Month: June 2016

6. On translation

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Ann Goldstein has one of the best literary jobs in the world, as chief copy editor at The New Yorker. But in her spare time, she translates some of the planet’s most popular books from Italian into English – the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante.

Kelly caught up with Ann Goldstein at her first major literary event, the Auckland Writers Festival. (That faint sound you hear in the background from time to time is distant applause and discussion in the main theatre.)

And we also asked some readers at the Festival and beyond: what makes the Neapolitan novels so compelling?

Listen here:

(If you’re on a mobile device, use iTunes, Audioboom or your favourite podcast app.)

About our guestPhoto of Ann Goldstein

Ann Goldstein began her career in publishing as a proofreader at Esquire in 1973. A year later
she joined the editing desk at the New Yorker, and has been the chief copy editor there since the 1980s.


In 1986, she and some colleagues decided to learn Italian.

Since then, Ann has become one of the world’s leading translators – in her spare time. In the last few years, she has edited new translations of the complete works of Primo Levi, and translated In Other Words, the new book by Jhumpa Lahiri, written originally in Italian.

But she is perhaps best known as the translator of the phenomenon that is Elena Ferrante, especially the dangerously addictive Neapolitan novels, beginning with My Brilliant Friend. These four books chronicle the lifelong friendship of two women – Elena and Lila – born into poverty in Naples, and growing up and growing older in a post-war Italy affected by crime, politics, identity, ideology, modernity and loss.

Book Cover of My Brilliant Friend

The novels have sold more than a million copies in English and led to Elena Ferrante being named as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet by Time magazine.

But Ferrante doesn’t want to reveal her real identity. Nobody knows who she is.  Not even her translator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ann Goldstein’s translation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words is published by Bloomsbury. Her translations of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) are published by Europa Editions in the US and UK, and Text in Australia and New Zealand.

The Auckland Writers Festival is held each May. The 2016 line-up included Hanya Yanagihara, Gloria Steinem, Jeanette Winterson & Susie Orbach, Vivian Gornick, Tusiata Avia, Helene Wong and Eleanor Catton.

One day soon on Unladylike

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We’ve been plotting.

Now we have a few live episodes, they ought to keep you occupied for a day or two.

We’ll release a new one each month – or more often if we get a bit excited.

Here’s what we have in mind for a few future episodes of Unladylike.

Image of recording studio

On translation
Ann Goldstein on the art and science of translation, and her work on the novels of Elena Ferrante.

On festivals
Do writers festivals create programs with gender and diversity in mind? We talk to women making decisions for festivals in the US, New Zealand and Australia.

On labels
Anita Heiss and Jessica Walton on perceptions, constraints, representation and freedoms.

On heroines
Malinda Lo and Rebecca Lim on creating kick-ass protagonists.

On process
Charlotte Wood and Paddy O’Reilly on dreaming, plotting (or not), drafting and redrafting.

On rebellion
Lee Kofman, Silvia Kwon and Maria Katsonis are possibly not such dutiful daughters.

That’s the plan for the next little while. We’ve already recorded some of these, but others are in the calendar-juggling phase. It might turn out differently. Certainly themes can change or emerge when we get into the studio and start talking.

But we want you to know how we’re thinking and what might lie ahead.

5. On swearing

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Our guests in this episode create very different work. Patricia Cornelius writes uncompromising, realist drama, while Toni Jordan is the author of best-selling contemporary fiction. But we’ve brought them together to talk about something close to both their hearts – swearing.

(Note: This episode may include swearing. A bit. Well, actually, a fucking lot.)

Listen here:


(If you’re on a mobile device, use iTunes, Audioboom or your favourite podcast app.)

About our guestsTIny Useless

Toni Jordan has been a newspaper columnist, a writing lecturer, molecular biologist, quality control chemist, and  door-to-door aluminium siding saleswoman.

Her first novel, Addition, was an international bestseller, published or about to be published in eleven countries. It was a Richard and Judy Bookclub pick and long-listed for the Miles Franklin award.

