 ABR<br />

Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.<br />

Kali Napier has signed a two-book deal<br />

with Hachette Australia due for release<br />

from 2018. Kali is a 2015 QWC Hachette<br />

Manuscript Development Alumni.<br />

Karen Lee Roberts wrote and<br />

performed the cabaret It’s Not Easy<br />

Being Green in October at Room To Play<br />

Independent Theatre.<br />

Kelly Lyonns has signed with Atlas<br />

Productions to publish her regency<br />

paranormal romance The Soldier’s<br />

Woman, due for release in January 2017.<br />

Kerry Lown Whalen’s short story The<br />

Cool Group won the 2016 Gold Coast<br />

Writers’ Short Story Competition. It will<br />

be published in eWriteabout.<br />

Lauren Daniels has been shortlisted in<br />

the Half the World Global Literati Award<br />

for her novel The Serpent’s Wake: A Fairy<br />

Tale for the Bitten.<br />

Lea Davey has self-published her first<br />

novel, The Shack by the Bay.<br />

iGrief by Lech Blaine has been<br />

shortlisted in the 2016 Scribe Nonfiction<br />

Prize Shortlist.<br />

Lesley Synge’s play The Nature of my<br />

Illness Being will be performed at a<br />

benefit for coal miners with Black Lung<br />

disease at Magda Community Arts in<br />

September. Her essay about Australian<br />

earth artist Siegi Karl-Spence was<br />

published in online journal Communion.<br />

Growth by Mirandi Riwoe has been<br />

shortlisted for the 2016 Josephine<br />

Ulrick Prize. Her story Dignity has been<br />

longlisted for the 2016 ABR Elizabeth<br />

Jolley Short Story Prize.<br />

Mocco Wollert has had poems<br />

Heatwave and Growing published in<br />

Positive Words magazine, In Love with<br />

Gauguin published in The Australia<br />

Times magazine, Much to do About Haiku<br />

in The Fellowship of Australian Writers’<br />

Scope magazine. Her poem Home was<br />

awarded third prize in the Society of<br />

Women Writers Queensland Poetry<br />

Competition. She has received second<br />

place in the Positive Words competition<br />

for Wind at the Rock.<br />

Nathan Shepherdson’s poem Whitely<br />

visits Morandi has been shortlisted for<br />

the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Prize.<br />

Paula White’s children’s book Clippity<br />

Clippity’s Exciting Discovery has been<br />

published by Ex Libris. It is illustrated<br />

by Marvin Paracuelles.<br />

Ron Ramsay has published his memoir,<br />

An Eternal World, Messages from the<br />

Other Side, online with Boolarong Press.<br />

Sandra Watkins has published The<br />

History of the Ekka.<br />

Shelley Nolan signed a two-book<br />

deal with Atlas Productions for Lost<br />

Reaper and Winged Reaper, released in<br />

September and October.<br />

The Rabbits by Sophie Overett has<br />

been included in the 2016 Richell Prize<br />

longlist for Emerging Writers.<br />

Tania Joyce has released her third<br />

romance novel, Distractions, as an<br />

ebook and print book.<br />

Wendy Dartnall has published A Wind<br />

from the East through Balboa Press.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 13


