Oh look, we’ve been a bit hopeless lately, haven’t we?
We’re not lazy – far from it. Just very, very busy. So we’re moving to releasing episodes in short series, rather than on a specific week of the month.
We’ll be back soon with some shit-hot new episodes of Unladylike, underway now.
You’ll hear from us soon. Stay tuned.
Between them, this episode’s guests have written award-winning opera, plays, poetry, young adult and children’s novels, essays, columns, and goodness knows how many grant applications and submissions to government.
So we asked them about writing across so many different forms and genres.
Jane Harrison is a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW and an award-winning playwright. In 2002, her first play, Stolen, was the co-winner of the Kate Challis Award. It has since been performed across Australia as well as the UK, Hong Kong and Japan. Rainbow’s End toured to Japan and played in 33 venues throughout Australia, and won the Drover’s Award for Tour of the Year in 2011.
Jane’s essays include ‘My Journey Through Stolen’, the award-winning ‘Healing our communities, healing ourselves’, and ‘Indig-curious; who can play Aboriginal roles?’
Her young adult novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis was published by Magabala Books in 2015. Jane was director of last year’s Blak and Bright literary festival.
Apart from the many projects and forms she discusses in this episode, Jane is also working on a stage adaptation of her story from the anthology Writing Black, and turning a play (The Visitors) into a film.
Alison Croggon is a poet, critic, opera librettist, playwright and bestselling author. Her beloved Pellinor novels have sold half a million copies around the world. Her young adult novel Black Spring was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, while The River and the Book won the Wilderness Society’s environmental writing prize.
Her poetry collections include This is the Stone, Ash, The Blue Gate and Theatre. Her opera libretti include Mayakovsky, Flood, and The Riders, which won two Green Room awards. She is one of Australia’s leading theatre critics and a columnist for Overland journal. And she has just launched her new self-published collaborative project, Fleshers.
We talk to three writers who teach, and ask them about the ways we learn and teach writing – in community organisations, schools, colleges and universities – and the skills and knowledge writers need.
Penni Russon
Penni Russon writes literary fiction for children and teenagers, and her books include the award-winning Only Ever Always. She teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne, having studied Children’s Literature at Monash University and then Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT. She has been blogging since 2006 and has recently been involved in a creative partnership with Storybird and a research project with Orygen Youth Mental Health and Headspace.
Alexis Drevikovsky
Alexis Drevikovsky is a writer and the General Manager of Writers Victoria – a major statewide writers’ centre which offers an extensive learning program. She has taught English to Mexican children, and her own writing has been published in The Age, Killings and Australian Love Stories. Alexis is currently working on a memoir.
Alison Ravenscroft
Dr Alison Ravenscroft was part of the legendary Australian feminist publishing cooperative, Sybylla Press. She now teaches in English at La Trobe University, and supervises a number of postgraduate students working on creative and critical projects. Her own fiction and academic writing has been widely published in journals and in edited collections, and her short story ‘Object Lessons’ won the Josephine Ulrich Literature Award. Her 2016 book The Postcolonial Eye considers the ways we read, see and understand race and desire.
This episode was recorded in a meeting room in a beautiful local library, where we were surrounded by young learners in homework club and older learners and readers in informal groups and classes. Perfect. If a little noisy.
Disclosure: Co-host Kelly Gardiner also teaches at La Trobe University and is a tutor at Writers Victoria.
Professor Helen C. White demonstrates how to dress for a creative writing class (University of Wisconsin, 1954)
Image sources:
University of Wisconsin Archives via Wikimedia Commons, pennirusson.com, Writers Victoria, La Trobe University
In our first live recording, at the Castlemaine State Festival, we asked two authors of nonfiction how they research complex subjects, manage their materials, and create compelling stories.
Robyn Annear is a history writer and Castlemaine local legend. Her books include Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne, Nothing But Gold: The diggers of 1852, The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant, and Fly a Rebel Flag: The Eureka Stockade. Her book A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne grew out of a State Library Victoria Creative Fellowship. Robyn was also guest curator of the State Library’s exhibition Naked democracy: governing Victoria 1856-2006.
Lynne Kelly is a science writer with a background in engineering, physics, mathematics, information technology and gifted education. Her most recent book, The Memory Code and its academic counterpart, Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture, explore oral traditions and the concept of memory spaces. Lynne has written fourteen science books, particularly for school-age readers, and a novel, Avenging Janie. Her most popular science titles include The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal, Crocodile and Spiders.
Robyn Annear’s beloved Bearbrass and A City Lost and Found have recently been republished by Black Inc. Lynne Kelly’s The Memory Code is published by Allen & Unwin.
Our thanks to Castlemaine State Festival for inviting us to be part of the festival, and to our fabulous audience.
Disclosure in the spirit of historical accuracy: Kelly was possibly over-excited to be told she was appearing on the same stage as Lola Montez, having recently written Madame Montez’s dramatic performance on the Goldfields into a short story, but got the year wrong in the heat of the moment. It was 1856, not 1857. The original timber Theatre Royal in Castlemaine burned down in 1887, so it’s not exactly the same stage. But we’re just going with it.
