MARCH - APRIL 2013
neWSletter of
the
EDITOR: DEREK MOTION
Writer-in-residence:
Josephine Rowe
Booranga’s first visiting writer for 2013 will be Josephine Rowe.
Josephine is a Melbourne based writer of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Her recent work appears in Best Australian Stories, Best
Australian Poems, Meanjin, The Iowa Review and the forthcoming
issue of Harvard Review. She has taught creative writing at Swinburne University and at the University of Melbourne, and in 2011
was the Australian representative at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Her new short story collection is Tarcutta
Wake (UQP, 2012). More information about her and her publications
can be found at
josephinerowe.
com
Public Events:
- Workshop (focus on ‘micro-fiction’), Saturday 23rd March, 11am at
Booranga
- Reading (+open mic section), Thursday 21st March, Wagga Wagga City
Library
Booranga Writers’ Centre (McKeown Drive) 2011 Office Hours:
Staff will be in every Monday (9am - 3.30pm), Tuesday (9 - 11.30am), Thursday (9 - 11.30am).
For enquiries (with a quick response) email us: [email protected]
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BOORANGA nEWS
MARCH - APRIL 2013
New Direction for Booranga
2013 Calendar of Booranga Events
March
I’d like to take this opportunity
to let you know that I’ll soon be
leaving Booranga, and taking
up a new job as Regional Arts
Development Officer in Western
Riverina (based in Leeton, Narrandera and Griffith).
11th - 23rd: Writer-in-residence,
Josephine Rowe
April
I’ve been Director at Booranga
for five years now and it’s been
a role I’ve enjoyed thoroughly.
I’ve seen some fantastic performances and readings, and I’ve
seen many local writers develop their craft and gain in confidence and experience. I’ve also been lucky enough to enjoy the support of a committed local
membership base and volunteer executive committee.
Starting in March our committee member Claire Baker will
be taking on my role until it
is officially filled. I’ll still be
seeing many of you personally
at the public events featuring
Josephine Rowe, and of course
our AGM, which is scheduled
for 17th April.
- Derek Motion
* Outgoing Director Derek Motion (above); incoming Director Claire
Baker (below)
17th: Booranga AGM, 5pm,
Wagga City Library
June
Writer-in-residence,
Keri Glastonbury
* 23rd: fourW twenty-four submissions close, one week earlier
than usual
July
3rd - 5th: 2013 ASAL conference
to be held in Wagga Wagga
August
Writer-in-residence,
John Connell
October
Writer-in-residence,
Margo Lanagan
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BOORANGA NEWS
JULY - AUGUST 2007
EDITOR: DEREK MOTION
NOTICE TO ALL MEMBERS
BOORANGA WRITERS’ CENTRE
WAGGA WAGGA WRITERS WRITERS INC
WISH TO ADVISE
THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
WILL BE HELD ON WEDNESDAY 17th APRIL 2013
5.00 PM FOR 5.30 PM
AT THE WAGGA WAGGA CITY LIBRARY
Guest Speaker for the evening will be
Keri Glastonbury
Academic and Poet
All members are encouraged to attend.
Cheese, wine and juice will be available.
Any member wishing to nominate for a position
on the Executive Committee of WWWW
should contact Sandra at Booranga on 6933 2688
or send a completed nomination form to Booranga Writers Centre
Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga, 2678
(a nomination form is enclosed with this notice)
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MARCH - APRIL 2013
BOORANGA nEWS
MARCH - APRIL 2013
Booranga Events Gallery
fourW twenty-three: (clockwise from top-left) Les
Murray launches in Melbourne; Stu Hatton reads in
Melbourne; Fiona Wright launches in Sydney.
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BOORANGA NEWS
JULY - AUGUST 2007
EDITOR: DEREK MOTION
MARCH - APRIL 2013
Recent Events: fourW twenty-three launch
(Sydney launch speech by Fiona Wright)
I was really excited when the Booranga possum made a cameo in this, the 23rd edition of 4W. “I hear you alright”, writes Christopher Kelen in his ‘Wagga Suite’, “must be warm over me.” I like to think that the little critter has been something of a caretaker,
however scratchy and cantankerous, a big-eyed and brush-tailed muse to the long series of writers who’ve stayed under its roof in
Wagga Wagga. I mistook the possum for an intruder one of the first evenings I was there; I wonder now if the creature knows just
how special a place it is that it inhabits.