Trends in young<br />

adult writing<br />

Amie Kaufman<br />

“I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a<br />

young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on<br />

the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous<br />

criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a<br />

previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore<br />

that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.”<br />

Nick Hornby<br />

You know what? Nick Hornby’s not<br />

alone. With success after success<br />

unfolding, young adult (YA) fiction’s<br />

not just alive and kicking, it’s<br />

making up all-new dance steps.<br />

Interested? You’re not alone either.<br />

So let’s take a look at what YA<br />

is, where it’s come from, who’s<br />

reading it, and where it might head<br />

in the future.<br />

What is YA?<br />

How do we define young adult<br />

fiction? Despite frequent use of<br />

the word, it’s not a genre. It’s a<br />

marketing category. YA takes in<br />

everything from thrillers to memoir,<br />

fantasy to science fiction (SF) to<br />

novels-in-verse. You name it, YA has it.<br />

It’s often said that YA is named after<br />

its target market, but the truth is<br />

that these days, it’s defined more by<br />

the age of its protagonist than the<br />

age of its reader.<br />

Despite (or perhaps provoking) a<br />

steady stream of eye-roll-inducing<br />

articles about how YA is too dark,<br />

too shallow, too simple or too much<br />

for teenaged readers, the truth<br />

is that it’s a thriving and valuable<br />

member of the publishing family,<br />

offering the chance to explore<br />

questions about who we are and<br />

what the world’s like, and what kind<br />

of place we want to occupy in it. YA,<br />

like all fiction, offers the chance to<br />

live other lives, rehearse our fears,<br />

and occasionally to learn about sex,<br />

drugs and rock and roll without<br />

necessarily trying them firsthand.<br />

YA is about defining oneself—to<br />

quote author Sarah Rees Brennan,<br />

it’s the literature of transformation.<br />

And this, perhaps, is part of<br />

its widespread appeal. We are<br />

always defining ourselves, always<br />

transforming ourselves, whether it’s<br />

our first day at school as a student,<br />

or our first day as a parent on pickup<br />

duty.<br />

There’s been much written about<br />

the origins of YA—commentators<br />

point to S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders<br />

as a turning point for books<br />

aimed specifically at teens, and<br />

authors such as Judy Blume and<br />

Robert Cormier for continuing<br />

to tell stories that spoke to the<br />

teen experience. By the nineties,<br />

YA fiction was booming, and<br />

in Australia books like Melina<br />

Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi<br />

brought it to the forefront of our<br />

consciousness.<br />

So who’s reading YA now, and what<br />

are they reading?<br />

What’s on the shelves now?<br />

And whose shelves?<br />

The question of who’s reading YA<br />

now is an interesting one, and the<br />

answers might surprise you. Back<br />

in 2012, the study Understanding<br />

the Children’s Book Consumer in the<br />

Digital Age established that 55% of<br />

YA buyers (with YA designated by<br />

publishers as for age 12-17) were<br />

aged 18+, and 78% of the time,<br />

they were purchasing the books for<br />

themselves, not for a teen.<br />

It’s easy for numbers to blur, but<br />

think about that: more than half of<br />

purchases were made by adults,<br />

and four-fifths of those were for<br />

adult reading.<br />

And it gets even more interesting.<br />

Just under a third of respondents<br />

were reading a book from The<br />

Hunger Games series, then at peak<br />

popularity. But the remaining 70%<br />

listed more than 220 titles they<br />

were currently reading. And only two<br />

of those titles commanded more<br />

than 5% of market sales. (The latest<br />

Harry Potter and Twilight.)<br />

What do we take from this? YA<br />

readers of all ages are reading<br />

a huge variety of books, and not<br />

just titles from major franchises.<br />

For authors, this is wonderfully<br />

encouraging—readers don’t just<br />

jump from one big-ticket item to the<br />

next. They read widely.<br />

A side-note: the number of adult<br />

readers in the YA space raises<br />

an important issue—Given the<br />

importance of YA to teens, how<br />

14<br />

WQ


do we ensure that books written,<br />

acquired, edited, marketed and<br />

sold by adults don’t crowd teens<br />

out of their own space? Groups<br />

like Australia’s national Centre for<br />

Youth Literature, which convenes<br />

the teen-choice Inky Awards, do<br />

excellent work in this area.<br />

In terms of exactly what readers<br />

have on their shelves right now, the<br />

answer is that YA currently features<br />

a healthy eco-system—fantasy’s<br />

blooming, contemporary fiction’s<br />

doing as well as ever, and SF is<br />

unquestionably entering the picture.<br />

But let’s take a look at where we’re<br />

headed from here.<br />

Where next?<br />

This is the million dollar question.<br />

And the answer is, as ever,<br />

disappointing: nobody knows,<br />

and chasing trends is a terrible<br />

idea. By the time it’s possible to<br />

identify a trend, it’s usually far<br />

too late to start writing to it. Long<br />

publishing schedules mean it’s not<br />

unusual to see a two-year span<br />

from acquisition to publication. The<br />

success of one book in a particular<br />

genre can spawn new publishing<br />

deals, but it’s an unreliable way to<br />

go about writing—it might just be<br />

seen as the exception to a rule, or<br />

the glow might have faded by the<br />

time your draft’s finished.<br />

It could be that upcoming<br />

blockbusters will shore up the<br />

market in certain areas. Veronica<br />

Roth of Divergent fame is about<br />

to release a space opera duology,<br />

with January 17th to see the<br />

simultaneous global release of<br />

Carve the Mark in 33 languages.<br />

Combined with the new wave of<br />

Star Wars movies, perhaps we’ll<br />

see an increased appetite for space<br />

opera.<br />

Or perhaps an incredible<br />

contemporary novel will break all<br />

the rules a month from now, and<br />

the reading world will be swept up<br />

in the demand for more just like it.<br />

This is the problem—there’s no<br />

way to predict the market, which<br />

means that, as always, an author’s<br />

best bet is writing their own stories.<br />

Writing stories so good they can’t<br />

be ignored.<br />

By the time it’s<br />

possible to identify<br />

a trend, it’s usually<br />

far too late to start<br />

writing to it.<br />

If we can predict anything, it’s<br />

that we’ll continue to see an<br />

increasing focus on diverse and<br />

authentic voices. We’ll continue to<br />

see readers demand stories about<br />

characters from diverse racial and<br />

cultural backgrounds, genders,<br />

sexual orientations, abilities and<br />

more. We’ll see increasing demand<br />

for ‘own voices’, stories told by<br />

people who are reflecting their<br />

lived experience. It’s important to<br />

understand that this isn’t a trend,<br />

though—it’s about stories showing<br />

the world as it really is.<br />

So, speaking of telling our own<br />

stories, what about Australian YA?<br />

#LoveOzYA<br />

Support for Australian YA is growing<br />

exponentially—the #LoveOzYA<br />

movement is a coalition of readers,<br />

authors, booksellers, librarians and<br />

publishing professionals, producing<br />

Get Your Story Started<br />

Writing workshop with Amie Kaufman<br />

Begin your project with Amie in this workshop and develop a framework<br />

you can use to generate story after story.<br />

Amie will guide you through putting together the elements of your novel<br />

or short story – generating ideas; identifying your protagonist, inciting<br />

incident, setting, antagonist and supporting characters – and bringing<br />

depth to these elements to create a story that is layered and compelling.<br />

Sunday 25 June 2017, Brisbane<br />

everything from events to reading<br />

lists to bookseller promotions.<br />

I won’t presume to speak for<br />

Aussie publishers regarding how<br />

they view the YA scene, or what<br />

they’re acquiring, but I will say that<br />

they’re releasing a steady stream<br />

of outstanding books by Australian<br />

authors. Look at their lists and<br />

you’ll see a wide range of genres.<br />

They’ll tell you, truthfully, that<br />

their acquisitions are about quality<br />

writing.<br />

Overseas, Aussies continue to break<br />

into foreign markets, but it’s not an<br />

easy thing to do. For more on this<br />

subject, see Jay Kristoff’s excellent<br />

article in the September issue of WQ.<br />

So where does this leave us? Good<br />

question. The rules are the same as<br />

always—there are none. The truth<br />

is, we can’t predict what will sell<br />

to publishers, or what the market<br />

will demand even next month.<br />

But what we can do is plunge into<br />

the wonderful, confusing, soulsearching<br />

stories that YA has to<br />

offer, and keep on writing.<br />

We can keep on making our stories<br />

so good, they can’t be ignored.<br />

Amie Kaufman is a New York Times and<br />

internationally bestselling young adult<br />

author. Her books have won Aurealis<br />

Awards and an ABIA, been named to the<br />

Kirkus, Booklist, YALSA and Amazon<br />

best of year lists, and are slated for<br />

publication in 26 countries. She is the<br />

co-author of Illuminae with Jay Kristoff<br />

and These Broken Stars with Meagan<br />

Spooner.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 15


.S. Elliott, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.K. Rowling, Ian<br />

ankin,<br />

Join<br />

Alexander<br />

the<br />

McCall Smith,<br />

ranks<br />

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of writers<br />

Ernest Hemingway,<br />

who<br />

Petter Altenerg,<br />

Aharon Appelfeld, Natalie Goldberg, Sophia Myles, Joe Sacco, Evangeline<br />

illy, Sadie Jones, Zoe Kravitz, T.S. Elliott, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, F.<br />

produce their best work in cafes<br />

cott Fitzgerald, J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Malcolm<br />

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emingway, Petter Altenberg, Aharon Appelfeld, Natalie Goldberg, Sophia Myles, Joe<br />

Quiet café work space t Private meeting rooms for hire t Flexible training room for hire<br />

acco, Evangeline Lilly, Sadie Jones, Zoe Kravitz, T.S. Elliott, Franz Kafka, Gerrude<br />

Excellent Stein, F. coffee Scott and Fitzgerald, tea t Book-inspired J.K. menu Rowling, t Word-themed Ian Rankin, gifts Alexander t Free wi-fi McCall<br />

mith, Malcolm Hosted Gladwell, events t Ernest Admin Hemingway, services t Facilitation Petter Altenberg, services t Aharon JP site Appelfeld, Naalie<br />

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When we’re open:<br />

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t 7am—5pm, Monday to Friday<br />

an Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Petter Alenberg,<br />

Aharon Appelfeld, Natalie Goldberg, Sophia Myles, Joe Sacco, Evangeline<br />

t Phone: (07) 3368 1088<br />

t 8am—2pm, Saturday<br />

t Email: info@northsidemeetings.com.au<br />

t Closed Sunday and public holidays<br />

illy, Sadie Jones, Zoe Kravitz, T.S. Elliott, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, F.<br />

t Web: www.northsidemeetings.com.au<br />

t Room bookings available evenings and<br />

cott Fitzgerald, J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Malcolm<br />

t Social: www.facebook.com/northsidemeetings<br />

weekends<br />

ladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Petter Altenberg, Aharon Appelfeld, Natalie Goldberg,<br />

ophia Myles, Joe Sacco, Evangeline Lilly, Sadie Jones, Zoe Kravitz, T.S. Elliott,<br />

Writers, Editors, Readers, Thinkers, Conversationalists and Coffee Lovers are always welcome<br />

ranz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, Alex-<br />

Conjuring stories<br />

Melaina Faranda<br />

When I give a creative writing workshop, I’ll sometimes<br />

break the word imagination into three: I for the self;<br />

MAGI being an archaic term for a magician, wise man, or<br />

sorcerer; and NATION representing a country or terrain.<br />

Put them together and we might consider that each of us<br />

contains a kind of inner magician able to roam through<br />

infinite internal realms and conjure from these—images,<br />

characters, possibilities, stories…<br />

One question that preoccupies<br />

anyone interested in the business<br />

of story making is—where does<br />

creativity come from? I’ve heard it<br />

suggested that creativity is moonlit,<br />

penumbral, that seeking to pin it<br />

down can be likened to chasing<br />

a shadow of light. For me it also<br />

entails a certain kind of leaning into<br />

a cerebral darkness. In particular,<br />

when I’m not being inundated or<br />

even inspired by a story insisting to<br />

be told, finding story requires the<br />

courage to continue to lean into<br />

that darkness and keep reaching<br />

with my inner senses, against the<br />

threat of nothing being there. In<br />

this instance, it truly is a case of the<br />

16<br />

WQ


threat of the empty rather than the<br />

empty threat.<br />

Sometimes creative courage entails<br />

a discipline of simply undertaking<br />

to remain there, to not skive off<br />

with a mundane achievement, or<br />

answering emails or staring into<br />

the fridge, but instead to ease into<br />

the nothingness a little deeper. And<br />

often from that darkness some part<br />

of us, an inner magician, appears to<br />

conjure the best type of writing—the<br />

things we didn’t know we knew.<br />

One question that<br />

preoccupies anyone<br />

interested in the<br />

business of story<br />

making is—where<br />

does creativity<br />

come from?<br />

So how does this work in practice?<br />

How is it possible to approach<br />

writing in a way in which we have<br />

an opportunity to conjure rather<br />

than contrive? I literally stumbled<br />

upon one of my favourite writing<br />

exercises in my children’s playroom.<br />

Before giving creative writing<br />

workshops, I’d often raid their toys<br />

to see what might be useful as<br />

a springboard for story. One day,<br />

while rootling through the lowrelief<br />

soft sculpture that was their<br />

playroom floor, I stubbed my toe on<br />

a blue plastic telescope. Into the<br />

bag it went, with the thought: this<br />

might be good for a five-minute<br />

activity—only to be intrigued when<br />

that five minutes stretched into two<br />

hours…<br />

I’d like to share the bones of this<br />

process with you now. There are<br />

only two caveats. The first is to<br />

refrain from rejecting what appears<br />

in your imagination. Regardless of<br />

whether anything you encounter<br />

feels like something you wouldn’t<br />

have consciously chosen, go with<br />

it. Also, not everybody visualises as<br />

such. Sometimes we see pictures<br />

in our mind, other times we tend<br />

more to feel or hear or simply know<br />

what it is that is there, and each<br />

or all are fine. Naturally, it’s also<br />

always helpful to close our eyes<br />

when imagining, to help shut out<br />

the clamour for attention from our<br />

external world.<br />

Imagine now that you are gazing<br />

into the distance at a far-away<br />

place or landscape that’s hazy and<br />

indistinct. Just take a quick note<br />

of what you see. Now imagine that<br />

you are holding up a telescope<br />

and training it on a specific<br />

spot in that landscape in which<br />

everything becomes clear within its<br />

circumference. There’s a person<br />

there. Don’t reject the person who<br />

appears. It might not be who you’d<br />

ordinarily be interested in writing<br />

about. In many ways this is even<br />

better. However, if it’s someone you<br />

already know, calmly move on and<br />

find someone else.<br />

The next thing to do is note and<br />

write down: what that person looks<br />

like, what they are wearing, any<br />

significant or noticeable facial<br />

or bodily features, any jewellery,<br />

tattoos, scars etc. This can feel<br />

like a process of observing as well<br />

as fabricating. In either instance<br />

there’s a deliberate looseness in<br />

our approach so that it can be a<br />

fusion of both. We then move to the<br />

question: how does that character<br />

feel about what they are wearing?<br />

And here begins the dance from the<br />

external to the internal and back<br />

again.<br />

Ideally we want to segue back<br />

and forth from describing our<br />

character’s external world, to<br />

describing from their internal<br />

perceptions. It is the same for<br />

all sensory observations. What<br />

sounds can they hear in this place?<br />

What sounds do they most long<br />

to hear, or most dread hearing,<br />

and why? This equally applies for<br />

sights, textures, smells, tastes<br />

etc. Questions can be asked about<br />

objects, about recurring dreams,<br />

what they care about most, secrets,<br />

loves and fears.<br />

... and from<br />

fathomless creative<br />

darkness another<br />

story is conjured.<br />

All this can be done in a spirit of<br />

ease of discovery. The telescope<br />

serves to protect us from<br />

overwhelm by delineating a clear<br />

circumference of specificity<br />

within our own infinite sense of<br />

imaginative possibilities. Rather<br />

than feeling an onus to ‘write<br />

a story’ from start to finish, we<br />

can embark on an exploration of<br />

a character revealing how they<br />

think and feel, their sensory world,<br />

and the specific artefacts that<br />

comprise their existence—and<br />

from fathomless creative darkness<br />

another story is conjured.<br />

Melaina Faranda is the author of forty<br />

YA and children’s books, published<br />

nationally and internationally, as well as<br />

being a qualified teacher for over twenty<br />

years. She gives numerous creative<br />

writing and self-editing workshops<br />

and masterclasses in schools, writers’<br />

centres and at literature festivals<br />

throughout Australia and can be booked<br />

through Speakers Ink.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 17


Writing on the road<br />

Claire Coleman<br />

The first impressions that would<br />

become my story began on the<br />

road. I had always intended to<br />

try to write a novel on the road;<br />

I had even started one once,<br />

so abandoned now that I can’t<br />

even remember what it was. As I<br />

crossed the Nullarbor Plain, the<br />

great desert that stretches across<br />

Australia’s south—a landscape<br />

most Australians never encounter—<br />

an idea embedded itself in my<br />

head and in my heart. It was too<br />

nebulous to write. When I returned<br />

to my ancestral country, to the<br />

coast where my ancestors had<br />

always lived and to the town where<br />

my grandfather was born, I felt the<br />

story edge closer.<br />

There is a cute little museum in<br />

a small, dusty mining town called<br />

Ravensthorpe. That was where<br />

my grandfather was born, where<br />

my ancestors, both Aboriginal and<br />

White, helped establish the town.<br />

In the museum I found a wall that I<br />

did not even know existed, covered<br />

in photos of my ancestors and<br />

my family. They must have spent<br />

significant time, years maybe,<br />

uncovering all they could on the<br />

history of my family and<br />

cataloguing it.<br />

It was also there in that museum<br />

that I was told of a memorial<br />

to the massacre nearby of my<br />

distant relatives, of the family of<br />

my ancestors. I was invited to<br />

the opening of the memorial and<br />

resolved, though due elsewhere, to<br />

return for it.<br />

After the opening there was no<br />

going back; it informed my entire<br />

life, this knowledge not just in<br />

words but in feeling, of a massacre<br />

in my family’s background. This<br />

experience was also the foundation<br />

for my novel; that massacre,<br />

that landscape, all massacres of<br />

Aboriginal people informed my<br />

writing. I would never have had<br />

that exposure, more profound than<br />

words, from reading.<br />

I started my<br />

manuscript in an<br />

ancient, ragged<br />

caravan, travelling<br />

from Ravensthorpe,<br />

through Perth,<br />

then up the coast of<br />

Western Australia.<br />

The sun was relentless, cooking<br />

the asphalt, threatening our tyres,<br />

stabbing our eyes. All around were<br />

ancient mountains, weathered<br />

into red dirt and fallen carmine<br />

rocks. Among those rocks were<br />

18<br />

WQ


plants, trees and flowers we had<br />

never seen before. There was a<br />

colour to that landscape, the red<br />

soil, sometimes purple rocks, the<br />

spinifex, a greyish, pinkish yellow.<br />

The entire landscape slid towards<br />

an inexplicable purple.<br />

I wrote that novel<br />

in a fever...<br />

I had never visited the Pilbara<br />

before. I was born in Perth, but<br />

those ancient red rocks were too<br />

distant for casual travel. When I<br />

left Perth in my early twenties,<br />

maybe to never return, I went east,<br />

towards Melbourne and Sydney,<br />

towards the people, the big smoke.<br />

I had crossed the Nullarbor then,<br />

and crossed back again only a few<br />

months ago before heading north.<br />

This new landscape of the west<br />

coast, this new painfully dry desert,<br />