Robyn Annear’s shoebox
On stage at the Theatre Royal (from left): Adele, Lynne, Robyn and Kelly. And Robyn’s famous shoe box. The ghost of Lola Montez lurks unseen behind us. Photo by Lisa D’Onofrio.
Unladylike heads to Castlemaine State Festival soon for our first live recording.
We’ll be talking with two writers of remarkable nonfiction: Robyn Annear and Lynne Kelly.
It’s on 22 March at 11am in the Theatre Royal Courtyard. Join us if you like, or stay tuned for the episode coming soon: On knowledge.
What does it take to recreate past worlds? How does a writer uncover the reality she needs to blend with imagination? Where do research and writing intersect?
We talk to two writers who’ve spent years researching and writing novels about the lives of real women from the past: Hannah Kent and Kate Mildenhall.
Hannah Kent’s first novel, Burial Rites, was an international bestseller and 
has been translated into 28 languages. It won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier’s People’s Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Bailey’s Prize.
Her second novel, The Good People, is just out in Australia and New Zealand will be published in 2017 in the UK, Ireland and North America.
Hannah is also the co-founder and publishing director of Australian literary journal, Kill Your Darlings.
Kate Mildenhall is a teacher and writer – she has taught in schools and universities, and worked at the State Library of Victoria, creating web content for students and teachers.
Kate is studying Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University.
Her first novel, Skylarking, has just been published.
Burial Rites and The Good People are published by Picador (Macmillan) in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland, and Little, Brown in the US. Skylarking is published by Black Inc in Australia and New Zealand, and will be published by Legend Press in the UK in 2017.
In case you missed it, here’s our guest post on Aerogramme Writers’ Studio on how to interview writers – or how to be interviewed, if you are a writer. It explains what we do, or try to do, when we interview writers for Unladylike, or at literary events.
First: prepare. Read as many of the other writers’ books, stories, scripts, poems as you can. Read them like a writer – look for themes not evident at first glance, technique, structure, characterisation, world-building, language. Read or watch interviews with them, and check their blog posts and social media to see what interests them, how they respond, which questions they’ve answered a million times.
How did you rebel? We talk to two writers of fiction and creative nonfiction about the role of rebellion in creativity, and the writers’ life.
Born in Russia, Lee Kofman is the author of five books. She has published three novels in Hebrew, and her first book in English was The Dangerous Bride, a memoir about non-monogamy and migration.
Lee has also published numerous short stories, short creative non-fiction and poetry, and her writing has won various awards. She teaches writing and mentors writers.
Lee is the co-editor (with Maria Katsonis) of a new anthology of memoir called Rebellious Daughters. One of the contributors to Rebellious Daughters is Silvia Kwon.
Silvia was born in Seoul, South Korea. She migrated to Australia at the age of nine and grew up in Perth. After studying art history at the University of Western Australia, she worked in community arts before deciding to move to Melbourne to pursue a career in publishing. She has worked at Oxford University Press and Black Inc.
Her first novel, The Return, was published in 2014.
Rebellious Daughters is published by Ventura Press.
Who chooses the writers we see at writers festivals, and how do they decide? Do they create their programs with gender and diversity in mind?
We talk to the women behind the legendary Auckland and Melbourne Writers Festivals, the North Texas Teen Book Festival, and Australia’s new Feminist Writers Festival.
In May each year, the Auckland Writers Festival stages over 120 public events, gathering together 160 of the best writers and thinkers from New Zealand and across the world, with over 22,000 festival goers and more than 5,000 young readers.
Director Anne O’Brien has been with the Festival since 2011. A trained journalist, Anne has worked on the legendary radio show ‘Nine To Noon with Kim Hill’ and with Women in Film and Television.
Rose Brock is a librarian and academic, and one of the founders of the hugely successful North Texas Teen Book Festival. It’s a free, one-day event featuring over 70 writers for young adult and middle grade readers talking with each other and 6,000 fans about books. It also includes a workshop day for teachers and librarians.
We spoke to Anne and Rose on site during their festivals (hence the audible excitement in the background!).
Auckland Writers Festival theme for 2016: Read the World
Then we brought committee members from the recently announced Feminist Writers Festival and the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival into the studio to talk with us about their processes and decision-making.
The Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) is an annual, two-week celebration for writers, readers and thinkers, held in August. It includes events for people of all ages and its Schools’ Program is Australia’s biggest literary festival for students. Last year over 56,000 people attended the festival – its biggest year ever, after thirty years of festivals.
Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Festival, and prior to that was with the Emerging Writers Festival, and worked as a writer, editor and small press publisher.
Joining us from the Feminist Writers Festival are Veronica Sullivan and Stephanie Convery.
Veronica is Prize Manager of the Stella Prize. She is a 2016 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, and was one of Melbourne Writers Festival’s 30 Writers Under 30 in 2015.
Stephanie is the festival’s Sponsorship Manager, and is a writer and the deputy editor of Overland. She was recently appointed as the deputy culture editor at The Guardian.
Melbourne Writers Festival theme for 2016: Identity
Unladylike 