Because 4W is just one part, very visible, of what the Wagga Wagga Writer Writers do for writing in this country. Operating out of
a cottage opposite the training vineyard at Charles Sturt University (and I assume that placement is no accident, either), they hold a
yearly program of residencies, readings, workshops, publications and the Booranga Prize, bringing writers to the Riverina and bringing Riverina writers the support they need to find their voice. I’ll never forget the workshop I sat in on, listening to a beautifullytailored older lady reading about the origins of the c-bomb. Nor how treasured I was made to feel there.
And this sense of treasuring is something that struck me too as I was reading this book. So many of the stories centre on love, its
fragility, attempts to keep it from slipping into loss. There’s Carol Chandler’s haunting story Sphinx, about destructive and potent
teenage love, Beverly Lello’s ‘Dancing on Grass’, charting the turmoil of a marriage threatened by the pressures of a drought, Mark
O’Flynn’s ‘Dictation,’ in which a teacher visiting a prison writes down a love letter dictated by an inmate, replete with lines like
“You know me my baby…I miss you so much but if I ever hear of you playin’ the field again leavin’ your two beautiful babies on
their own in the house all night then I’m gunna cut your face up with a razor…” Sean O’Leary’s story ‘Pawn’ sees an unemployed
gambler spend one perfect day with a topless barmaid who reads Murakami. These are stories about holding things sacred, of holding
on, be it to a baby’s dress, a superstition, a broken vacuum cleaner, that last twenty dollars or the promise of an acceptance letter from
a literary journal.
In the poems too there is a sense of honouring the small things, even or especially at the point where, as Julie Beveridge puts it, ‘the
thought of a poem becomes to vast.’ There are poems here for hats, for dust, for storms, for the much-maligned Oxford comma.
Poems that find grace in the photograph of a lost relative, in a pair of roadkill foxes, in landscapes of grasslands, deserts, harbours,
farms, trams, desires.
But what’s even more exciting is the sense of playfulness within the journey, the exuberance and wildness and the heart of so many
of the works that make it such a delight to read, and bode so well for our literary culture. There are lines in this book that stopped me
dead: Matt Hetherington has a whole poem about such moments, which he calls ‘something/ gone cute on my heart again’. Ivy Alvarez has a poem here titled ‘Conversations with a Sociopath, in a Kitchen, 2am.’ Michael Farrell’s structuralist cowboys rides a frog
into town from New South Fuckmyarse, Stu Hatton catalogues monks, Daniel King’s helps C. August Dupin track down a lost Poe
story with the assistance of Derrida and three poached eggs. There’s a correspondence in poems, a character sketch of Tempranillo, a
pantoum made of lines from Christina Aguleira songs.
I’m only offering you tidbits here, because the truly delightful thing about 4W is its ability to surprise, to take you to unexpected
places and then shift the ground as soon as you think you’ve found your feet. I love the accidental juxtapositions of the work, which
come about because the works are arranged alphabetically (something that I’m normally, as a Wright, ideologically opposed to); the
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BOORANGA nEWS
MARCH - APRIL 2013
way the writers are from everywhere and from so many different schools or styles – there’s no sense of the clique within this little
magazine. But the works still talk to each other, talk through and across each other, because they’re all, of course, about writing and
the world, about the things we want to cling to, the things we love or want to love.
On which note I want to leave you, with a few lines from Maurice McNamara’s madcap and deliciously witty poem ‘writer’s group’.
He writes:
writers’ group is about love
not love as we know if, Jim
most of the time we’re exasperated
tied to chairs
eating dips never meant to be eaten
And I bid you to leave your chairs, grab more drinks and dips, and declare 4W 23 launched.
Writers-in-residence, 2013
Academic and poet Keri Glastonbury is currently here for a writing residency and also to
participate in the national ASAL conference (this conference will feature some of Australia’s most well-known literary academics and writers).
John Connell is an award winning filmmaker, new media producer, project manager,
author, and two time walkley winning journalist. He is currently working on a short story
collection titled Anatomy of a heartbreak and a non fiction work with World Press photo
award winner Andrew Quilty titled Men of Letters. While at Booranga Connell will be
working on his debut novel The ghost estate, to be published worldwide by Picador late
in 2013.
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BOORANGA NEWS
JULY - AUGUST 2007
EDITOR: DEREK MOTION
MARCH - APRIL 2013
Book Review: The Only Constant by Robyne Young (Sydney: Promotions from the Pen, 2012.)
Don’t be misled by the size of The Only Constant, a collection of eight short stories written by Robyne Young. This slim-fit
volume hides within a depth of experience that belies its 120 pages. The quotations at the front, together with the book’s title,
orientate the reader to the issues that are teased out within this diverse collection.
