Words Out - Lee Kofman in Neighbours

Melbourne kicks up a windy, lightning-striking, summer storm as I drive to meet Lee Kofman. The Bureau of Meteorology radar is a colour riot that matches the graffiti sidewall of Neighbours, Lee's local cafe in St Kilda.
Set on one corner of an intersection with a service station, a milk bar and a single-storey brick house, this is where Chapel St sighs. It's the rolling recovery from Richmond, South Yarra and Windsor, barely touched by the knockdown rebuild developers. Yet.
Just up the road from the cafe are terraces that remind me of houses my friends moved to in Carlton when we were at university. Back then I was a girl from Glen Waverley still stuck in suburbia and envied anyone living in these old houses with bohemian histories and character.
While I was coveting Victorian buildings, a much younger Lee was deifying cafes. Growing up in a provincial and religious town, they symbolised civilisation and urbanity - things to aspire to.
Now Lee comes to Neighbours two or three times a week to write. She hates first drafts and though she needs the quiet of home to edit, she's good at all sorts of procrastination when something needs to be started. Lee has a love-hate relationship with writing, but being served good coffee and food in a cafe certainly helps to take the work out of it.
Cafes are important to Lee as a writer and also as a person. Her work is often an exploration of something she's been thinking about, or a question she wants to try and answer, which has led her to write about the relationship between writers and cafes herself. She's excited telling me about the role cafes have played in history, as places where rebels have plotted (in Turkey and Persia) and as targets to be closed down by governments forcing control. In person Lee is the curious and a little bit mischievious character I'd imagined.
While it's not quite scheming or inciting rebellion, I admire Lee's writing for challenging how we think and for sharing what she finds on her personal journeys to understand. Taking this approach means that her work doesn't follow a linear structure, something I described as potential for mess when I wrote about 'The Dangerous Bride' last year. Apparently there were plenty of people that didn't share Lee's vision as she was writing, but she believes in authors that write from their personality - I found her branching and digging intelligent, well-linked and an approach that I've enjoyed in her short stories as well.
Her favourite favourite book ever (no, she's not afraid to say that there is one) has helped Lee to not be afraid of writing from her own experience. She's read 'The Master of Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov many times, in three different languages, and calls it the "epitome of a non-linear novel." Thanks Lee, another addition to my Must Read pile.

It's not surprising that Lee is someone who gets bored and has therefore escaped to write in plenty of cafes. She used to be a regular in a place in Port Melbourne (which I won't name) that had everything a cafe-writer needs - "comfortable couches and cushions, quiet, atmospheric music and an owner who is nice but not intrusive."
It's a balance that I too have found and lost, and I share her frustration with new owners and their need to change our special places. We discover that we also share a fierce love for Melbourne when Lee asks me about my own work. She remembers reading a piece I wrote about my relationship with Melbourne, and tells me about falling in love when she was living in Sydney and came here for the weekend. Taken straight from the bus station to Acland St, she had a first-sight-fall-hard hit.
Lee's love of Melbourne is matched with the enthusiasm she has for her work as a writing teacher and mentor. Some writers resent time they spend in other occupations, but though she doesn't give herself credit for the generosity and bravery in her own work, Lee finds other writers inspiring and courageous and loves working with them.
When I listen back to the time I spent talking with Lee there's laughter, rain and more of me talking than there should be. She's a natural mentor, and is kind but firm when she suggests that despite my passion for short stories (fiction), I should consider writing more creative non-fiction. It's an exciting area right now, and she believes there's strength when you write about what you know. "You should try it," she tells me. "I really think you should try it."
After Lee's left I notice that it's quiet. Most people have eaten and gone, the rain's stopped and it feels a bit like the schoolyard before the bell rings, because I'm thinking about all the things I might try to work on next. I think, "You should try it" might be a maxim that Lee applies to her own life as much as her writing and teaching, and I think it might be a little bit contagious.

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Words Out is a series of interviews with writers in the cafes they like to work in.  I'm making Melbourne's future literary map for tourists in the years to come.

