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Sam van Zweden

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emerging writers festival

Because Every Time You Pick Up Your Pen, You Realise You Know Nothing

Last night was the launch of the program for the Emerging Writers’ Festival. As always in the Wheeler Centre, seating was a little awkward, but the entertainment made up for it. To launch the program, Ben Birchall hosted a panel made up of Paddy O’Reilly, Sean Condon, and Meg Mundell. While there didn’t seem to be a specific point of discussion, the wandering topic of the event was a good way into the festival, which encourages us as writers to think about our practice and process, the wider implications of what we do, not just the act of publishing but the whole idea of “being a writer”. It’s so important to have space and time to do this, to make meaning of what we’re doing.

Paddy O’Reilly provided the quote I got the most out of from the night – “I learn,” she said, “every time I pick up a pen, that I don’t know anything.” In a way, this is possibly the worst thing for me (as someone at uni studying the craft of writing) to take on board. It’s also really constructive though. It’s such a positive way of tackling blank pages, new projects – don’t try for that level of production I reached by the end of my last project, because that was something different. This is new, I’m starting from scratch, and I know nothing, so just do it.

Having spent an hour or two picking out my dream itinerary from the very spunky looking program (all individually screen printed, as last year), I’ve come up with the following events as my picks from the 2011 program. All links back to program descriptions (and tickets) on the EWF website –

26th May – The First Word

28-9th May – Town Hall Writers’ Conference

31st May – Not Your Nana’s Slide Night

4th June – The Writers’ Toolkit

4th June – Tram Tracks

4th June – The Pitch

5th June – Page Parlour

5th June – Spelling Bee

Also, right throughout the festival the #ewf11 hashtag will be active (already a fair bit of action on Twitter), and panels will be hosted online. There’s a whole extra level of discussion that occurs over the Town Hall weekend if you’ve got access to Twitter on your phone. There’s a silent layer of discussion going on on Twitter at the same time as panels are running, it enriches the whole experience. I’m so glad this year I have a wanky phone with internet access so I can get to that – last year I saw tweets post-fact and was a bit disappointed I’d missed them.

Also exciting news connecting LGWABP with the EWF this year – I’m one of the bloggers whose content is being pulled into their Planet. A “planet” is a feed which draws in content from selected blogs, which are tagged in a certain way. So throughout the festival, anything that I tag with “emerging writers festival” will appear in that feed. Lisa (festival director)’s experience as a blogger has made this feed really nuanced in the way it works, as she understands that the planet benefits both the writers and the festival. Had a non-blogger created this, it may have turned out a bit differently.

SO! Go check out the EWF program, tickets are all on sale, program’s up, I’m part of their blogging planet, the #ewf11 hashtag is already active – get involved!

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Winding Up for EWF

It’s only just over a week until the first official event for the Emerging Writers’ Festival. On Thursday, 5th May at the Wheeler Centre, the 2011 program is being launched. Titled “Stories from the Trenches”, the event promises to be a lot of fun – not only can we get our paws on the program, but we’ll also be treated to readings from Meg Mundell, Paddy O’Reilly and Sean Condon, all addressing the reality of “the cold, hard world of Writerland”. The event will be hosted by Ben Birchall.

…Did I mention it’s free? Bookings, however, are “recommended” (see: get your tickets now cuz it’s going to be so rad that if you don’t, you won’t be able to squeeze in the door).

You can see the whole program at the EWF website, and pencil those into your diary so you can’t make any other plans! Then top up your credit card for a bit of a beating.

You can also get all happy in your pants over the brand-spankin’ website, which has SO MUCH happening, and a super-spiffy new layout – more about that in the next few days, as well as a picks-from-the-program post.

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Neon Pilgrim Review

I’m officially on holidays, so I’m finally munching through some of the “to-be-read” pile. The first thing I picked up off that pile was Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster, which I bought from the EWF Page Parlour a few weeks ago.

I should probably flag it here that I interviewed Lisa for Yartz just before the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and she seemed absolutely lovely. I’ve also been following her blogging for a while, so I went into this book with an already reasonably good opinion of Lisa and what she’s been up to. I have to say though, that this book boosted that by about a hundred percent.

Neon Pilgrim is about Lisa’s journey along the henro michi – a back-breaking trek, 1200 kilometres through Japanese mountains, all the way around Shikoku. No small effort.

