Asialink Writing Residencies

Applications for 2011 residencies are now open, and close on 10 September 2010.

The Asialink Writing Residency Program, which began in 1997, is a unique opportunity for Australian writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, history, essays, playwriting, young adult fiction, blogs, new media and interactive content to live and work for an extended period in Asia. As well as giving talks, workshops and media interviews residents have worked on themes as diverse as Merle Oberon's mysterious origins, Jewish communities in Calcutta, foreign journalists in Beijing, historical fantasy in Japan, the politics of unification in Korea, multiculturalism in Malaysia, mythology in Vietnam, and connections between Australian Aboriginal communities and Indonesia.

Grants of up to $12,000 go towards travel, living and project expenses, and afford recipients a unique opportunity for international cultural exchange, in-depth research and sustained time on creative work.

Hosts vary from Australian Studies Centres and University Literature departments to artist retreats, writers centres and publishers. Applicants also have the option of proposing their own host organisation.

Click on the headline to this blog entry to find the application form and more details.

Transparency and graffiti

The photo above was taken by me in the Reichstag, the German Parliament House in 2009.

We know that there was a fire in the Reichstag in 1933 orchestrated by the Nazis as a means of giving more power to Adolf Hitler. In the Second World War the Reichstag was damaged further.

When the Russian forces came to Berlin in 1945, they partied in the ruined Reichstag. To show their contempt for the regime they had just displaced, Russian soldiers wrote their names and other graffiti on the stone walls of the Reichstag. That's what you can see above.

Much of this was covered up in renovations in the 1950s when the building served as the parliament for West Berlin, but after the fall of the Mauer (Wall) in 1989, the Reichstag, which sat right on the border between East Berlin and West Berlin, was renovated again to become again the centre of German parliamentary power.

It was decided to leave the graffiti on view, as a sign of transparency. The great glass dome on top the Reichstag is another symbol of transparency in government.

Writing within the Academy: Basic thoughts

Writing as an academic discipline sits within literature and literary theory, but Writing as a profession lies outside the academy and for purposes of making an income — if that is the sole career option of a writing graduate — within the publishing industry.

This is an uneasy fit for research institutions since Writing as an applied craft does not fit easily within the research imperatives of more traditionally focussed universities. But at the same time writing is a necessary activity in almost all professions and occupations and the ability to write well can enhance career opportunities.

The need for writing as a discipline in the Australian university context is to provide a workable nexus between the requirements of the academy and the demands of the commercial marketplace where graduates of writing programs will need to negotiate the skills they are taught within the academy For students whose first language is not English, an ability to write well in English may also help compensate for a strong accent.

But to understand the present place of Writing as a discipline in the Australian university context, we need to revisit the history of the discipline.

Dawson (2001) acknowledges that many writing courses emerged in teachers colleges or colleges of advanced education rather than in the Group of Eight. This was partly because English as a discipline dominated traditional universities, while other institutions were adapting to accommodate vocational demands.

Creative writing in education courses, for example, followed on from developments at school level. In universities, writers were part of the academy but as analysts of literary texts rather than teachers of writing. Thea Astley, A.D Hope, James McAuley and Elizabeth Jolley are some examples of writers within the academy. Admittedly, A.D. Hope played with the idea of teaching writing, but he was much more comfortable teaching poetic theory rather than poetic praxis.

Creative writing emerged in the 1970s as a separate discipline, with three institutions claiming credit as the first —WAIT which is now Curtin where Brian Dibble initiated courses following the North American model, Canberra CAE (now Canberra University) and NSW IT, now UTS. At the same time Michael Wilding was also experimenting with writing courses at Sydney University.

Krauth (2000) notes that, in the early 1990s, creative writing programs in Australia were 'thrust' into the university domain by the Dawkins amalgamations. Prior to that, there was no established national focus: no national peak body, no discipline-based research agenda, no political or academic networking, and no statistical analysis to portray the nature of the activity advancing apace on isolated campuses. Compared with the visual and performing arts disciplines, creative writing programs were unorganised and separatist, but they were aware of their potential for the future.