Lee Kofman is a Russian-born Israeli-Australian author, writing teacher and mentor based in Melbourne. She published three fiction books in Hebrew, but since 2002 she has been writing exclusively in English and publishing short stories, creative non-fiction and poetry widely in Australia, Scotland, UK, USA and Canada.
Lee is the recipient of many literary awards. She judged several writing competitions, served as a member of the Varuna Fellowship Selection panel and organised several festival and conference panels, including the International Non-Fiction conference. Lee is the blogger-in-residence for Writers Victoria.
Lee's first book in English, the memoir 'The Dangerous Bride' about non-monogamy and migration, came out in October 2014 with MUP. Find more about it here.
Lee's written about 'The Master and Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov here.

Words Out - Nicole Hayes at Santucci's

Nicole Hayes is a writer, editor, tutor, talker, mother, wife and passionate Hawthorn supporter. I joined one of her creative writing workshop groups when I came back to Melbourne last year, and from the first session knew I was in the hands of a generous and talented guide. Like Shaun Levin (one of my tutors in London), she has that rare ability to listen, analyse and offer insightful critique to work after a quick first read.

Though a lot of her time is spent developing others, an important part of Nicole's routine is getting away from distractions to focus on her own writing, and she's been coming to Santucci's in Carnegie to do this a couple of times a week for about 6 years.

Unlike meeting Else Fitzgerald at Carolina, I didn't have any trouble finding Santucci's, but they certainly keep a low online profile. The family-owned cafe has been here for decades and has a homely quirk to it. The coffee machine is an important feature and there's bookshelf displays of old percolators and grinders, old lamps on the tables and pictures with a loose Italian theme hung in collaged groups - it all adds up to make a loungey, informal-dining vibe. And they make good coffee.

Nicole arrives with a load that would fail commercial airlines' weight limit for carry-on luggage, although she assures me she took this much when she flew to London last year for the inaugural Australia and New Zealand Festival of Literature & Arts. She carries a laptop for writing, piles of hardcopy for editing, and "just-in-case" files. Nicole's a busy person who values alone-time as a precious commodity that should be spent on her writing (guilt is a great motivator), so it's important that here there is no wifi and though the staff are friendly, they don't bother you when you're head down.

It's usually crowded so fortunately Nicole doesn't have a favourite table or chair, she just grabs a space and gets to work. When we're there the lunch crowd is as mixed up as the furniture, and it's loud. It's the sort of incoherent noise that cafe writers like Nicole love - she'd find it far more distracting to be in a quiet cafe where a private conversation would really carry. If she does get stuck, Nicole uses a freeform exercise to get her work moving, shared with Writers Victoria here.

And did I mention that the coffee's good?

There used to be couches and toy boxes at the front of Santucci's, and on Saturdays a woman sat at a window table and read tealeaves for free. One day the woman asked Nicole if she could do her reading. Maybe the scribbling in the notebook (pre-laptop days) gave it away, but she asked Nicole if she was 'the creative type? a writer?' and Nicole felt convinced this stranger could see a powerful creative spirit in her. After the ceremony, the woman told Nicole that she would definitely be published. That was some years ago and the woman has since moved away, but wouldn't it be lovely to tell her that she was right. Nicole's first novel, The Whole of My World, was published in 2013 and is the first book about AFL to feature a female fan (not groupie, football-loving-female). Since its publication she's been interviewed and joined panel discussions covering a broad range of topics - Dark issues in Young Adult fiction, role models for girls and young people, women writing (and loving) footy, and writing what you love.  Her second novel, One True Thing,  will be published in May and she's already set to take part in the Melbourne Writers Festival Schools' Program in August.

Nicole has said that she has to write about a subject or a theme that really matters to her. "And I have to be angry about it, too - an injustice or a crime - in order to maintain my focus." She's choosing important themes in her work and pushes her students to call on the same passion and purpose in their own writing.  Santucci's is one of her places for holding and harnessing that focus, and on the way out I realise that their quote of the day when we met is a fitting tribute - a message that could come from one of Nicole's students for how much she helps them - to a writer fast becoming the voice for "girls finding their way in traditionally masculine worlds."

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I'm with you. I love you not for what you have made of yourself but for what you are making of me. George Eliot

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Nicole Hayes is an author and writing teacher based in Melbourne. Her debut novel, The Whole of My World (Random House 2013), about family, friendship and football, was longlisted for the 2014 Gold Inky Award, and shortlisted for the 2014 Young Australians’ Best Book Award (YABBA). Her second novel, One True Thing, will be published by Random House in May. She has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing, and is nearing completion of a PhD at the University of Melbourne where she taught fiction and screenwriting for more than five years. She runs writing workshops for Australian Writers Centre and is the Creative Writing Facilitator at Phoenix Park Neighbourhood House. Previously, Nicole has lived in England, France, Japan, and Hawaii during her extensive travels before finding her way home to Melbourne. To find out more, visit her website: www.nicolehayesauthor.com or follow her on Twitter: @nichmelbourne.

Words Out is a series of interviews with writers in the cafes they like to work in.  I'm making Melbourne's future literary map for tourists in the years to come.

Words Out - Else Fitzgerald at Carolina

Else writes in Carolina, named after the Ryan Adams song, 'Oh My Sweet Carolina' at 11 Nicholson St, Brunswick East. Despite her warning that it was hard to find, and my google maps research, I had to call from Nicholson St for instructions. With the original business name still painted on the window glass it's a modest treasure. A bit like Else. Try finding her online and you'll get listings for Ella Fitzgerald or F. Scott Fitzgerald - not bad company to be associated with, and hopefully indicative of the respect this emerging writer will realise.
Else is welcomed with hugs from the staff when she arrives, like she’s part of this family, and it’s close. She works as well as writes here so it is sort of a second home, which Else things helps with her writing. She's comfortable and relaxed, it's a bit like being in her living room but without the distractions at home. There’s no wifi.

Enjoying an Earl Grey or a soy flat white, on warmer days she might use a table in the courtyard (with a power point nearby), but she’ll usually sit at the table in the front by the coffee machine looking out on Nicholson Street. An urban vista that certainly doesn’t appear in Else’s writing. Born and raised in East Gippsland, her stories are rooted in rural settings, characters and issues. Water is a key feature in each of her three published stories, and the influence of seasonality, drought and fire threads her work. Her writing is dense and carefully carved, so it’s not surprising that she spends a lot of time mulling and editing. You’re more likely to find her refining working in Carolina than developing something in its initial stages.

Unlike many café writers, Else doesn’t tend to steal too much from what's going on around her. Most of her characters have some foundation in someone she knows, usually from the dairy farming days, so you don’t need to worry about her eavesdropping. Anyone who knows my writing knows I am the exact opposite in this sense – the working title of my short story collection is ‘You are being watched’. Enough said.

We do however share a common inspiration: using music. The emotional response Else feels to songs will create the tone and mood of a story and she'll often have headphones on at her cafe table. It’s usually one song that she becomes obsessive about with each story - for ‘River’ it was ‘Youth’ by Daughter, which you can listen to below.

As well as the staff family, Else’s real family come to Carolina. Her mum lives locally and is also a writer - and the founder of Verandah. She often drops by, playing a key role in editing Else's work, and her sister comes in as well.  There’s no disparaging looks for taking up a whole table over a few hours, possibly because there are other artists working here, as in creating and as in on staff, including a painter and a graphic designer. It makes me look around wondering what other people might be up to while we're talking.

The following published stories have all spent some time in Carolina, and I can’t wait to read the current stories that are “pretty much finished but need editing.” If you happen to see Else working away at one of her tables, please don’t interrupt her for too long.

You can read Else's online portfolio of poetry and stories on Elsewhere

‘River’ won the Fiction first prize in the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers competition (2014) and is published in The Victorian Writer (Sept-Oct issue)

‘The Appearance Of Earth’ was published in Visible Ink vol.24 (2012)

‘A Body of Water’ was Commended in Elizabeth Jolley Prize (2011)

Words Out: a series of interviews with writers in the cafes they like to work in.  I'm making Melbourne's future literary map for tourists in the years to come.