I’ve never really read travel books before. Something about the term “travel literature” puts me off – I imagine middle-aged intellectuals relaying things like “the rich history” of countries with Western histories much older than Australia’s… While it’s all very interesting, it’s not something I’m keen on dedicating myself to for a whole book. And I’m sure this isn’t even what travel literature entails. It’s just what my mind has made it.

When I heard about Neon Pilgrim though, I felt like this might be something I could relate to, and get something out of reading. When Lisa started the journey, she was a 28 year-old, overweight and very depressed. Having visited Japan as a student, she had heard about the henro michi, and decided that this was what she needed to pull her out of depression.

The pilgrimage is said to be enlightening, each henro (pilgrim) is accompanied by the spirit of Kobo-Daishi, who the walk is done in honour of. The Japanese who inhabit Shikoku believe that by giving settai (gifts) to pilgrims, they too honour the spirit of Kobo-Daishi even though they cannot do the trek. So the journey itself is a respected thing, and pilgrims are helped out a great deal by those who live in the towns and cities that the henro michi passes through.

The book is written simply, there’s no complicated jargon or assumed prior knowledge of Japan or its rituals. The book includes a glossary of Japanese terms used in the book, but most of the time it isn’t needed, as Lisa makes meanings very clear.

Along the way there are fantastic crazy old men, deeply respected veterans who have done the pilgrimage hundreds of times, and kind people Lisa’s own age, who are all doing the pilgrimage for different reasons. There are bears, and spiders, and blisters. Every story along the way has its place, and the pilgrimage becomes a mesh of encounters and problems to negotiate.

I won’t say that the prose is amazing. It’s good – very funny at times, and at others you can really feel Lisa’s frustration. But I wouldn’t call it artful. Artful prose isn’t what this book is about though.

There’s an old Taoist saying, that “the journey is the reward” – while Lisa’s fitness improves, and she meets some wonderful people along the henro michi, the reward in terms of escaping depression is less tangible. I think this is one of the things I loved about the book – Lisa proves to herself that she can still get out of herself and tackle the world, but along the way she still hits that brick wall many times. She doubts herself – in fact, it’s not until temple 76 that she actually thinks that perhaps she will actually reach the end. At certain times in the journey the only way forward is to “step. Step. Step”. And I think this is how it is, and how it’s meant to be – getting through tough things like depression is like that, it’s not “cure!” and then everything’s great. It’s just one foot in front of the other.

At the end of the book there is no definitive ending. Yes – Lisa makes it to the end. But it’s only the end of the henro michi – the start of something much bigger. And I didn’t even find the open ending frustrating, I found it incredibly hopeful. While I know I probably won’t do a trek like this, I have taken a lot from the “Step. Step. Step.” attitude and the idea that accomplishing something is not the end.

Lisa Dempster, the smiley lady you will see at many a literary event, has walked 1200 kilometers and slept in some very crazy places. She has gone through some absolutely insane shit – go shake her hand next time you see her. Or go read Neon Pilgrim. Or both.

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Pride, Procrastination and other Disasters

You’ll have noticed my blog has been incredibly quiet of late. I apologise.

I’ve written very little. I’ve blogged hardly at all. I’ve read only to wind-down before bed or else I’d never sleep. I’ve seen hardly anyone and I haven’t had a beer in over a week.

This is life on the arse-end of the semester. Four assignments due in a three-week period. We’re still in that period, the last one’s due on Tuesday.

So I’m still not blogging and all of the above.

But in the name of procrastination and pride, I thought I’d post the following interviews I did for Yartz, with Lisa Dempster and Emilie Zoey Baker. They were done just before the EWF, there’s just been a little delay in getting them up – technical stuff. Computers, hey?

As I can’t figure out how to embed youtube clips:

Here’s Lisa’s interview.

And here’s Emilie’s.

And for those of you who just can’t get enough, here’s a link to the reading that EZB was kind enough to do for the Yartz .

Enjoy your weekend viewing, my friends, and I will return to this very blog after Tuesday when I am officially ON HOLIDAYS!

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Darkness and Addictions

It’s a well-known historical fact – creative people, writers particularly, are really good at addictions.

Amphetamines, prescription drugs, opium, alcohol.

Life have compiled a whole album of “Famous Literary Drunks Or Addicts” – there are some surprising addictions up there such as Louisa May Alcott’s addiction to opium, though typhoid-related-fever is a decent excuse.

I can’t say I was surprised by this. I know addiction and creativity go hand-in-hand. Many creative people seem to have that “something-to-get-away-from” in common. Perhaps this is why so many of us find ourselves in reading, and deal with ourselves better in writing. Or drinking. Or substance abuse. They’re all just ways to crawl away from the dark places.