Communications courses emerged in the 1970s as well and were often taught in CAEs and technology institutes across the board to enhance the ability of students to communicate effectively in the workplace and with the public. They offered students education in applied aspects of writing – for example, writing reports or office communications — as well as introducing some basic communications theory. As a particular example, I have taught engineering students at UTS how to write without using engineering jargon so that members of the general public could better comprehend infrastructure projects that would likely have an impact on them.

The teaching of creative writing and writing as a professional tool were often combined, as happened for example at UTS and is the underlying thrust of the teaching of Writing at the University of New England. This is a recognition that Writing is a vital professional tool across the board as well as a potential career path for, unfortunately, a small number of writing graduates.

What I have found (Fisher 2006) s that most Writing courses do not sufficiently prepare potential professional writers with sufficient knowledge about copyright, legal issues, potential income sources and other essential basics to begin a career in Writing. UNE writing courses offer a variety of potential career paths for writers, but I would want to see the Publishing and Editing options covered the isssues I have identified that are generally missing.

References

Brien, Donna Lee, and Webb, Jennifer, Writing courses: Who needs them? Australian Author, vol. 39, no. 3, December 2007, pp. 12–15

Dale, John, Glenda Adams (1939–2007), Australian Author, vol. 39, no. 2, August 2007, pp. 26—29.

Dawson, Paul, Creative Writing in Australia: The Development of a Discipline, Text, Vol 5, no 1, April 2001.

Kirkpatrick, Peter, The strange death of Australian literature, Australian Author, vol. 39, no. 1, April 2007, pp. 20–23.

Krauth, Nigel, Where is Writing Now?: Australian University Creative Writing Programs at the End of the Millennium, Text, Vol 4, no 1, April 2000.

Surma, Anne, Defining professional writing as an area of scholarly activity, Text, Vol 4, No 2, October 2000

Armidale: Books and Music

It's starting to cool down up here on the Northern Tablelands. I've invested in gloves and scarves and made sure the gas is connected -- a bit of a tricky exercise as this required dealing with a Wesfarmers subsidiary called Kleenheat which controls LPG distribution here. The LPG comes through metered pipes, though, so I don't have to worry about the cylinder running out.
The cold doesn't stop things happening. The Rotary Book Fair started this Saturday. It continues for a few days. I visited there with my colleague, Dr Jane O'Sullivan, and I was amazed at the number of books on offer. The racecourse had been given over to trestle after trestle groaning with books, all available for a fraction of their new prices.
The variety was incredible -- poetry, science, fiction of all descriptions, cooking, philosophy. It made me wish that there was a resale royalty on the second-hand sales of books, but I also happily purchased a number of books I'd been wanting for some time and now possess.
Sunday saw me in Lazenby Hall at UNE to hear the Armidale Symphony Orchestra (ASO) play. How many Australian towns boast their own orchestra? It was a shame that the hall was not packed to capacity, because the concert was excellent. Wendy Huddleston conducted and the three pieces played were inspired choices.
Borodin's Overture to Prince Igor started the event with a bit of a buzz. Then Deidre Rickards joined the orchestra on piano for Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor. This was a first class performance, full of verve and energy.
The last piece played was the first Australian performance of Franz Berwald's Third Symphony. Berwald was a Swedish composer whose work was largely unplayed in his lifetime. This symphony was not performed until 1905, 37 years after Berwald's death. It was unusual in only having three parts.
But Huddleston and the ASO did the work justice. I want to hear more of Berwald now.
I walked home to turn on the gas heater and warm myself further with a bowl of soup.

Music from another Country now on Kindle

My book Music from another Country is now available as a download on Amazon's Kindle. If you have a Kindle or compatible device, you can order the e-book through Amazon. Click on the header for this post to go straight to Amazon
The US edition of the print version is already available from Amazon here.

Farewell Deirdre Hill (O'Donnell)

I knew her only for the past few years. She was one of my predecessors at the Australian Society of Authors where she worked to help achieve one of our greatest victories, Public Lending Right, and she remained very interested in its affairs right up until her last days. For the past year or more, her frailty was very apparent.
We ceased having meetings of the Trustees of the ASA Benevolent Fund (of which she was Chair until forced to stand down down due to her physical deterioration) at the ASA because it was too difficult for her to climb the stairs.
I knew her particularly through the Benevolent Fund and her attendance at ASA events.
I was aware she was the wife of Gus O'Donnell, who was the copyright visionary who set up the Australian Copyright Council and Copyright Agency Ltd.
I'm sorry she's gone.
Pax vobiscum, Deirdre (1925-2010).