A range of human dilemmas are told through a variety of voices, male or female, and of all ages. Each of the scenarios is readily
accessible to readers as Young utilises her skills in selecting language appropriate to the protagonists, orientating the reader to the
protagonist’s mental state and providing a gradual awareness of what has taken place in the lives of these people. From the pregnant woman who discovers she has breast cancer and then undergoes treatment not knowing how this will affect her child, to the
man who seems to attract dominant women in his both private and business life, to
the girl on the verge of womanhood looking forward to the local show while dealing with death of a parent and ensuing financial difficulties within the family, to a
woman suffering from post-natal depression set against the backdrop of televised
war, all provide the reader with different points of view, and pose the unasked
question – what would you do in these situations?
The narratives, so dexterously handled by Young, are contemporary ones, which
help us identify with the familiarity of these issues that occur all around us, to us
and to our families. This places the reader in a position where s/he cannot help
but empathise with the protagonists. How they, that is, the protagonists, deal with
these problems provide much to think about, such as the young man’s reaction to
his girlfriend’s unexpected pregnancy and how this is linked with his interest in
gardening, and the motif of blue butterflies that flutter throughout the text.
The essence of our contemporary Australian society becomes the backbone of each story. Product names, synonymous with our
culture, are used as little flashlights leading the reader into the various domestic scenes. Even the instructions provided by a laundry product are utilised, making ironic commentary on the dilemma being faced. The experience of living in regional Australia
provides a suitable backdrop for the isolation of personal struggle which all the characters face.
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BOORANGA nEWS
MARCH - APRIL 2013
The people in these stories are real and believable. They could be your next door neighbour, or that family that lives in the next
suburb, or your immediate family. The woman tired of the sympathy shown to her because of the death of her teenage son, and the
woman angry at her cancer demonstrate how these characters are not paper thin, but possess a range of emotions that we humans
possess. By allowing the characters to reveal their human frailties, Young pumps life into these narratives that take them from being quite enjoyable to something that stimulates further thought long after the reading process has finished.
The presentation of the book has been well thought-out, with text that is clear and attractive to read – there is no squinting or straining to make out the words. An embellishment to each story is provided by a small drawing capturing the essence of the text, for
which Suzanne Hicks, the illustrator, is to be commended. The use of a motif from each drawing is used at the start of each new
story, giving both a decorative touch, and a hint at what is install for the reader. These all combine to make the process of reading
this book a highly enjoyable one.
Conclusions are varied, with some being resolved, while others are left open-ended with the reader having to decide what might
happen next. These variations allow for a certain freshness within each story – they are not written to a formula, but are as varied
as the changes that constantly beset our lives.
Having read this collection several times, I must congratulate Robyne on her accomplishment in producing stories that are able to
maintain reader-engagement, even after multiple readings. It will be most interesting to see what Robyne Young has installed for
us in future literary works.
fourW twenty-four
Please note: Submissions for fourW twenty-four will close earlier in 2013. For this year only the cut-off date is:
21st June, 2013
Full subsmission guidelines are available at: http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/arts/humss/booranga/submission-guidelines
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BOORANGA NEWS
JULY - AUGUST 2007
EDITOR: DEREK MOTION
MARCH - APRIL 2013
Members’ Work
Soup
rushing upstream
suffocating Flowerdale Lagoon;
log, head shaped, bobbing.
Flood.
by D.E. South
Booranga on the Web
Homepage: http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/arts/
humss/booranga/
Email list sign up:
http://csu.us5.list-manage.com/
subscribe?u=2666ad0df9dee182e7d4d9af4&id=ab1124f38e
‘Like’ our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/
Booranga-Writers-Centre/198309036885917
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Booranga
Check-in via Foursquare when at the centre: https://foursquare.
com/venue/17176180
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BOORANGA nEWS
MARCH - APRIL 2013
PUBLISHING, COMPETITIONS and OPPORTUNITIES
General Submissions
Remember to keep in mind those literary journals that are open
for submissions all year. A good place to start researching the
major Australian ones is here:
http://www.litmags.com.au
(Booranga receives copies of the NSW based journal Southerly,
and issues are available to borrow for Booranga Members)
Henry Lawson Festival Verse & Short Story Competition
The Henry Lawson Festival Verse and Short Story Competition
is now open for entries in a number of categories, some with
Australian themes and most without theme restrictions. Short
stories are limited to 2000 words and verse to 48 lines.
Closes: 28th March
Further information: http://www.henrylawsonfestival.com.au/
events-and-entertainment/entry-forms
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Poetry
The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry
You are invited to submit up to three poems (published or un
published) for a new anthology of Australian speculative poetry.