was so different to the cooler,<br />

limestone-floored Nullarbor that<br />

comparisons fail.<br />

We stopped in the first pull-over<br />

we saw, local gravel, smeared-out<br />

gibber, to photograph the rocks,<br />

the hills, the colour, oh the colour.<br />

My beloved grabbed the camera,<br />

started clicking; she had never seen<br />

those colours before; she wanted<br />

to keep them forever. I turned<br />

and absorbed the alien landscape<br />

through my sun-baked eyes.<br />

Then I saw it, a skeletal hilltop,<br />

glowing red. I ran to the caravan<br />

and hammered a scene into my<br />

tablet. Those hasty words came to<br />

be among the first words to enter<br />

my coming novel, and are the only<br />

words I can think of that I have no<br />

desire to improve.<br />

I wrote that novel in a fever,<br />

generally from five to seven in the<br />

morning, travelling. I continued<br />

as we turned at the top across the<br />

dry tropics towards Darwin, never<br />

making it. It was just too hot in<br />

Kununurra, right at the top of WA,<br />

and we were told by people coming<br />

the other way that Darwin would be<br />

unbearable. Much writing, much<br />

unexpected creativity, happened<br />

as we fled from the heat south<br />

towards cooler Alice Springs. All<br />

those places are in my novel, not<br />

as places, but as a feel, a sense of<br />

place.<br />

Travel broadens the<br />

mind, that is what<br />

they say. It does<br />

something far more<br />

important: travel<br />

trains the senses.<br />

I completed a draft I loved,<br />

still travelling, edited it for<br />

the black&write! Fellowship<br />

competition while briefly in<br />

Melbourne, then sent it off before<br />

departing again, heading east,<br />

planning to experience the east<br />

coast as we had experienced the<br />

west. One week before my birthday,<br />

waiting for a mechanic to receive<br />

the parts to fix my car, I learned I<br />

had won the fellowship.<br />

Writing on the road is not easy and<br />

not for everyone; there is simply<br />

never enough time. There were days<br />

I wanted to write, yet instead spent<br />

the entire day driving, there were<br />

breakdowns, there was equipment<br />

failure. I had to devise ways to work<br />

with limited and flaky electricity. I<br />

wrote on solar power and batteries,<br />

then my batteries failed. However, I<br />

would not be able to write the same<br />

novel staring at a wall, or even at<br />

the same landscape, every day. If<br />

you are stuck, or just looking for<br />

inspiration, go find another place<br />

to be. There is no way to guess<br />

where that place might take you.<br />

Shane Howard has said he wrote<br />

his masterpiece Solid Rock after<br />

camping at Uluru. You might not<br />

even have to go that far; even five<br />

minutes somewhere different might<br />

change everything.<br />

Travel broadens the mind, that is<br />

what they say. It does something<br />

far more important: travel trains<br />

the senses. The world is almost<br />

certainly bigger, stranger and more<br />

beautiful than you imagine; words,<br />

even photographs, cannot truly do it<br />

justice. There are always surprises:<br />

turn a corner and things open up<br />

that can make your heart soar or<br />

break. You can’t see that from an<br />

armchair or a desk. You can only<br />

see it by getting out there to find it.<br />

Claire Coleman is a Noongar woman<br />

whose ancestral country is the south<br />

coast of WA. She writes prose, poetry<br />

and non-fiction while travelling around<br />

the continent now called Australia in<br />

an old car and ragged caravan. In 2016<br />

she became one of the recipients of<br />

the black&write! Indigenous Writing<br />

Fellowship.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 19


as if performing a Laurel and Hardy<br />

routine.<br />

Coming home – 25 years<br />

of QWC<br />

Craig Munro<br />

Speech delivered at the 2014 AGM, to<br />

help celebrate QWC’s 25th Anniversary<br />

I knew these slapstick artists well:<br />

one was an architect and UQP<br />

author, while his mate was a former<br />

academic whose unpublished<br />

novels I had several times rejected.<br />

Gathering up what remained of my<br />

voice, I drew on my full authority as<br />

QWC chair, and ejected them both<br />

from the meeting.<br />

It had been another, less rowdy<br />

meeting in Adelaide several years<br />

before that had inspired me—as<br />

an author and publisher—to<br />

help establish a writers centre in<br />

Queensland.<br />

In 1989, the year after World Expo,<br />

South Brisbane was a wasteland.<br />

As a member of the steering<br />

committee trying to set up a writers<br />

centre, I spent many weekends<br />

driving around the deserted back<br />

streets. My targets were the former<br />

Expo admin buildings—one of which<br />

I hoped might make a suitable<br />

home for our fledgling centre.<br />

Representing the interests of<br />

local writers groups, my fellow<br />

committee members and I wanted<br />

a location close to the CBD and<br />

transport. Although Southbank’s<br />

Performing Arts Centre, Gallery,<br />

and new State Library had recently<br />

been built, the suburb still felt like a<br />

ghost town.<br />

Eventually, the Goss regime found<br />

a space for us across the river at<br />

the back of a century-old public<br />

service building in William Street—<br />

opposite the Government Printery.<br />

Its chief virtue was a good-sized<br />

meeting room in addition to several<br />

offices. For the new staff, including<br />

inaugural director Robyn Sheahan-<br />

Bright, it was also hot and in need<br />

of refurbishment.<br />

I’ll never forget our first AGM<br />

there—held in the unairconditioned<br />

meeting room one humid evening.<br />

Unfamiliar with meeting procedure,<br />

I’d spent days reading up on this,<br />

especially after hearing that a<br />

disgruntled faction might be<br />

planning some kind of coup.<br />

Prior to the meeting, we closed<br />

all the freeway-facing windows<br />

but the room quickly became<br />

uninhabitable—so we opened them<br />

again and everyone had to shout<br />

over the roar of traffic from the sixlane<br />

Riverside Expressway.<br />

It wasn’t long before I’d talked<br />

myself hoarse.<br />

The threatened coup never<br />

eventuated but, halfway through the<br />

agenda, two latecomers suddenly<br />

swung open the heavy green door.<br />

Their entry had a theatrical flourish,<br />

and it didn’t take me long to realise<br />

they were in fact too drunk to let<br />

go of the door. Instead they swayed<br />

there on the slow arc of its hinges—<br />

The Literature Board’s new Director,<br />

Ipswich accountant and poet Tom<br />

Shapcott, had called an informal<br />

meeting during Writers Week to<br />

discuss setting up such centres.<br />

Tom’s meeting was timely, as the<br />

South Australian Writers Centre—<br />

the first in the country—had just<br />

opened its doors.<br />

Like a pair<br />

of Russian<br />

anarchists with<br />

a mutual delight<br />

in demolition,<br />

we pounded and<br />

jemmied all this<br />

shelving off the<br />

walls to create a<br />

spacious, well-lit<br />

meeting place.<br />

I came away from Adelaide<br />

determined to push for a Brisbanebased<br />

centre. Before long our<br />

steering committee began<br />

meeting every few weeks in UQP’s<br />

boardroom on the St Lucia campus.<br />

20<br />

WQ


Robyn has written about writers<br />

centres in the book she and I<br />

edited—Paper Empires: A History of<br />

the Book in Australia 1946–2005.<br />

‘From the beginning,’ says Robyn,<br />

‘there was confusion about the<br />

purpose of writers centres… Their<br />

brief was to run courses and<br />

provide writers with information.<br />

‘There was [however] much<br />

discussion about how writers would<br />

actually use a centre’s physical<br />

space.’<br />

I recall visiting the early South<br />

Australian centre which had desks<br />

set up so writers could work, well<br />

away from household distractions.<br />

This aspect was something our<br />

early steering committee spent a<br />

lot of time discussing, yet as writers<br />

centres evolved, in Brisbane and<br />

then other cities, ‘hot desking’<br />

ceased to be such a priority.<br />

In her chapter, Robyn charts the<br />

development of centres as they<br />

moved from supporting nonprofessional<br />

and emerging writers<br />

to embracing professionals as<br />

well. Over more than two decades,<br />

the number of centres has<br />

mushroomed.<br />

In NSW, for example, regional<br />

writers centres are now dotted all<br />

over the state from Broken Hill<br />

to Armidale—most on university<br />

campuses. The very successful<br />

Byron Bay Writers Festival was<br />

originally hosted by the local writers<br />

centre, and in WA, there was even<br />

a Broome branch office of the main<br />

centre in Perth.<br />

Our original steering committee<br />

reflected the writing groups and<br />

genres we collectively represented.<br />

I was a biographer and literary<br />

historian, but there were also poets,<br />

novelists, screenwriters and my<br />

playwright friend Errol O’Neill.<br />

As a postgrad student during the<br />

early 1980s, my English Department<br />

office had adjoined that of Errol’s<br />

brother: the brilliant lecturer, orator<br />

and radical activist Dan O’Neill.<br />

Over that eventful<br />

quarter-century, the<br />

literary landscape<br />

has become<br />

extraordinarily<br />

diverse …<br />

When QBuild decided to eject QWC<br />

from William Street and renovate<br />

the space for someone else, they<br />

found us another disused building.<br />

This one was larger: a two-storey<br />

former medical laboratory on upper<br />

Wickham Terrace, near Brisbane<br />

Grammar School. Robyn, however,<br />

was disappointed that the only<br />

room suitable for meetings was<br />

lined on four sides with wide timber<br />

laboratory benches. Heavens knows<br />

what gruesome experiments had<br />

once taken place there!<br />

So, one weekend—in Clint Eastwood<br />

mode—Errol and I brought in<br />

our heaviest hammers and steel<br />

crowbars. Like a pair of Russian<br />

anarchists with a mutual delight<br />

in demolition, we pounded and<br />

jemmied all this shelving off the<br />

walls to create a spacious, well-lit<br />

meeting place.<br />

Robyn and her QWC team had<br />

helped organise the hugely<br />

successful Writers Train from<br />

Brisbane to Charleville, and<br />

she framed a series of writer<br />

photographs—including scribes<br />

Hugh Lunn and Thea Astley, Tom<br />

Keneally and Rodney Hall—to adorn<br />

the walls of that reinvigorated<br />

space.<br />

Largely due to the dedication and<br />

creativity of successive directors<br />

and staff, the Queensland Writers<br />

Centre has become one of the most<br />

respected in the country. Among<br />

its many important initiatives is a<br />

nationwide bestseller: Australian<br />

Writers Marketplace, the must-have<br />

directory for every serious writer.<br />

As a QWC member for 25 years, I<br />

could not have developed my own<br />

skills and contacts as a writer,<br />

editor and publisher without this<br />

dynamic centre which has few peers<br />

in Australia or internationally.<br />

Over that eventful quarter-century,<br />

the literary landscape has become<br />

extraordinarily diverse—with writing<br />

genres to suit every taste. The<br />

timing of QWC’s establishment<br />

could not have been more<br />

propitious, as the 1980s had been<br />

a boom time for Australian writing<br />

and publishing.<br />

Queensland Writers Centre grew<br />

rapidly to maturity during the<br />

communications revolution of the<br />

1990s—with the globe-shrinking<br />

internet and the instant gratification<br />

of emails and mobile phones.<br />

Twenty-five years ago, in the old<br />

analogue world, I’d cruised at<br />

walking pace in my university Ford<br />

Falcon around the streets and byways<br />

of South Brisbane. Though<br />

I searched high and low, I never<br />

found what I was looking for.<br />

Tonight, snug in QWC’s State Library<br />

embrace, I feel I’ve come home at<br />

last to the place of my dreams.<br />

Craig Munro is an award-winning<br />

biographer and QWC’s founding Chair.<br />

As UQP fiction editor, he launched<br />

the careers of both Peter Carey and<br />

David Malouf. Craig has twice won the<br />

Barbara Ramsden Award for Editing.<br />

His memoir Under Cover: Adventures in<br />

the Art of Editing was published to wide<br />

acclaim in 2015. His other books include<br />

Wild Man of Letters and Paper Empires:<br />

A History of the Book in Australia 1946-<br />

2005, co-edited with Robyn Sheahan-<br />

Bright.<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 21


Events<br />

Whose Head Are You In?<br />

A one-day workshop on writing<br />

effective point of view and creating<br />

believable, engaging characters with<br />

Sandy Curtis.<br />

Date 3 December 2016<br />

Location Queensland Writers Centre,<br />

South Brisbane<br />

qwriters.co/curtis-characters-dec<br />

QWC End-Of-Year Party<br />

A celebration of 2016 and the launch<br />

of the 2017 QWC Program.<br />

Date 9 December 2016<br />

Location Poinciana Lounge, State<br />

Library of Queensland, South<br />

Brisbane<br />

qwc.asn.au<br />

RTX Sydney<br />

RTX Sydney is a two day gaming<br />

and internet culture event hosted<br />

by production company Rooster<br />

Teeth. See the greatest new games,<br />

learn about the industry and meet<br />

likeminded fans.<br />

Dates 4—5 February 2017<br />

Location International Convention<br />

Centre Sydney, Darling Harbour,<br />

Sydney<br />

rtxsydney.com<br />

Perth International Arts<br />

Festival including Perth<br />

Writers Festival<br />

An annual arts festival of international<br />

quality, which includes a dedicated<br />

Writers Festival program.<br />

Dates 10 February—5 March 2017<br />

Location Various venues across Perth<br />

perthfestival.com.au<br />

Adelaide Fringe Festival<br />

An open-access, arts festival that<br />

showcases artists in all genres<br />

and venue types, including cabaret,<br />

theatre, dance, comedy, circus and<br />

music.<br />

Dates 17 February—19 March 2017<br />

Location Various venues across<br />

Adelaide<br />

adelaidefringe.com.au<br />

Festivals in 2017<br />

April<br />

May<br />

June<br />

July<br />

August<br />

Swancon<br />

Sydney Writers Festival<br />

Auckland Writers Festival<br />

Voices on the Coast<br />

Emerging Writers Festival<br />

CYA Conference<br />

Byron Bay Writers Festival<br />

Melbourne Writers Festival<br />

Queensland Poetry Festival<br />

Adelaide Festival<br />

A festival of the top international<br />

theatre, music, dance, writers and<br />

visual arts.<br />

Dates 3—19 March 2017<br />

Location various venues across<br />

Adelaide<br />

adelaidefestival.com.au<br />

Somerset Celebration of<br />

Literature<br />

A three-day festival celebrating<br />

literature with interactive sessions<br />

and workshops for children and<br />

adults.<br />

Dates 15—17 March 2017<br />

Location Somerset College, Gold<br />

Coast<br />

Romance Writers of Australia Conference<br />

somerset.qld.edu.au/celebration-ofliterature<br />

September<br />

October<br />

Brisbane Writers Festival<br />

Tasmanian Writers & Readers Festival<br />

Sunshine Coast International Readers & Writers Festival<br />

National Young Writers Festival<br />

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival<br />

Bundaberg Writefest<br />

22<br />

WQ


Open calls<br />

Affirm Press<br />

Details General email submissions<br />

Information affirmpress.com.au/<br />

submissions<br />

Allen & Unwin<br />

Details The Friday Pitch runs all week<br />

Information allenandunwin.com/<br />

about-allen-and-unwin/submissionguidelines<br />

Black Inc<br />

Details General email submissions,<br />

not accepting unsolicited poetry or<br />

children’s books<br />

Information blackincbooks.com/<br />

submissions<br />

Bloomsbury Spark<br />

Details Bloombsury YA digital imprint,<br />

general email submissions<br />

Information bloomsbury.com/au/<br />

bloomsbury-spark/submissions<br />

Carina Press<br />

Details Harlequin digital-first imprint.<br />

Submit through an online form. The<br />

minimum word count for submissions<br />

has recently been lowered to 20,000.<br />

Information carinapress.com/blog/<br />

submission-guidelines<br />

Destiny Romance<br />

Details A Penguin Australia digital<br />

imprint, online submission form<br />

Information destinyromance.com/<br />

writers-centre<br />

Escape<br />

Details Digital imprint of Harlequin<br />

Australia, online submission form<br />

Information escapepublishing.com.<br />

au/submission<br />

Giramondo Publishing<br />

Details Online submission form<br />

Information giramondopublishing.<br />

com/contribute<br />

Guillotine Press<br />

Details General email submissions<br />

Information guillotinepress.com.au/<br />

submissions<br />

Hachette Australia<br />

Details General email submissions<br />

Information hachette.com.au/<br />

Information/ManuscriptSubmission.<br />

page<br />

Harlequin Books Australia<br />

Details General email submission<br />

Information harlequinbooks.com.au/<br />

submissions<br />

Harper Impulse<br />

Details Digital-first imprint of Harper<br />

Collins, general email submissions<br />

Information harperimpulseromance.<br />

com/write-for-us<br />

Mills & Boon<br />

Details Accept general postal<br />

submissions<br />

Information millsandboon.com.au/<br />

submissions<br />

Odyssey Books<br />

Details Online submission form<br />

Information odysseybooks.com.au/<br />

submissions<br />

Pan Macmillan<br />

Details Submit manuscripts on the<br />

first Monday of every month<br />

Information panmacmillan.com.au/<br />

manuscript-monday<br />

Pantera Press<br />

Details General email submissions<br />

Information panterapress.com.au/<br />

fiction-and-non-fiction-how-to-submit<br />

Penguin<br />

Details Monthly Catch (first week of<br />

each month, from the 1st to the 7th)<br />

Information penguin.com.au/gettingpublished<br />

Pixapops<br />

Details Open for submissions of stories<br />

for readers up to six years of age to be<br />

produced as immersive digital picture<br />

books and animated stories<br />

Information pixapops.com<br />

Random House Australia<br />

Details Will accept hard copy general<br />

submissions only that are separate<br />

from Penguin<br />

Information randomhouse.com.au/<br />

about/manuscripts.aspx<br />

Rhiza Press<br />

Details Will accept unsolicited YA<br />

fiction only, online submission form<br />

Information rhizapress.com.au/<br />

submissions<br />

Text Publishing<br />

Details Will accept hard copy<br />

submissions only<br />

Information textpublishing.com.au/<br />

manuscript-submissions<br />

Wombat Books<br />

Details Will accept unsolicited<br />

picture books only through an online<br />

submission form<br />

Information wombatbooks.com.au/<br />

authors/submissions<br />

Xoum<br />

Details Online submission form<br />

Information xoum.com.au/submissions<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 23


Competitions and opportunities<br />

Wombat Books’ Illustration<br />

Challenge<br />

Illustrations by school-aged children<br />

for publication in Yay! It’s Library Day<br />

by Aleesah Darlison.<br />

Closing date 28 February 2017<br />

Fee No fee<br />

wombatbooks.com.au/<br />

competitions/139-wombat-booksillustration-challenge-2017<br />

Mondeto 2024 Short Story<br />

Prize<br />

Short stories of any length that<br />

describe a credible, positive vision of<br />

life in 2024 in a satisfying narrative<br />

context.<br />

Closing date 31 December 2017<br />

Fee $10<br />

mondeto.com/2024.html<br />

The Book Illustration<br />

Competition<br />

Illustrators over the age of 18 are<br />

asked to submit three illustrations<br />

and a binding design for Mansfield<br />

Park by Jane Austen.<br />

Closing date 16 January 2017<br />

Fee £25 or £15 for students<br />

Fish Flash Fiction Contest<br />

Flash fiction up to 300 words, with no<br />

restriction on theme or style.<br />

Closing date 28 February 2017<br />

Fee €14<br />

fishpublishing.com/competition/<br />

flash-fiction-contest<br />

Toowoomba Repertory<br />

Theatre 2017 Play Writing<br />

Competition<br />

Submissions of unpublished and<br />

unperformed play scripts of one hour<br />

in length. Shortlisted playwrights<br />

will receive feedback on their work.<br />

Two selected winning plays will be<br />

performed during the 2017 Carnival of<br />

Flowers.<br />

Closing date 31 January 2017<br />

Fee $40<br />

toowoombarepertorytheatre.com.au/<br />

html/2017_playwriting_comp.html<br />

Fish Poetry Contest<br />

Flash fiction up to 4,000 words, with<br />

no restriction on theme or style.<br />

Closing date 31 March 2017<br />

Fee €14<br />

fishpublishing.com/competition/<br />

poetry-contest<br />

Fish Short Memoir Contest<br />

Flash fiction up to 300 words, with no<br />

restriction on theme or style.<br />

Closing date 31 January 2017<br />

Fee €16<br />

fishpublishing.com/competition/<br />

short-memoir-contest<br />

Gemini Magazine Poetry<br />

Prize<br />

Unpublished poems of any form,<br />

subject matter, style or length from<br />

new and established poets.<br />

Closing date 3 January 2017<br />

Fee $5 for up to three submissions<br />

gemini-magazine.com/poetryopen.<br />

html<br />

Genjuan International Haibun<br />

Contest<br />

Haibun between 7 and 35 lines, with<br />

at least one haiku included. Entries<br />

must be posted as hardcopies to<br />

competition coordinators in Japan.<br />

Closing date 31 January 2017<br />

Fee No fee<br />

hailhaiku.wordpress.com/genjuan<br />

Tasmanian Writers’ Prize<br />

Open to residents of Australia and<br />

New Zealand to submit short stories<br />

up to 3,000 words on an island or<br />

island-resonant theme.<br />

Closing date 13 February 2017<br />

Fee $20<br />

fortysouth.com.au/magazine/<br />

tasmanian-writers-prize<br />

Vine Leaves Vignette<br />

Collection Award<br />

Vignettes of poetry or prose in a<br />

collection totalling 50-60 pages,<br />

written in English and not previously<br />

published as a whole.<br />

Closing date 28 February 2017<br />

Fee $30<br />

houseofillustration.org.uk/<br />

get_involved/the-book-illustrationcompetition<br />

vineleavesliteraryjournal.com/vineleaves-vignette-collection-award.html<br />

Jim Baen Memorial Short<br />

Story Award<br />

Submissions of short stories of no<br />

more than 8,000 words that show<br />

the near future of manned space<br />

exploration (no more than 50-60 years<br />

in the future).<br />

Closing date 1 February 2017<br />

Fee No fee<br />

baen.com/baenmemorialaward<br />

24<br />

WQ


Text Prize<br />

Awarded annually to the best<br />

manuscript written for young readers.<br />

Open to works of fiction or non-fiction<br />

of between 20,000 and 120,000 words,<br />

suitable for young adult or children’s<br />

readership.<br />

Closing date 3 February 2017<br />

Fee $25<br />

textpublishing.com.au/text-prize<br />

2017 Somerset National<br />

Poetry Prize<br />

Categories for students in years<br />

7-9 and students in years 10-12, for<br />

poems up to 50 lines. Winner receives<br />

$300 plus flights to Somerset<br />

Celebration of Literature.<br />

Closing date 9 December 2016<br />

Fee $15<br />

Gival Press Poetry Award<br />

Poetry manuscripts of at least 45<br />

pages are eligible for this US contest.<br />

The winner receives USD$1,000 and a<br />

publishing contract with Gival Press.<br />

Closing date 15 December 2016<br />

Fee $20<br />

Tom Collins Poetry Prize<br />

This WA contest is for poetry up to 60<br />

lines. 1st prize $1,000; 2nd $400; four<br />

highly commended of $150 each.<br />

Closing date Prize opens in<br />

November 2016<br />

Fee not stated<br />

fawwa.org/competitions<br />

Times/Chicken House<br />

Children’s Fiction<br />

Competition<br />

For unpublished and unagented<br />

writers of children’s and young adult<br />

fiction. Top prize is a publishing deal<br />

with Chicken House and £10,000<br />

(subject to contract), plus agent<br />

representation.<br />

Closing date 18 December 2016<br />

Fee £15<br />

chickenhousebooks.com/<br />

submissions/#about<br />

Boulevard Short Fiction<br />

Contest<br />

Open to writers who have not yet<br />

published a book of fiction, poetry or<br />

creative non-fiction with a nationally<br />

distributed press. Top prize $1,500<br />

and publication in Boulevard.<br />

Closing date 31 December 2016<br />

Fee $16<br />

somerset.qld.edu.au/celebration-ofliterature/competitions/poetry-prize<br />

somerset.qld.edu.au/celebration-ofliterature/competitions/poetry-prize<br />

boulevardmagazine.org/short-fictioncontest<br />

Ballymaroe International<br />

Poetry Prize<br />

This Irish contest offers €10,000 to<br />

the winner and €1,000 to each of<br />

three runners up.<br />

Closing date 31 December 2016<br />

Fee €12 per poem<br />

themothmagazine.com/a1-page.<br />

asp?ID=8010&page=13<br />

Keep your eye out for<br />

these opportunities that<br />

may open soon:<br />

ABR Calibre Prize<br />

australianbookreview.com.au/prizes/<br />

calibre-prize/current-prize<br />

black&write! fellowships slq.qld.<br />

gov.au/whats-on/awards/blackwrite/<br />

fellowships<br />

EJ Brady Short Story Competition<br />

artsmallacoota.org/page10.htm<br />

The Hope Prize bsl.org.au/events/<br />

the-hope-prize<br />

Inky Awards insideadog.com.au/<br />

page/inky-awards<br />

National Biography Awards sl.nsw.<br />