Lisa Heidke: What Kate did Next

As I've stated elsewhere on this blog, Lisa Heidke is a friend of mine. Because of that I read her books. I'm glad I do, because otherwise I would miss almost entirely the genre she inhabits.
It's marketed as chick-lit. The pink cover with gold hearts gives that away, but really What Kate did Next (Allen & Unwin, ISBN 978-1-74175-933-4) is simple escapist popular fiction, and that's meant as a compliment.
Rather than expanding the generic boundaries of the Mills and Boon and Harlequin formulaic books, this is the sort of book we had on the bedside tables of our house when I was growing up. It's the sort of book we took on holidays to the beach. It's the urban Australian equivalent of Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Taylor Caldwell and even Mary Renault.
Of course it recounts a journey. In this case, the journey concerns Kate Cavendish, who should be happy in her well-off middle-class North Shore lifestyle (yes, I'm talking about a very Sydney book).
She has two children, a thirteen year old troublesome daughter Lexi and an eight year old son Angus. Her husband Matthew is a successful businessman who expects her to cook dinner for visiting American clients at a moment's notice. The scene where Kate offends four Mormons with her alcohol fuelled meal is very amusing, and self-deprecating about the smug superiority of North Shore codes of behaviour.
Kate was a successful photographer before she took on motherhood. Now, she has a chance to work again at Delicious Bites magazine. Her friend Fern, perhaps a little conveniently but again in that casual North Shore way, is "a guru in the magazine world" and thus able to offer Kate a suddenly vacant assistant position.
So Kate starts work and, while she is fantasising about the thighs of Arnaud, Angus' soccer coach, who also works at the magazine publishing company, finds herself out late at night, and drunk, with Graeme Grafton, the handsome chief photographer.
At the same time, her mother is proposing to remarry her father, who left the family twenty years before, while her sister Robyn blobs around eight and half months pregnant. Robyn's husband, Dan, ran away once the pregnancy was confirmed and is now in Spain asking for a divorce so he can marry the chick he's met there. Meanwhile, Lexi has cut her hair off and is wagging school.
It sounds silly and it could be, but Heidke hangs these disparate pieces together to create a funny and pleasant read. That may not seem much, but so few books offer that these days. I find I close more at page 10 than I finish.
Yes, we have infidelity, but neither Kate nor Matthew does the dirty deed (though Kate comes perilously close). The side-story of the remarrying parents is engaging and offers a counter balance to the general craziness. And in the end Kate finds she can be a photographer, a mother and a loved and loving wife.
Is it for everybody?
I don't think so, but it is for sufficient readers that Allen & Unwin chose to publish this second of Heidke's books. It's not merely because it is set on the North Shore, where the dads drive BMWs, the mums drive Mercedes and the soccer coaches are French and handsome. My own book set on the North Shore, Music from another Country, has been praised for its honest depiction of masculinity, but, even though it is enjoying modest sales, no publisher (including Fat Frog, who published it) was ready to throw significant marketing dollars at it.
Not so for What Kate did Next. The book is everywhere, including front of the shop here in Dymocks Armidale. Heidke's book is indicative of subtle changes in the publishing industry. She is part of the feminisation of publishing -- it is women who are buying more books, who are reading more fiction. Stories for blokes are relatively high risk -- publishers are better off targetting their non-fiction lists at them.
So this is the new "middle list". And with a book like What Kate did Next, Allen & Unwin have made a good middle-brow, middle-class choice.
That may seem as if I'm damning the book with faint praise, but I'm not. This is the sort of book that is like comfort food. It's nourishing, familiar and tasty and you know what you are getting.
You can't go wrong with that.

Footnote: In the list of acknowledgements, Heidke thanks Shelley Kenigsberg as a member of her writers' group. Shelley has been an office-bearer in the Society of Editors (NSW) and or several years in the eighties I worked with her and Lisa Heidke at the same publishing company. It's pleasing to see we're still all muddli9ng around with the industry.