Fall Girl (2010) was published internationally and has been optioned for film, and Nine Days was awarded Best Fiction at the 2012 Indie Awards. Her latest, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts is out now.

 

Patricia Cornelius is one of Australia’s most innovative and acclaimed playwrights. She was a founding member of Melbourne Workers’ Theatre and has written over twenty-five plays including Savages, Slut, Jack’s Daughters, Max, and Lilly and May. She co-wrote Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?  and its film adaptation, Blessed. Her novel, My Sister Jill, was published in 2002. 

Patricia’s many awards include a Gold AWGIE and Green Room awards, the Jill Blewett Award,  the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Awards for Drama, and the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award.

Patricia’s play SHIT was presented by the Melbourne Theatre Company and at Forty-five Downstairs and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Cast photo of SHIT


Peta Brady, Nicci Wilks and Sarah Ward on stage in SHIT.
Production photo: Sebastian Bourges

 

Toni Jordan’s essay ‘Blue Meat and Purple Language’ appears in the anthology Purple Prose,  edited by Liz Byrski and Rachel Robertson and published by Fremantle Press. Her new novel, Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, is published by Text.

The script for Patricia Cornelius’s play SHIT is published by Red Door.

4. On romance

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Just as her heroines break conventions of their era, historical romance writer Tessa Dare dares to break the conventions of her genre.

Adele caught up with Tessa at the Romantic Times Booklovers conference in Las Vegas.

We also asked some readers what they love about the romance genre.

Listen here:

(If you’re on a mobile device, use iTunes, Audioboom or your favourite podcast app.)

About our guest

Trained as a librarian, Tessa Dare’s writing career began after winning the first Avon FanLit competition in 2005.  The Romantic Times called her first novel, Goddess of the Hunt, ‘… a daring debut…From the hilarious opening to the poignant climax, Dare uses wit and wisdom, humor and sensuality .’

Photo of Tessa Dare

Tessa Dare.
Photo: Raphael Maglonzo

She is now the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thirteen historical romance novels and four novellas. Her books have won numerous accolades, including Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award and multiple Romantic Times Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Awards.  Booklist magazine named her one of the ‘new stars of historical romance,’ and her books have been contracted for translation in more than a dozen languages.

 

3. On editing

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Historian Clare Wright and editor Mandy Brett talk us through the collaborative process of creating a book – in this case, the award-winning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.

Listen here:

(If you’re on a mobile device, use iTunes, Audioboom or your favourite podcast app.)

About our guestsBook cover, Forgotten Rebels

Dr Clare Wright is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. Her first book was a best-seller, Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia’s Female Publicans. 

In 2013, Clare released her second book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, following years of research into women’s roles in one of the key moments in colonial Australian politics, the Eureka Stockade. It won the 2014 Stella Prize and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and just about every other award going. We Are the Rebels, a young adult version of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, was published in 2015.

Clare’s essays have have appeared in The Age, Crikey, The Guardian, The Conversation, and Meanjin as well as leading international scholarly journals. She researched, co-wrote and presented the acclaimed television documentaries, Utopia Girls: How Women Won the Vote and The War That Changed Us.

Clare is a Principal Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University.

 

Mandy Brett’s distinguished editing career began as an editor and publisher at IAD Books, an Book cover We are the Rebels
Aboriginal publishing house in Alice Springs, producing a wide range of titles in fiction, education, reference and dictionaries. She has worked as a freelance editor, as a production editor on a small magazine and, for a number of years, as a computer programmer at Penguin Books.

Mandy is now a senior editor with Text Publishing, where she has been since 2002, working on both fiction and non-fiction titles, including any number of bestselling books such as Toni Jordan’s novels and more recently Magda Szubanski’s memoir Reckoning. Her essays and speeches have appeared in Meanjin, Bookseller & Publisher, and Crikey.

She is a guest lecturer in fiction editing at RMIT.

 

The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and We are the Rebels are published by Text.

2. On friendship

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Our three guests for this episode lead the vanguard of contemporary realism in young adult fiction written in and about Australia, and published internationally.

Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell and Fiona Wood write about grief, about place, about love, about coming of age and most of all they write about friendship.

And that’s what they’re talking about on Unladylike.

Listen here:

About our guests

Photo of Cath Crowley

Cath Crowley

Cath Crowley grew up on a property that was a long way from town, reading the adventures of Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. After studying radio production and literature at university, she became a teacher overseas. In 2004, she published The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain, about a brilliant soccer player, and became a full-time writer.  The remaining Gracie Faltrain titles followed as well as Chasing Charlie Duskin and Graffiti Moon. It was for Graffiti Moon that Cath was awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction and the Ethel Turner Award for Young People’s Literature.

Photo of Simmone Howell

Simmone Howell. Photo: Susan Gordon Brown

Simmone Howell is an award-winning short story-writer, and screenwriter. Her short film Pity24 won an AWGIE award and has screened at film festivals such as the London Australian Film Festival and Los Angeles Shorts Fest. Her realist teen novels Notes from the Teenage Underground, Everything Beautiful and Girl Defective feature prickly outsiders, rebels and pop culture icons. Notes from the Teenage Underground won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction and the Gold Inky Award.

Photo of Fiona Wood

Fiona Wood
Photo: Giulia McGauran

Fiona Wood started her writing career in scripts working on television dramas like The Secret Life of Us, Neighbours and MDA. In 2010 she debuted as a strong new voice on the young adult scene with Six Impossible Things. Her sophomoric title, Wildlife, won the CBCA Book of the Year Award for Older Readers, and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, Ethel Turner Prize. Her latest book is Cloudwish.

Cath Crowley’s Gracie Faltrain trilogy, Chasing Charlie Duskin and Graffiti Moon are published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and New Zealand, and by Knopf in the US. Her new novel, Words in Deep Blue, will be released in August.

Simmone Howell’s Notes from the Teenage Underground, Everything Beautiful and Girl Defective are published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and New Zealand, and by Bloomsbury and Simon and Schuster in the US.

Fiona Wood’s Six Impossible Things, Wildlife and Cloudwish are also published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and New Zealand, and by Little Brown in the US.

1. On story

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Vivian Gornick and Sian Prior are both journalists and memoir writers. We brought them together to talk about how nonfiction writers work with memory, imagination and language, and finding the story in a situation.

Listen here:

About our guestsPhoto of Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick grew up in the Bronx, and began her writing career as a journalist with the Village Voice in 1969, an early chronicler of the feminist movement.

Her ­books include a guide to writing personal narrative, The Situation and the Story, and two collections of essays: Approaching Eye Level and The End of the Novel of Love.

But she is probably best known for her memoirs: Fierce Attachments, about her childhood and her difficult relationship with her ­mother; and the recent The Odd Woman and the City.

 

Photo of Sian Prior

Image James Mepham

Sian Prior is a singer, writer and broadcaster, working in radio, television, print and online, specialising in reporting on the arts and popular culture.

She has been a newspaper columnist, a
travel and opinion writer, and a theatre, opera and book critic. She writes fiction and nonfiction, and also teaches writing.

Her first book, Shy: A Memoir, was published in 2014.

Sian Prior’s book, Shy: a memoir, is published by Text.  

Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City is published by Nero Books in Australia, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in the US.

Book cover: Vivian Gornick

Sian Prior Shy cover

Coming up

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Very soon, on Unladylike podcast, you can hear our first few episodes.

And they are stonkers*, if we do say so ourselves.

#1 On story

Vivian Gornick and Sian Prior, both journalists and memoir writers, in conversation about memory, imagination and language.

#2 On friendship

Fiona Wood, Simmone Howell and Cath Crowley talk about portraying friendship in writing for young adults, and their own collaborations.

#3 On editing

Historian Clare Wright and editor Mandy Brett on the process of creating an award-winning bestseller.

#4 On romance

Tessa Dare on romance fiction as a feminist genre, and why readers are in love with love.

#5 On swearing

Novelist Toni Jordan and playwright Patricia Cornelius on the power of purple language.

 

And after that? You just wait.

 

* stonker

noun BRITISH informal plural noun: stonkers

  1. something which is very large or impressive of its kind.

    (Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press)