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Q&A Monday: Ben Eltham
Jodie Kinnersley
Aug 22, 2010
Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist, researcher and creative producer from Melbourne, Australia. He has worked as a freelance arts journalist and critic, as well as a producer and festival director at a series of experimental and fringe arts festivals in Newcastle, Brisbane and Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and is undertaking a PhD at the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Research.
He blogs at http://culturalpolicyreform.wordpress.com.
Q&A Monday: Emmett Stinson
Jodie Kinnersley
Aug 16, 2010
Emmett Stinson’s debut collection of short stories is entitled Known Unknowns. He has received The Age Short Story Award and a Lannan Poetry Fellowship, and serves as the President of SPUNC – The Small Press Network, a Fiction Editor for Wet Ink: The Magazine of New Writing, and the book reviewer for Triple R’s Breakfasters. He is a Lecturer in Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne.
Q&A Monday: Jack Heath
Jodie Kinnersley
Aug 09, 2010
Jack Heath is the author of five action-adventure books. He started writing The Lab when he was 13 years old and had a publishing contract for it at 18. He is the founder of New Poe, a website on which writers submit, critique, and win prizes for short stories. In 2008, Jack’s books were the subject of four mini-documentaries by Broken Bush Films, entitled The Jack Heath Chronicles. He blogs at http://blog.jackheath.com.au/
Q&A Monday: Rachel Hills
Jodie Kinnersley
Aug 02, 2010
Rachel Hills is a journalist, blogger, editor and public speaker based in Sydney, Australia. Her work has been published in publications including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Russh, Cleo, YEN, Girlfriend, The Monthly, The Bulletin, Vogue, The Big Issue, The Walkley Magazine and others. She blogs at http://rachelhills.tumblr.com.
Q&A MONDAY: MICHAELA MCGUIRE
Jodie Kinnersley
Jul 19, 2010
Michaela McGuire is a Melbourne writer. Her first book “Apply Within: Stories of career sabotage” was published last year by MUP. She co-curates and hosts ‘Women of Letters’ which is Melbourne’s loveliest literary event TM. She is currently working on her second book, a collection of essays, that will be published by MUP in 2011. Her writing has appeared in The Age, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, JMag and is forthcoming in The Lifted Brow.
Q&A Monday: Mischa Merz
Jodie Kinnersley
Jul 12, 2010
Mischa Merz’s book Bruising about her experiences as a boxer, was published to critical acclaim by Picador in 2000. In 2002 her essay Body Blows – Sport and the Threat of Female Muscularity was included in the Overland Lecture Series. Her short fiction has appeared in Meanjin, Island, Overland and the Cardigan Press Anthologies Normal Service Will Resume and Allnighter. Her journalism has appeared in The Age, The Sunday Age and the Herald Sun and various magazines and specialist publications. She is the 2001 Australian Amateur Boxing League women’s welterweight champion. (more…)
Q&A MONDAY: Lisa Dempster
Jodie Kinnersley
Jul 05, 2010
Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. She is a professional editor and writer who has been published widely, including book titles Neon Pilgrim and The Words We Found: the best writing from 21 years of Voiceworks magazine. As the publisher at indie outfit Vignette Press she created the sub-cultural journal the Sex and Death Mooks. Lisa is a committed vegan, and is the editor of The Melbourne Veg Food Guide.
She blogs at www.lisadempster.com.au.
Q&A MONDAY: CHLOE WILSON
Jodie Kinnersley
Jun 28, 2010
Chloe Wilson is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her first collection, The Mermaid Problem, was published by the Australian Poetry Centre in 2010 and will be launched this Thursday 1 July at the Wheeler Centre. Her poetry has appeared in The Age, Blue Dog, Wet Ink, Voiceworks and is forthcoming in Going Down Swinging. In 2009 she won the Poetry and Youth categories of the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards and the Page Seventeen poetry prize. She is a former poetry editor for Voiceworks.
Q&A Monday: Lorelei Vashti
Sam Cooney
Jun 21, 2010
Lorelei Vashti. Female. Lives in Melbourne (for the minute). Member of the literati brat-pack (my invention). Is regularly published in a whole heap of places, including The Age (weekly column), TheVine, Behind Ballet and is famous for her insane Courtney Love updates for Defamer. Also, her blog is chock-a-block full of excellent pieces you won’t find anywhere else. Absolutely crazy, in a hug-and-kiss-a-stranger way (not a knife-in-the-back-of-Monica-Seles way).
Lorelei Vashti. Female. Lives in Melbourne (for the minute). Member of the literati brat-pack (my invention). Is regularly published in a whole heap of places, including The Age (as a weekly columnist), TheVine, Behind Ballet and is famous for her insane Courtney Love updates for Defamer. Also, her blog is chock-a-block full of excellent pieces you won’t find anywhere else. Absolutely crazy, in a hug-and-kiss-a-stranger way (not a knife-in-the-back-of-Monica-Seles way).