gov.au/about-library-awards/<br />

national-biography-award<br />

Banjo Patterson Poetry Competition<br />

brandorange.com.au/orange-nsw/<br />

banjo-paterson-festival<br />

Colin Roderick Award jcu.edu.au/<br />

foundation-for-australian-literarystudies/colin-roderick-award<br />

Mulga Bill Writing Award<br />

mulgabillwritingaward.wordpress.<br />

com<br />

John O’Brien Festival Open Writing<br />

Competition johnobrien.org.au/openwriting-competition-guidelines<br />

Jospehine Ulrick Poetry and<br />

Literature Prizes griffith.edu.au/<br />

humanities-languages/schoolhumanities-languages-socialscience/news-events/josephineulrick-prizes<br />

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards<br />

arts.gov.au/pm-literary-awards/howenter<br />

Western Australian Premier’s Book<br />

Awards pba.slwa.wa.gov.au<br />

WWW.WRITINGQUEENSLAND.COM.AU 25


About QWC Membership<br />

Founding Patrons<br />

Thea Astley<br />

Bruce Dawe<br />

Geoffrey Dutton<br />

David Malouf<br />

Michael Noonan<br />

Jill Shearer<br />

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker)<br />

Honorary Life Members<br />

Hilary Beaton<br />

Martin Buzacott<br />

Heidi Chopey<br />

Laurie Hergenhan<br />

Helen Horton<br />

Philip Neilsen<br />

Craig Munro<br />

Robyn Sheahan-Bright<br />

Kevin Gillespie<br />

Life Member<br />

Lynette Kellow<br />

Group Members<br />

Bush Curlews Writing Group<br />

Brisbane Writers Group<br />

Bundaberg Writers’ Club<br />

Burdekin Readers’ and Writers’<br />

Association Inc<br />

Capricorn Writers and Friends<br />

Carindale Writers Group<br />

Fairfield Writers<br />

Garden City Creative Writers<br />

Geebung Writers<br />

Hearts of Gold Writers Group<br />

Kenmore State High School<br />

Readers Group<br />

Mackay Writers Group<br />

Macleay Island Inspirational<br />

Writers Group<br />

Mount Isa City Library Writers Group<br />

Our Words, Our Stories<br />

RedWrites Writing Group<br />

Society of Women Writer’s<br />

Queensland Inc<br />

Stanthorpe Writers<br />

Townsville Writers & Publishers Centre<br />

Tropical Writers Inc<br />

U3A Writers<br />

Vision Writers Group<br />

Writing with a Vision<br />

Yon Beyond<br />

Institutional Members<br />

ACT Writers<br />

Aromas<br />

Australian Society of Authors<br />

Brisbane Square Library<br />

Brisbane Writers Festival<br />

Children’s Book Council of Australia –<br />

Qld Branch<br />

Griffith University Library (Gold Coast)<br />

Immanuel Lutheran College<br />

Queensland University of Technology<br />

(Kelvin Grove)<br />

Moreton Bay Region Libraries,<br />

Northlakes Library<br />

The NSW Writers’ Centre<br />

Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre<br />

Northern Territory Writers’Centre<br />

Riverbend Books<br />

SA Writers Centre<br />

St Patrick’s Senior College Library<br />

Tasmanian Writers’ Centre<br />

University of Queensland Press<br />

Voices on the Coast<br />

Writers Victoria<br />

WritingWA<br />

Legal advice<br />

We advise contacting the Arts Law<br />

Centre of Australia: www.artslaw.com.<br />

au, T 02 9356 2566,<br />

F 02 9358 6475, toll free 1800 221 457.<br />

Alternatively, the Australian Society of<br />

Authors offers a contract advice service<br />

– details are available on their website<br />

www.asauthors.org. There are also<br />

contract FAQs on the site. Alex Adsett<br />

Publishing Services offers commercial<br />

publishing contract advice to authors<br />

and offers a discount to QWC members,<br />

www.alexadsett.com.au.<br />

Terms and Conditions<br />

Refund/Returns Policy<br />

QWC does not offer refunds on books,<br />

magazines or other products purchased<br />

from QWC, except where the goods<br />

are defective by fault of the publisher,<br />

manufacturer or distributor.<br />

In the event that you have purchased<br />

an event ticket and Queensland Writers<br />

Centre must cancel that event, we will<br />

try to reschedule it for a later date. If we<br />

cannot reschedule the event, or if you<br />

are unable to attend on the amended<br />

date, your payment will be refunded in<br />

full.<br />

If you cancel a booking for, or are<br />

unable to attend, an event such as a<br />

workshop, seminar or masterclass,<br />

Queensland Writers Centre will<br />

not provide a cash refund. If your<br />

cancellation is made at least 5 business<br />

days prior to the event, you may<br />

use your original payment as credit<br />

towards the cost of attending another<br />

QWC workshop, seminar, masterclass<br />

or event (space permitting). If the<br />

alternative event is valued at less than<br />

the value of the original booking, no<br />

cash will be refunded for the balance.<br />

The alternative event you select must<br />

take place in the same calendar year<br />

as the original booking. If there are<br />

no available places in another event,<br />

your credit may be used to purchase or<br />

extend QWC membership.<br />

If you have paid a deposit to secure a<br />

place in a Year of the Writer course<br />

(Year of the Novel, Year of the Edit etc.),<br />

your deposit will only be refunded in full<br />

if you cancel more than six weeks prior<br />

to the course start date. Cancellations<br />

after this date will not be refunded.<br />

All credit must be allocated within 30<br />

days of issue by making a subsequent<br />

booking. Please note: credit cannot<br />

be used to purchase books or other<br />

products available from the QWC shop.<br />

26<br />

WQ


QWC Membership benefits<br />

Membership form<br />

When you become a member of QWC, you become part of a vibrant<br />

writing community and you have access to a wide variety of resources<br />

and information.<br />

Writing Queensland (WQ) Magazine<br />

Exclusively for QWC members, the quarterly WQ Magazine features<br />

articles from industry professionals and writers.<br />

Members-only programs and services (some costs apply)<br />

The Writers Surgery offers members 90-minute consultations to discuss<br />

their projects (including grant applications) face-to-face, by Skype or by<br />

telephone with an experienced editor or published author.<br />

Year of the Writer series is a suite of masterclasses to help you plan,<br />

write and edit your novel and explore your author platform.<br />

The Novelist’s Boot Camp is an intensive three days of brainstorming,<br />

plotting and practical exercises to get your novel started and well on its way.<br />