Over the last weekend at the Emerging Writers’ Festival,  on a panel titled “Going To A Dark Place”, writer Joel Magarey talked about his OCD. I left that room really encouraged by the fact that this man has written a book that deals so candidly with something that’s so stigmatised and crippling. To look your demons in the face like that, and not be afraid to put it out there, is amazing. It should also be noted that the OCD is not all Joel’s book is about. It doesn’t take over.

Lisa Dempster’s “Neon Pilgrim” confronts her depression. Henry Rollins’ “Black Coffee Blues” talks about depression, making it dark but essentially toothless. Even J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” has dealt with depression in her children’s books, and she is not ashamed to tell people.

The list of writers with depression or other mental illness is endless, but mostly we never find out about it. And when we do it’s an “Oh. Who’d have known?” situation. It’s certainly more okay to put these kind of things out there now, but I don’t think we should underestimate the strength of people who do.

I’m constantly chased by anxiety. And when I hide in the toilets now there’s that poster on the back of the door staring at me, letting me know that “Anxiety Is Paralysing” (thanks Lady, I get it!) and I curse that bitch while I try to breathe like I have normally sized lungs.

I think the key to dealing with the “dark” parts of ourselves is to accept them. Work around them.

Turn the darkness into something productive.

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Breakable Bags, Zelda and Reframing Rejection

8.30am. It was absolutely freezing this morning, but I got out of bed. I got to the city. I got coffee. When I walked up to the door of the Town Hall, a fatherly looking man in an entirely-too-endearing beefeater-esque hat shook his head and made me finish my coffee outside. There are some serious injustices in Melbourne.

Once safely in those doors, the caffeine starting to do its job, Festival Fever took over. They asked for my autograph (…on the door list), they handed me a WEEKEND PASS necktag, and they pointed me towards showbags. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this year’s showbag. Last year, the bag itself was awesome (I still use it on a daily basis), but the contents weren’t so crash hot, with more pamphlets for things not relevant to me than things I was actually interested in. This year, however, the bag itself is incredibly cool (great size and comfy to wear) but dangerously breakable. I can see myself having to carry another bag inside this bag, in wait of its breaking day. Until such time – awesome. And the contents! ABR, Inscribe, Readings’ catalogue, Bookseller + Publisher, Wet Ink. And even the pamphlets are actually relevant and interesting – I don’t know how much of this was planned and how much just came in, but I’ll be busy with its contents for a while.

The day had an insane amount of knowledge on offer, so I came out pretty tired. So much went into my brain, and such is the extent of the notes I took, that I simply can’t recall all of it. I can, however, retrace my steps in terms of rooms and events, and give you a little taste of the glory that was the Emerging Writers’ Festival Town Hall Program today.

The day started with “Seven Enviable Lines”, which featured the Festival Ambassadors sharing seven pieces of advice they wished they’d received earlier in their careers. Natasha Campo’s “publish or perish” was quickly written down by me, and affirmed at every panel today. She also stressed the importance of being brave in asking for help from whatever relevant people you can find. Advice I’ll definitely be taking on board.
Sean Riley’s advice was not to be afraid to use the words “no”, “absolutely not”, and “go fuck yourself” – if, as a writer, you’re not backing your own work, then nobody will. He also said to remember to “arrive late and leave early” in scenes. An uproariously funny speaker, and certainly one I’ll jump to see if there’s an opportunity in future.
Jill Jones’ advice was to be aware that “writing is bad for your health – especially your posture”. As soon as she said this, everyone in the room wiggled in their chairs and straightened up self-consciously.
While this panel was on, it was nice to see each of the speakers nodding and each other’s advice. Also funny to see was Julian Shaw taking a photo on his iPhone – which soon appeared on Twitter. It was a reminder of the huge role that Twitter has played in the whole festival this year, and which was hugely present in every panel, whether through people talking about Twitter or just the guys either side of me posting tasty little snippets from their smart phones.

As I moved from room to room, trying to find zany ways to wear my necktag like they do on Survivor, I couldn’t help but feel comforted by the amount of people walking around with notebooks, madly trying to hold on to the pearls of wisdom imparted there. In fact, it was the people without the notebooks that looked somehow out of place.