Writing: necessity or luxury?
Necessity.
So, Lorelei, what’s up? Whatcha been doing lately?
Writing about TV for The Age’s Green Guide. Blogging about celebrities for The Vine. Rhapsodising about ballet for Behind Ballet. Working on my Debut Novel™, which, if anyone asks, is about a young woman’s search for her identity in a world gone mad. Attempting to write a play and start a new blog about dresses. Trying to write and record my Debut Solo Acoustic Album™, which, if anyone asks, is about a young woman’s search for her identity in a world gone mad. And I’m preparing to move into my first permanent home for many years. By permanent, I mean I might stay there for six months or so. By preparing to move, I mean I’m getting psychological help to deal with the concept of committing to any city for longer than a sojourn. By getting psychological help, I mean I’m drinking heaps of whiskey.
You write for so many different mediums. How do you manage and balance it?
Optimism. Index cards. Meditation. Regular bouts of hysterical sobbing, followed by Rocky-like gym montages with this song playing in my earphones. Phone calls to my friends in the dark hours of night. A total naivety as to how careers are supposed to work, and therefore no limits. And no social life. That’s quite a crucial one.
You have heaps upon heaps of writerly and creative friends. Does this help, or hinder your own work?
I know I just said I had no social life but despite hardly ever leaving the house, you’re right—I have somehow obtained the most brilliant bunch of incredibly talented friends. And without wanting this answer to deteriorate into the realm of schmaltz, the truth is they help me beyond belief. They’re everything. They give me ideas and conversation and opinions and inspiration and wine and delicious food and reading material and music and their shoulders to cry on. As soon as they gauge from the growing pools of tears and snot gathering somewhere around their underarms that one side is soaked, they generously offer me their other. And then when that side is saturated, they gently pass me over to another friend’s shoulder while they hunt down an industrial dryer, and so on and so forth until I have ruined fourteen perfectly nice blouses but am feeling a lot better thank you, and we can finally all get back to work.
You’ve lived in many places on this globe. Running to, or away from something?
Running to. As those great philosophers, Eurythmics, say: ‘Everybody’s looking for something’. In my case, it’s a rent-free abode, which is why I usually end up moving back in with family, even when they reside in such far-flung corners of the earth as India or Queensland.
But I absolutely love running away, too. It’s definitely the most shallow and short-term way to solve any problem. Annie Lennox, once again, has put it most catchily.
If you could read anyone’s journal or raid anyone’s hard drive, through whose would you rifle?
Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s. Not sure if she can even actually write yet, but can’t wait to see what she comes up with once she gets the hang of it. I think she’s pretty much the best thing on earth: that opinion is, of course, based solely on this picture and this picture.
The internet: friend or foe? Discuss.
Best, best, best, best, best friend.
You can punch one person in the schnoz and get away scot free. Who do you clobber?
Firstly, because I suffer from a barbarous variety of RSI that regularly sends shots of yowling pain down the entire right side of my body, you must understand that I’d never be able to actually hit a person hard enough to seriously hurt them. Which is fortunate for my exes but unfortunate for the dramatic potential of this question. Some days I can barely even lift a teacup to my poor, parched lips (please send flowers and sympathy cards C/— Virgule, The Internet). Despite my impediment though, I’ll try to answer this as best I can.
The thing is, I feel an obscure and irrational protectiveness towards Winona Ryder. Outside in the world, I act almost as if she’s my sister for some reason; maybe it’s because I spent every afternoon after school from the ages of 8–16 watching Beetlejuice, Mermaids and Heathers over and over. Anyway, she practically feels like family to me, and I feel compelled to defend her dubious name if anyone ever insults her by casually calling her a shoplifter or a mono-talented actress, for example. These “Winonenemies”, as I call them, are definitely clobber-worthy. As for everyone else though, I believe in peace. Except maybe in the case of that Liberian dictator who ate people.
You’re an exile, banished to a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. You are allowed one book and one album of music (in a solar powered iPod) to last the rest of your days. Any preferences?
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. And We Tell Ourselves Stories to Live by Joan Didion.
Have you ever hit a cane toad with a golf club? Could you?
I’m from Queensland so of course I have, although as is the case with most childhood sports I seem to have blocked out the details. I think we used to do a bit of it after school at Brownies, which really goes against the “Do Unto Others” ethos of that organisation, wouldn’t you agree? The very idea of it horrifies me now, of course; I haven’t even been able to kill a mosquito ever since I did that Buddhist meditation course on the top of a mountain in Chiang Mai. So no, I could never do anything to a cane toad again, except run from it (see above Eurythmics film clip for preferred soundtrack to this scenario).
What are you reading?
You didn’t ask me this question; I just added it in myself right now because I think you should have. Not that I’m trying to tell you how to do your job. It’s mostly because I’m nosy and it’s something I always want to know about everyone else, so I presume you would want to know it about me, too. Right? So anyway, my answers, since I asked, are:
Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, Patti Smith’s memoir, Paris Reviews and New Yorkers dating back to October 2009, Harpo Speaks! and I just finished my brilliant, dear friend Benjamin Law’s book The Family Law which you simply all must read as a matter of urgency. Proust still has me in his ever so dainty and flowery thrall as well—I am seriously just one and a half volumes away from finishing In Search of Lost Time now, and I’m pretty confident I’ll finish it before I die, as long as I live for at least four hundred more years, that is. Like Dracula.
Q&A Monday: Zoe Dattner
Sam Cooney
Jun 14, 2010
Zoe Dattner. Female. Lives in central Victoria, Australia. Writer of fiction and nonfiction. Co-founder and Creative Director of Sleepers Publishing. General Manager of SPUNC (the Small Press Underground Networking Community), a peak organisation that represents, advocates, and promotes more than eighty small publishers around Australia. Is also a graphic designer, and has worked in pretty much all areas of publishing. Kicks arse about town.
Zoe Dattner. Female. Lives in central Victoria, Australia. Writer of fiction and nonfiction. Co-founder and Creative Director of Sleepers Publishing. General Manager of SPUNC (the Small Press Underground Networking Community), a peak organisation that represents, advocates, and promotes more than eighty small publishers around Australia. Is also a graphic designer, and has worked in pretty much all areas of publishing. Kicks arse about town.
Writing: necessity or luxury?
For me? It’s a luxury. For anyone who’s particularly good at it, it’s a necessity.
You are an ardent spruiker for small press publishing. Why?
It’s my job. No, seriously, the fact is that I feel passionate about all small, independent endeavors where business meets creativity. When these two basic human disciplines work together in harmony, they form the basis for Supreme Human Productivity, a wonderful symbiotic reaction very particular to our species whereby the flourishing of our intellect and our creative urges promotes and invites more of the same. We’re part of a wonderfully mad machine that sits up there with modern agricultural practices, as far as its significance to our civilisation goes.
SPUNC has about eighty member organisations now. Are you aiming for McDonald’s/Apple/Coca-Cola style domination? What is your plan of attack?
I like to think that some of the best operations ever carried out in history owe their success to a serendipitous turn of events. Look at the storming of Normandy for instance – sure, there was a lot of planning and a lot of smart people involved, but if the weather hadn’t suddenly turned bad, and then suddenly turned good again, providing a very small window of opportunity, the outcome of world war II would possibly have been very very different. The challenge to us is in taking risks and pursuing an opportunity and being clear on what our objectives are. That sounds like corporate motivational speak - and I guess it is. It’s amazing how appropriate military analogies can be when answering these sorts of questions. The upshot of all that is that my plan of attack will always involve lots of smart people, then I can take credit for all their brilliant ideas when things go really well. Likewise, I can blame them when things go badly.
Sleepers Publishing is goin’ great guns/kickin’ goals/right on the money, mate. What’s next?
More novels, more new fiction, more exciting writers you never knew existed, and more innovative explorations into the realms of digital publishing. Well, perhaps not innovative (all the great ideas we come up with tend to happen about a fortnight before people with more money and resources have exactly the same idea – it’s so hard being original these days). What have we got to do? One of two things: either do something that no one else is doing and make waves that way, or do something that everyone else is doing, but do it better.
If you could read anyone’s journal or raid anyone’s hard drive, through whose would you rifle?
Charlie Chapman, Leni Riefenstahl, Edith Campbell Berry (fictional character from Frank Moorhouse’s novels), Steve Jobs.
The internet: friend or foe? Discuss.
Frenemy? I like the internet. I think it rocks. It’s just like real life, only you can turn it off.
You can punch one person in the schnoz and get away scot free. Who do you clobber?
I confess, I don’t really feel that way about anyone. But I do rather dislike Angelina Jolie. (Sorry Ange, I know we had that talk and you thought we’d sorted out all our differences, but I guess I wasn’t being completely honest with you. I just don’t like your face.)
You’re an exile, banished to a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. You are allowed one book and one album of music (in a solar powered iPod) to last the rest of your days. Any preferences?
Book: the collected works of every word anyone in my family has ever written about anything (they’re all big wordsmiths, each and every one of them, it would make for one hell of compendium. Not for anyone else, mind you, but a masterpiece for me.)
Album: Likewise, the greatest hits of every drunken singalong that’s happened around the dining table with my family. Anyone who’s been privy to one of these sessions would have to agree that we’re insanely talented.
Have you ever hit a cane toad with a golf club? Could you?
No. Absolutely.
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