The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry will be edited by Tim Jones (New Zealand) and P.S. Cottier (Australia), to
be published by Interactive Publications of Queensland in 2014.
Speculative poetry encompasses science fiction, horror, fantasy
and magic realism. Previously published works should contain
details of first publication and any information about any rights
held by publishers. All selected poets will a receive a copy of
the anthology. Please note that submissions are welcome from
anyone living in Australia, and expatriates. Send your work in
the body of an email, with a bio of no more than 100 words.
(Attachments will not be opened).
Closes: 4th June
Further information: http://pscottier.com/2013/02/25/poetrywanted-for-new-anthology-guidelines/
BOORANGA NEWS
JULY - AUGUST 2007
EDITOR: DEREK MOTION
MARCH - APRIL 2013
PUBLISHING, COMPETITIONS and OPPORTUNITIES
Prose
Theme ‘Fairy Tales Twisted Sideways’All short stories entered
in this competition must be in the style of fairy tales, with a
twist.
The 2013 Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley
Short Story Prize
Closes: 30th June
The 2013 Jolley Prize is worth $5000 (first prize), with supplementary prizes of $2000 and $1000. It will be judged by Tony
Birch (academic and author of the 2012 novel Blood), Maria
Takolander (poet, critic and a past winner) and Terri-ann White
(Director of UWA Publishing).
ABR will publish the three shortlisted stories later this year in
its special Fiction issue, and announce the winner at an award
ceremony in Sydney that same month. Anyone is eligible to
enter, as long as they are an Australian citizen or permanent resident. ABR gratefully acknowledges Mr Ian Dickson’s generous
support for the Jolley Prize.
Enrty fee: $10
Further information: http://apchapterandverse.blogspot.com.
au/
The Elyne Mitchell Rural Writing Award
This award commemorates Elyne Mitchell’s life and work,
and has been established to encourage all writers to focus their
stories on the Australian rural landscape.
There are three categories each with a cash prize ranging from
$500 to $1000.
Closes: 31st July
Closes: 31st May
Further information: http://www.elynemitchell.com/2012competition/
Further information: https://www.australianbookreview.com.
au/prizes/elizabeth-jolley-story-prize
The Stringybark Erotic Short Fiction Award
You have 1800 words to produce a short story that will ‘delight’
the judges. International entries welcome. There is a total value
of over $770 worth of prizes in cash and books available. Stories must be sent via email.
Adelaide Plains Chapter & Verse - Short Story
Competition
Closes: 31st March
1st, 2nd & 3rd cash prizes, plus Highly Commended & Commended certificates as awarded by judge. The best entries as
chosen by judge will be published in a collection.
Further information: http://www.stringybarkstories.net/The_
Stringybark_Short_Story_Award/Home.html
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BOORANGA WRITERS’ CENTRE
APPLICATION FOR 2013 MEMBERSHIP
Booranga (trading as Wagga Wagga Writers Writers Inc.) was formed in 1987 to assist and promote local authors and their
work. The group holds regular readings at local venues, conducts writing workshops, offers fellowships at Booranga, the Riverina Writers’ Centre at Charles Sturt University, and published an annual anthology, fourW, under the imprint of fourW press,
and is active in promoting writing and writers throughout the Riverina.
Membership period: 1st January to 31st
December 2013
Group membership (including one copy of fourW)
$55.00
Single membership (including one copy of fourW)
$36.00
Single membership (not including anthology)
$25.00
Concessional membership (one copy of fourW)
$26.00
Concessional membership (not including anthology)
$15.00
Student membership (under 21 years) not including
anthology
$11.00
MEMBERSHIP ENTITLES YOU TO...
- Copy of fourW twenty-four Anthology
- Regular newsletter (bi-monthly) & e-list mailouts
- Member discounts to readings, performances & workshops
- Invitations to writing events & get-togethers
- Access to a network of writers, book enthusiaists &
other writers’ centres for information & friendship
- Use of Booranga Writers’ Centre resources, such as
library and computer
Please fill out and send application form to:
Wagga Wagga Writers Writers Inc. Booranga Writers’ Centre,
Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga NSW 2678, Phone/Fax (02) 69332688
Name:
Address:
Telephone:
Email:
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.............................. (home).............................. (work) .............................. (mobile)
..............................................................................
Enclosed is: $............. cheque/money order FOR:
(please indicate membership type required)
undeliverable return to:
POSTAGE PAID AUSTRALIA
Booranga Writers’ Centre
Locked Bag 588
Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2678
POSTAGE PAID
AUSTRALIA
WWWW & the Booranga Writers’ Centre are supported by: