Melbourne Writers Festival - Artist Transport

I'm excited. Yes, it's sunny and mild enough not to need a heavy jacket, very good reasons to be happy, but more importantly it's on. #MWF15 officially kicked off this morning.

Last year I was a front-of-house volunteer, collecting tickets at the door, politely asking people to move up so that we could fill all the seats in a room, checking writers were comfortable in Green Rooms and steering them to the signing table.

Of course one of the (many) perks was then getting to sit in and listen to the conversations, readings and panel discussions.

This year I decided to put my hand up for Artist Transport instead, and I cannot believe the people I'm going to picking up and taking to the airport. It's a little bit amazing, exciting, intimidating and just bizarre to think that I will be the one who welcomes guests from pretty much every continent. Poets, performance artists and politicians...I will be their first contact with #MWF15.

Okay, now I'm making myself nervous. But mostly, I can't wait!

I do feel as though I shouldn't announce the details of my upcoming passengers. I'm not sure why but it doesn't seem right to broadcast, or brag, so for now I'll just say that my first trip is tonight, to an event, so, if you check the program, you might be able to work out who is going to be in Car #1 with me at the wheel.

Deep breath.

What I Loved: Get in trouble by Kelly Link

This collection is outrageous. I never thought that I'd be hooked by stories with superheroes, Summer People, Sleepers or Ghost Boyfriends, but I've just finished it and I'm telling you, readers, to get your hands on it.

In hindsight there are a few hints that this is going to be a trip before you even start reading:

1. The title: what reader isn't at least a little bit mischievous; who wouldn't want to know what kind of trouble we're talking about and who gets in it
2. Michael Chabon calls Kelly Link "the most darkly playful voice in American fiction"
3. Neil Gaiman says "she is unique and should be declared a national treasure"
4. Her author photo: she looks like she's just holding in a great story under that smile, but only just; her eyes lock in with the confidence that she can hold your attention and that tattoo, well I'm just intrigued at how stating the obvious seems like something with more possibilities and stories behind it
5. Acknowledgements: I love reading these - it's where a writer really has the free space to be themselves and speak as an individual. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays...are all spaces for writers to explore, expose, polish and propose, but here, this page or two, is where stripped down personality can really show. And in this case you get a peek into the community behind these stories. Link thanks people for borrowed ghost stories and discussions about evil pants and television shows, and I've never seen an Arts Centre thanked for providing "a desk, some elk, a bear, and conversation" before, but here it is.

If I'd done much research before reading 'Get in trouble' I probably wouldn't have touched it. On Goodreads, as well as the obvious Short Stories and Fiction groups, it's been added to Fantasy, Magical Realism, Science Fiction and Horror and I guess I'm one of those "people who don't read fantasy fiction but have #insertyourownexample"* that the panel at the Bendigo Writers Festival "Fantastic" session talked about.

Those tags could easily have been more than enough reason for me to leave this book in the library when I have so many other stories to read, but boy am I glad I didn't.

*From ANZ Lit Lovers post - Bendigo Writers Festival #2

I do have one question about the book: On the cover, what does the key with 1584 mean? Maybe I can ask her at the Five Minute Story Slam (MWF)

Words Out: Paddy O'Reilly at The Moat

I met Paddy O'Reilly on the day her new short story collection, 'Peripheral Vision', was released. I was surprised that she'd suggested we could meet for a coffee that day, thinking she'd be busy walking bookshops checking that it was on the shelves and celebrating with champers and good friends. But that's probably a reflection of me and what I would have been doing. As it turns out she hadn't realised that it was Publication Day, so I got to introduce myself with good news and (I hoped) some indication that I do have a finger on Melbourne's short story pulse.

Just on the shelves

If you're interested in talking about or listening to others talk about Books, Writing and Ideas, then you've no doubt been under 176 Little Lonsdale Street to The Moat. It's lamp-lit and cove-like, an escape from winter chills and 40 degree north winds. The bluestone walls, bookshelves and striped wallpaper have hosted night readings and breakfast clubs, writing groups, Christmases in July (that was me with some old work colleagues and a slow-roasted, aged lamb shoulder) and of course happy hours leading in to late night drinking sessions.

At lunchtime, when I met Paddy, it was full and we may have been surrounded by people connected with the State Library of Victoria, The Wheeler Centre and its resident organisations, writers and readers and publishers and tourists on the Melbourne literary trail (or completely unaware of the significance of the venue).

Paddy was already settled at a window table and when I joined her we quickly found synergies - our love of short stories, laughing, big cities, Melbourne's coffee snobbery and valuing time spent with people who love talking about books, reading and sentences as much as we each do. Most of her work happens at home, "in the dark" - she has tried writing in cafes, walking down the street and on trams but works better when no-one is looking and she can go out in her garden to think in the company of her free-range urban chickens, Toni and Guy (named after their plumage).

I like her sense of humour in person as much as on the page.

Writing under two names, Paddy O'Reilly and P A O'Reilly, gives her scope to experiment and have fun with her writing. Creating Norm and Loretta - a character who first appeared in a short story but wouldn't leave her author alone - for 'The Fine Colour of Rust' was entertaining and I can imagine a great relief compared to some of her other stories. Too often humour can be dismissed in 'literary' publishing, and I loved hearing Cate Kennedy and Michael Cathcart, in a Radio National interview with Paddy, talk about how much their partners and families laughed through Loretta's Gunapan dramas, and surely that makes it a valuable addition to books that expand readerships.

It's fitting that we met in The Moat where above us Kate Larsen is doing an amazing job at extending Writers Victoria's program, events and opportunities, and beside us Lisa Dempster is curating more and more diverse events for Melbourne Writers Festival. There's so much work going on to broaden the demographic of writers and readers and I think Paddy's writing range plays an important part in this.

Her novels and short stories happen in rural cities, urban density and, in 'The Wonders', an "accelerated world of human artifice". I love her descriptions and details and that she's equally compelling writing from the male and female perspective, in first and third, past and present tenses.

"The woman was wearing a large, floppy hat of aqua terry towelling that completely covered her hair and partly obscured her face. Her upper torso was quite slim and she swivelled like an office chair on her heavy hips…" (from Deja Vu)

As an exercise for myself I've written down all of the opening paragraphs and endings in the stories in 'Peripheral Vision', and done the same with my own works in progress. It's a categorical demonstration of Paddy's skill setting up a story - sometimes with an opener that drops you smack in a setting, sometimes feeling like humour or far lighter than how the story then progresses - telling and finishing the story in a way that achieves the writing tip I have as my screensaver: "Wherever possible try to tell the entire story of the novel in the opening line" (John Irving).

"I live in a suburb where no politician lives and therefore the trams run infrequently, often late and without proper brakes." (from 'The City Circle') 

"Two days after the windows imploded, the first cracks appeared in the walls. We had taped up the glassless windows with gaffer and cardboard and at night the wind moaned as it nudged the torn edges of cardboard, trying to get in." (from 'Breaking Up") 

When she's not writing, Paddy enjoys giving technical support to her writer friends. If she hadn't been a writer she may well have been a coder - as she tells me it too is all about creativity and attention to detail I think that, like short stories, it might be another art that is under appreciated. You might find her hammering things together, assembling Ikea furniture or running workshops where she loves watching enthusiasm build in a room and seeing how much can happen in just four hours. Whatever she's doing there's an underlying dedication to celebrating stories.

Paddy won't talk about what she's working on now - she attributes being terribly superstitious to her Irish lineage - but on this day of publication she feels extremely privileged to have a second collection of short stories published. I'm also grateful to UQP for publishing 'Peripheral Vision'. I hope that the sentiment 'not enough people love short stories' is really 'not enough people know they love short stories' as that's something we can overcome.

Thanks so much for your time, Paddy. You made me laugh and were happy to talk on tangents - like how unfair it seems that your name doesn't automatically entitle you to an Irish passport when I have one; and who are all these young people (the youff) who seem to be able to spend hours in cafes on weekdays; and why is it that people think it's okay to interrogate writers about how much of their writing is based on their own experiences, when it's released as fiction, because how can a writer's personal experiences be more important to talk about than the work itself? - while you tried to enjoy some lunch in between appointments. Talking with Paddy felt like being with "my people" - proud love for the short story form, Melbourne and most of all for celebrating writing. Oh, and I owe you a coffee.




Words Out: plotting Melbourne's future literary map

What I Loved: Patient: The story of a rare illness

I was at a pre-program launch for the Melbourne Writers Festival a couple of weeks ago.  It was a civilised gathering in Aesop on Collins St, with wine from Mount Langhi Gihran.

The ever-smiling hostess, Lisa Dempster, stood before us with a few pages of text that she barely referred to. Clearly, orchestrating a diverse and innovative program doesn't mean she's out of touch with any of the details.

I was grinning as she talked about the In Conversation session with Ben Watt. Maybe it was Lisa speeding up and (have I imagined this?) fanning herself talking about the lead singer of Everything But The Girl and his books? Maybe she, too, knew a boy that had given her an EBTG album a few decades ago?

Whether it's fair to 'blame' Lisa or not, the Ben Watt session was highlighted at my program planning session the next morning. Ticket booked I thought I'd better have a look at what he's been up to over the past 20+ years.

I borrowed Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness and started it late one night, just to knock over a few pages. It's a good thing I knew that this stuff happened a while ago and Ben is alive and touring and "well", because I was tense and teary in my 75 page quick opening read.

I'm wary of true stories in the actual people's hands. If they're not written well I'm saddened by the waste of a good story, and then I experience a little self-disgust for responding like that. But there's nothing to worry about here.

Watts' journey of dreadful physical illness includes more medical specialists than one hospital hires, surgeries and drips and hoses in and out of his body, and we learn all of this with blends of facts and his reflections. I never thought I'd be rooting for levels of his cell counts and blood culture tests, and I held my breath while they slow-bombed him with cyclophosphamide.

But where he really gets me is writing about other people. Several aspects are analogous to the prison experience, and "like a lone diver among sharks, I would watch the cool-eyed doctors and anaesthetists glide round my bed." During his first days in hospital he doesn't want to face other patients and their illnesses, but over time they become part of his community. We see the arrivals of long-term patients who know the drill, and newcomers who look as confused and dis-interested in others as Watts did at the start.

One morning a patient had been prepped and drugged for theatre, but was left waiting in the ward. He was stoned and couldn't stop giggling, "like a little boy in bed on the morning of his birthday." It infected the whole ward so patients gigged at anything, at the nurse apologising for the delay, the porter arriving with a trolley. For a few minutes these terribly sick men are like little boys in a mini-pageant. It's one of the many places Watts uses humour that is natural and a delightful release.

I'm not sure my nerves are ready for his recent memoir - "a remarkably intimate portrayal of his parents." This was enough on how his relationship with his father evolved during his illness to send me back to the tissues -

"We sat together with our little legs side by side, and just started talking in quiet voices - nothing demonstrative or loaded with meaning: just odd things about the car, about jazz and the cricket. I felt like we were boys. And I realised that was how he wanted it. He didn't really want to be my grown-up dad. He wanted to be on equal terms, conspiratorial and even-handed. Good fellas. Little musketeers. I told him I liked his shoes, and he said he would get me a pair. It was something concrete that he could do."

Interestingly I didn't have EBTG in my head while reading this, but couldn't shake James Taylor -

"I feel fine anytime she's around me now, she's around me now almost all the time. And if I'm well you can tell she's been with me now. She's been with me now quite a long, long time, and I feel fine."

I'd like to think that Ben and Tracey would be okay with that.

What I Loved - work I have read and must share