Rabbit Hole writing challenges (free).<br />

Advertising discounts<br />

Members receive a 25% discount on advertising in WQ and our weekly<br />

e-newsletter, a fantastic way to promote their business to an engaged,<br />

educated readership of thousands, with wide interests in culture, music,<br />

food, family and travel as well as reading and writing.<br />

QWC Member discounts<br />

QWC members receive discounts on QWC’s annual program of<br />

workshops, masterclasses and industry seminars.<br />

Presentation of your membership card will also provide you with<br />

discounts at the following places:<br />

Bookshops<br />

• 10% discount at:<br />

Book Nook, Brisbane City; Byblos Bookshop, Mareeba (discount<br />

on second-hand books only); Dymocks, Brisbane City; Dymocks,<br />

Townsville; Folio Books, Brisbane City; The Jungle Bookshop, Port<br />

Douglas; The Library Shop, SLQ, Brisbane; Maleny Bookshop,<br />

Maleny; Mary Who, Townsville; Riverbend Books, Bulimba; Rosetta<br />

Books, Maleny; The Written Dimension Bookshop, Noosa Junction;<br />

The Yellow Door Books and Music, Yeppoon.<br />

Cinemas<br />

• $10 tickets at Dendy Cinema, Brisbane<br />

Other discounts<br />

• Author Photos by Profile Portraits Australia: $110 for 3 low res<br />

photos (normally $150); $140 for 3 high res photos (normally $195).<br />

Contact Giulio on 0417 604256 www.giulio.saggin@gmail.com / http://<br />

profileportraitsaus.blogspot.com.au (mileage costs may apply)<br />

• Developmental editing and manuscript assessment services by<br />

Totally Edited: 10% discount. Contact Richard Andrews at<br />

www.totallyedited.com<br />

• La Boite Theatre tickets $25 (preview) $39 (in season).<br />

• Olvar Wood Writers Retreat offers a 10% discount to QWC members<br />

on all their writer services. www.olvarwood.com.au<br />

To join Queensland Writers Centre please complete the<br />

information below or join online at www.qwc.asn.au.<br />

Please complete and return to:<br />

Queensland Writers Centre, PO Box 3488,<br />

South Brisbane Queensland 4101<br />

or email: qldwriters@qwc.asn.au<br />

Applicant’s details<br />

Name _____________________________________________<br />

Organisation _______________________________________<br />

Postal Address _____________________________________<br />

__________________________________________________<br />

___________________________ Postcode _______________<br />

Telephone _________________________________________<br />

Email _____________________________________________<br />

Please indicate New member Renewing<br />

Duration and type of membership<br />

One Year Two Year<br />

Print PDF* Print PDF*<br />

Full membership $65 $65 $120 $120<br />

Concession $55 $55 $100 $100<br />

Passionate (5 yrs) $260 $260<br />

Youth (under 26) – $25<br />

Writers’ group<br />

or organisation $99 $99<br />

Institutional sub. $150 $150<br />

Donation $<br />

(Donations of $2 or more are tax deductible)<br />

Payment<br />

Please find enclosed my payment of $ _________________<br />

Mastercard Visa Cheque Money order<br />

Card number<br />

Expiry date ___________ / _____________<br />

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Signature _________________________________________<br />

*PDF option means that you receive WQ as a PDF copy via email, not as a<br />

hard-copy magazine. All prices include GST. Donations are welcome and<br />

are tax deductible.<br />

27


Queensland writers:<br />

Promote your book in WQ<br />

QWC is offering discounted<br />

rates for Queensland<br />

writers to advertise their<br />

books in WQ through our<br />

BUY QUEENSLAND BOOKS<br />

advertising spreads:<br />

OTHER ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES<br />

MEMBERS<br />

WQ quarter page Full colour (CMYK) $230 $305<br />

Spot colour (2 PMS) $160 $265<br />

WQ eighth page Full colour (CMYK) $128 $170<br />

Spot colour (2 PMS) $90 $120<br />

NON-<br />

MEMBERS<br />

QWC members:<br />

$50 per issue<br />

Non-members:<br />

$60 per issue<br />

Other advertising options<br />

also available.<br />

→<br />

WQ classifieds Graphic $50 $68<br />

Text $25 $35<br />

WQ insert/PDF A4, A5 or DL only $360 $480<br />

Newsletter graphic banner $60 $120<br />

Newsletter classifieds $30 $60<br />

Prices not inclusive of GST.<br />

For more information email editor@qwc.asn.au<br />

Last chance to buy<br />

The Australian Writer’s<br />

Marketplace in print<br />

The Australian Writer’s Marketplace will<br />

soon become a digital-only directory. The<br />

2015/2016 edition of the book is the final<br />

print edition.<br />

Copies of 2015/2016<br />

print editions are<br />

now available at a<br />

discounted price of<br />

$37.50 (rrp $49.94)<br />

or $33.95 for QWC<br />

members, plus<br />

postage. Mini editions<br />

are also discounted.<br />

For more information<br />

please visit qwriters.co/<br />

shop-awm or call us on<br />

(07) 3842 9922.<br />

BEYOND THE BOOK:<br />

Learn the secrets of<br />

international success<br />

NY Times and USA Today best-seller<br />

Joanna Penn in conversation with<br />

Rachel Amphlett and Belinda Pollard<br />

Join self-publishing success, Joanna<br />

Penn, whose blogs have been voted<br />

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as she chats with Amazon best-seller<br />

Rachel Amphlett and Belinda Pollard,<br />

writer, editor and publisher, about the<br />

secrets of success in self-publishing.<br />

Time & date 2.00pm, Sunday 26 February<br />

Prices $25 or $20 QWC and Editors<br />

Queensland members<br />

Bookings qwriters.co/penn-beyond-book


Buy Queensland books ...<br />

FICTION<br />

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Errol Bishop<br />

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Isobel’s life has changed; all but destroyed one<br />

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When a phone call announces her former boss is<br />

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Neive Denis<br />

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What happened on Crete? How can a sabbatical in<br />

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strange boats anchoring in the bay trigger a dangerous chain of<br />

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Sentinels of Tzurac: Zarkwin’s Revenge<br />

James Raven<br />

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Death of Innocence<br />

Karen Graham<br />

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With a seemingly perfect life, Michael and his two<br />

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his eldest daughter is found murdered. Trying to solve this case and<br />

get over his loss, Michael learns that his other daughter is also being<br />

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Propositions<br />

Tania Joyce<br />

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Propositions is a steamy contemporary romance set<br />

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Red Moon: secrets of a sixties schoolgirl<br />

Pam Mariko<br />

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pammariko.com / print • eBook<br />

Andrea Hampton is going to break through the north<br />

midland gloom and her fog of misery her way—she’ll<br />

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hasn’t planned on being a 14-year-old mum, or on the move to London,<br />

where life could be fun...<br />

Bent Lilies<br />

Margaret McGuigan<br />

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print • eBook<br />

Sisters Dolly and Jean are proprietors of the Star Café,<br />

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agree on their criminal activities, but their inner wishes vary. Bent Lilies<br />

shows how Australian women in 1950s dealt with problems such as<br />

theirs: surviving, keeping secrets and finding love.<br />

Aquila<br />

Sue-Ellen Pashley<br />

Buy: amazon.com<br />

sueellenpashley.com / eBook<br />

18-year-old Nick Larcombe is a self-confessed nonromantic,<br />

until he lays eyes on Grace Carr. Already<br />

bruised and battered by life, Grace isn’t looking for any<br />

sort of relationship, but when Nick rescues her from sure death at the<br />

bottom of a windswept cliff, Grace needs answers.<br />

Advertised books from QWC’s Books from our Backyard 2015. Browse the full catalogue at backyardbooks.com.au. Advertise in WQ - editor@qwc.asn.au.


QUEENSLAND WRITERS CENTRE<br />

Level 2, State Library of Queensland, Stanley Place, South Brisbane<br />

qwc.asn.au<br />

Postal address:<br />

PO Box 3488<br />

30 South Brisbane<br />

Queensland 4101<br />

Contact details:<br />

07 3842 9922<br />

qldwriters@qwc.asn.au WQ<br />

Connect with us:<br />

Newsletter: qwriters.co/qwc-news<br />

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