Dion Kagan hosted the panel on interviewing, titled “The Gentle Art of Persuasion”. Dion cited many of his own “train-wreck” interviews as proof that the only real way to get better is to practise. I must say, I took a lot of encouragement from this – my first two interviews for camera aired just over a week ago – I’m still waiting to see them. I know now, though, that if they’re terrible it’s just a right of passage. Panelist Barb Lemon compared interviewing to adding character voices when reading a children’s book – I’d never thought of it like this, but now that the thought’s been introduced, I’ll be sure to approach story material in a much more interview-y way.
Travel writer Brian Thacker had some insanely wonderful stories, and he approached all his travels in this way – no formal interviews, just approaching it all with curiosity, taking notes, quotes in shorthand.
All the panelists also offered little hints to make interviewing much easier – check, double-check, triple-check all the technical stuff. Press record before you enter the room to make it more comfortable in dictaphone interviews. Have questions in a notebook, but don’t read them out verbatim. Best piece of advice for the panel, though?
Tate Ischia shared his favourite piece of advice about writing – that the whole thing is like Zelda. You have to go on weird quests which seem to have nothing to do with anything, meeting lots of people and doing lots of little tasks. In the end, all of this means you slay the dragon. You win the game.

The “Taking It Online” panel (exactly what the name implies) started with Phillip Thiel’s embracing of the impermanence of the internet. “It’s writing made to fade, and quickly forgotten”, he said. While that’s a scary thing in many ways, Phillip seems to have come to terms with it, embraced it, indeed turned it upon itself: his work centres around “a year of…” projects. This year, Phillip is kissing a different person every day – today it was festival director Lisa Dempster.
Also in this panel Mel Campbell put forward a convincing case for writers not to allow themselves to be taken advantage of just because of the newness of writing for online audiences.

In “Never Surrender”, the amazingly accented and very funny Paul Callaghan encouraged us to “reframe” rejection and accept it as part of the process not only of being a writer, but of being a human being. Elizabeth Campbell echoed this, saying that failure can be treated as something both inevitable and productive. By far the most entertaining speaker of the day though, was Sean Condon, who lamented his failure. Indeed, his failure at even failing saying he “counts actual rejection as something of a success!” – he by far prefers a rejection letter to being utterly ignored.

The final speaker of the “Mining The Personal” panel, Lou Sanz, was an absolute hoot: while her contribution wasn’t rife with advice, it was certainly a nice piece of comic relief when my mind was getting too full of information.

Today’s program ended with “The Pitch” – a panel featuring representatives from different publications and publishing houses. While most of the information boiled down to “read the submission guidelines, be considerate”, some more specific tips from certain publications will hopefully give me a bit of an advantage next time I submit something to them.

It started at 9.00am. It finished at 5.30pm. It was a damn long day, but one I’m so glad I didn’t miss.

The EWF Town Hall program is on again tomorrow, so if you’re free you should come down and soak up some of the fantastic advice and inspiration on offer.

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Page Parlour Haul

Today was awesome. I woke up late, I went to Page Parlour, I met someone I’d only ever known via twitter, I went to an art show, I caught up with friends.

Day three of the Emerging Writers’ Festival saw the Page Parlour grace the heated walkways of the atrium at Federation Square. Page Parlour brings together a bunch of emerging writers and publishers to present their books and zines in a market type setting.

My Haul?

– The Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam
– Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing ed. Karen Andrews
– Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster

There were other things I wanted to buy – uni student income said no.

But I’m pretty satisfied and itching to get into this haul!

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Paper Radio Is Here, As City Basement Books Leaves

Two unrelated things in one post. Why not?

Paper Radio – it’s finally here. It’s been a long time in the making, and the excited chatter around the place has been deafening, so the fact that it launched today is something of a relief. In a great way. It’s all I expected and more!

Paper Radio is an online literary journal of sorts. There’s a FM channel which features fictional writing, and an AM channel which showcases non-fictional work. There are a few familiar names on the list of people behind this literary love-fest – Dion Kagan is familiar to me as the editor of last year’s EWF publication “The Reader”. He’s also hosting a few events for the EWF this year, I believe. Estelle Tang is also on the Editorial Advisory Committee, and she’s the amazing brain behind the utterly bottomless book blog “3000 Books”. So the team behind Paper Radio are strong, assuming those names I’m familiar with are anything to go by.

The website is really sleek, nicely designed with bold colours and collage-like graphics. And it’s not just the visuals that are nicely designed. It’s easy to get around the site, and while the FM channel is the only active thing on there at the moment, with one episode up of a story by Chris Somerville, the player isn’t complicated and the quality of the content is awesome. The reading on the episode that’s up is done by Jon Tjhia (executive producer of Paper Radio), who has an utterly enchanting voice, and the sound design behind the reading isn’t intrusive at all.

Really looking forward to future episodes from Paper Radio!

I’m afraid this post also contains some news that makes me incredibly sad…

City Basement Books, that amazing floor-to-ceiling booklover’s heaven (downstairs, 28 Elizabeth St, CBD), is shutting its doors. At least, at this location. I’ve tried searching for quite a while about what the deal is, but all I can find is that the store is “moving on” – whether this means the store is closing, or just moving premises I’m not sure. Either way this books shop has been one of my favourite places in Melbourne for years now. It’s always been so reliable, to not only have the book you’re looking for, but to have it from different publishers, different editions, with any different covers it may have had… And alwas for a reasonable price, in great condition.

Before they do close their doors or move, (whichever it may be) they are having a massive sale. All books $1 until this Friday, so get down there and pay your respects to the sacred ground at 28 Elizabeth St, Melbourne CBD.

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The Emergence of the Writer’s Festival Program

It’s official! The date I’ve been hanging out for since last year is finally here. The Emerging Writers Festival program was launched last night, and you can now view the program on the EWF website.

I’ve already started ranking what I simply must go to, what I might go to if I come into some money, and what’s not helpful for me at all.

Things that have caught my eye:
“The First Word” ($20/$10) on the 21st of May… I went to this event last year and it got me so excited. It’s a panel event, this year’s line up includes some names I know well and others I’ve never heard… just a great way to kick of the festival.

“Express Media Skill Share” ($10ea./$30 for all four) on the 22nd of May… Express Media do some amazing work with young people, and Melbourne’s absolutely blessed to have a constant resource for our young and emerging writers. Express Media are running a bunch of workshops on the 22nd May, and have an awesome deal that you can go to all four workshops (so you’ll be there all day soaking up fantastic knowledge and skills) for $30. I’m only interested in two of these workshops, but they both look pretty great – one is run by Jo Case and it’s about writing good reviews, and the other is run by Davina Bell and Julia Carlomango and it’s about editing your work for publication… looks like some really worthwhile stuff happening with Express Media.

“Page Parlour” (FREE!) on the 23rd May is a big zine fair at the Fed Square atrium. It’s a really great place to meet people, as a lot of the stalls are manned by important people from those publications (editors etc), and also a good way to stock up on some publications that are a little harder to find.

From the 24th-28th of May, there’s something called TwitterFEST (FREE), where EWF are running interviews, discussions debates etc on Twitter, making it really democratic and interactive, everything’s just organised using #hashtags. …you don’t even have to leave the couch for this one! I’m most interested in the 28th of May at 2pm, when a slew of fantastic writers and important people will be discussing “how is Twitter helping writers?”

From the 24th to the 27th of May, Estelle Tang is hosting “15 Minutes of Fame” (FREE), at The Wheeler Centre, 7pm daily. These events will be mini book launches of books from a variety of fields. Well worth a look-in.

There’s a heap of (FREE) “guided writing exercises” from 6-7pm daily at the City Library, as part of “Creative Writing Bootcamp”… a good excuse to be forced to do something?

The 27th of May sees a regular Wheeler Centre event, “Lunchbox/Soapbox” (FREE) as part of the EWF, with Chris Flynn talking about “the role of heroic dogs in literature and movies”….sure. I’ll be there.

 “Wordstock” is always a huge event for the EWF, and it happens on the 27th May. It’s a night of performances from writers who have written in response to a certain band or artist. Last year was Nick Cave; this year is AC/DC. I met Emilie Zoe Baker not so long ago, and she’s a really amazing woman and poet. She’s performing here, as well as Sean M Whelan and some other great poets/writers, so get on down there. ($20/$10).

There’s some amazing stuff going on at the Town Hall on the 29th and 30th of May. Discussions about the writing process, what makes a good interview and all the hard parts of being a writer – the Town Hall program is a little pricier, but it’s where the bigger events happen and from the look of the lineup this year there will be some worthwhile discussions taking place in that building.

On the 29th May is an event the EWF have been talking about a lot in the lead-up to the program launch. “The Zine Bus” (FREE) is a bus which takes zines around Melbourne, and “culminates in a guerilla zine market” at Fed Square.

…The entirely too-long list of events above are only those I’m interested in. And I’ve just skimmed over the program, especially the Town Hall side of things. Get onto the EWF website, check out the program, get yourself down to some of the awesome events that will be on in just a few weeks’ time.

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