My friend Sarah and I ran a creative writing workshop out of a musty classroom in the Western suburbs. We were told that the students had limited English skills. So I spent the two weeks prior texting my aunt for Arabic translations of English and Assyrian words.
She has something new to offer.
Can she be new again?
I mean ‘new’ in the sense of reborn.
‘New’ as in alive once more.
Hey Debby, it’s not cute to perpetuate stereotypes about other communities and capitalise on their experiences by opting to tell their stories—so quit it. In recent years, the conversation of who can tell what stories has become more frequent.
Another Anzac Day comes on down the pipe. It always feels like the real Australia Day to me. As if some essence of who we are can still be found amid the twisted celebrations and misdirected attacks.
When he asked about work, I told him I was a writer. ‘Ah ye-as,’ he said, and I took this exclamation to mean that the doctor felt there was some correlation between my problems and the general conditions of a writer’s life.
Like most authors, I do almost anything for money, but the thought of engaging with a bunch of young people was cause for anxiety. If it was ever the case that I was once young, the experience was wasted on me. I don’t remember having a youth, and what I do remember about it I try to forget.
I don’t read fiction about illness much. I know that’s not what you expected, as it goes directly against the premise of this essay. But fiction allows me to inhabit another body; it’s a luxury. I’m not sure I want to read about a body that is ill like mine. Thinking about my experience of illness takes up so much of my life already: the GP appointments, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, the neurologist I haven’t yet seen but have spent nine months on a waiting list for, imagining what it’ll be like to enter that room. I’m not as well…
Surveillance . . . paranoia . . . telekinesis . . . and an eight-year-old psionic messiah who will either save or destroy humanity. [podbean resource=”episode=n839f-9ada39″ type=”audio-rectangle” height=”100″ skin=”1″ btn-skin=”103″ share=”1″ fonts=”Helvetica” auto=”1″ download=”0″ rtl=”0″] When readers are asked what they love to read, science-fiction comes up second place, with crime being the number one choice. But as a writer, to get your book into the bookstore doesn’t seem to reflect this preference. Sales do not reflect it. And now, arguably more than ever, Hollywood loves the blockbuster sci-fi for its visual spectacularity. Writer David M Henley discusses this predicament…
Words || Katerina Bryant “Sometimes pus, sometimes a poem… but always pain.” —Yehuda Amichai, as quoted in Shaping the Fractured Self The first poem I loved was Sylvia Plath’s Tulips. I didn’t understand it; not at first. I was in the last year of high school and our teacher took us through the poem; line by line, stanza by stanza. I remember the way she would pace the room as she spoke during English and History, calling Rasputin a “weirdo” and Charles Manson “freaky”. Her hair was henna red and her excitement awoke an excitement in me, even though I…
Words || Katerina Bryant When I first became ill, I tried to find stories like mine. I needed to see myself on the page to believe I could adapt to a new life: a quieter, restrained life. I will not go into the particulars of my illness here—it is a sticky blend of mental illness and seizures that takes over the page once I begin to write about the details. But I will say that for the first few months of my illness, I left the house only for work. I did not dare live a life that could compound…
This issue will allow writers, scholars and poets to probe the different types of violence: from linguistic to domestic; institutional to historical, against humans and against animals, that have plagued, and continue to plague, Australia’s cultural landscapes. Southerly is looking for fiction, poetry, memoir and essays on the theme of violence: personal, cultural, national, global, literary. There is too much source material. We are interested in spectrums of violence from the accidental and the careless to ruthless strategy. We are also interested in the relationship between literature, writing and violence: Jason Mohaghegh has written of the “chaotic imagination” and the “will to cruelty” in some new literatures; Maurice Blanchot has mapped…
I view writing as my way to understand the complexities of lives I have and haven’t lived. So, often my writing is far-reaching—I’ve yoyo’d from writing about hunting feral pigs to mental illness to my recent obsession, women clowns. It seems the only consistency in my work is that it’s nonfiction.
