Authors made a real impact in Canberra last week, when they spoke at the Senate Inquiry into the Productivity Commission report. Most notable of all was Anna Funder. The clip of her opening statement went viral and has been watched by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Also, Sharon Stone called her a Badass, which made me jealous.
I've never had a very large garden, but I've always been into gardening. I'm doing some writing for Laak Boorndap and truly, it's an inspirational project. One of the groups involved in Laak Borndap is Superbloom, so I was delighted to see that they're doing a bed by the main entrance of the Abbotsford Convent, where I have my office, so I'll get to see it everyday.
I wrote a short article for the (fabulous) Wildnerness.org.au on my series of kids books. For those who don't know them they're called Tippy & Jelly Bean, Flipper & Finnegan and Mango & Hopscotch. They are excellent books, put together by a team of us: Anil Tortop (illustrator), Susannah Chambers (publisher) and moi. Read about them here.
This is the first blog in what I hope will be a regular series. The problem with being a freelancer is that I'm always working on a dozen different things at once and I'm often asked what I do. It's a fair question. Frankly, I'm all over the shop. So, here's a list of some of the things I'm currently doing.
Australian Society of Authors: I'm currently chair of the board of the ASA, though not for much longer. It's been a busy few years, we've done amazing work and I'm proud to be a part of it. I'll write a separate post sometime listing the various campaigns we've been involved in lately, but the most significant issue for us has been the development of AI and the suggestion that there should be legislation to allow for TDM (text and data mining) exceptions for tech companies developing this technology.
Copyright Agency: I'm a non executive director of the Copyright Agency, which is a fancy way of saying I sit on the board. Much of the work of that organisation overlaps with the work of the ASA. It's a tough time for copyright, which also means I couldn't think of a more interesting time to do this work.
Workshops: I'm developing a series of writing workshops, to be held at the Abbotsford Convent next year. I've become allergic to Zoom — a condition for which there is no treatment — so as much as is humanly possible, I plan to teach in person rather than online. I'm also allergic to Power Point. Another untreatable condition. As a teacher I encourage students to trust their instincts, take risks, and engage with questions of ethics, sustainable practice (writing is a mental health risk) and craft. The aim is to support students in developing work that is both technically strong and deeply personal. My workshops will focus on creative process rather than being constrained or intimidated by (demoralising) publishing trends. I want students to connect with their own voice and to write the book they need to write. I want to us all to enjoy the process rather than focusing on the end point (publication, deals, awards etc). More on this workshop series, and other teaching I'll be doing next year, in another post.
Writing Books: I've written ten books am currently writing three more. The three books I'm writing are:
My novel 'The Whole Earth Catalogue', is an intergenerational saga, set against the backdrop of climate collapse/change. It begins in 2018 and finishes around 2118. There are a lot of trees in this book, which started as a nonfiction book about forests, but morphed into something else, as things do. It's about half finished and I hope to have it finished in the next 9 months.
'How to Write a Life': a mashup of a writing guide and memoir. Very much in the early days of development but I plan to share unpublished sections of it with interested students/people who subscribe to Trees-Stories.
‘A Story in Twenty Trees’ is a book-length work of creative nonfiction that explores the entangled histories of Eucalyptus trees and Linnaean taxonomy. It examines how the act of naming has historically functioned as a tool of colonial possession. Each chapter centres on a different species of Eucalyptus, selected in order of European ‘discovery’, to trace the unfolding of dispossession, scientific classification, ecological change, and cultural memory.The project began as an 8,000-word essay written during my 2023–24 Miegunyah Writing Fellowship.
Art Installation: I've been working on my visual arts skills over the last ten years or so. This is more a personal practice than a public one, but I have been developing some ideas which have broader application. The one of these that is developed enough to mention publicly is (working title) the Future Library. Inspired by Oslo’s Future Library, the Australian National University’s Xylarium,and tiny museums and lesser-known community archives I've seen around the world, the project will be an artistic expression of ethical responsibility. My ultimate ambition for the library would be that it also include the planting and maintenance of a small forest as is the case with the Future Library.This long-term art installation merges my interest in literature, art and ecology. I see the library as having two iterations, a pop up space (or caravan?), and a built room in which every thing in it could be defined as an artwork including the bookshelves and the reading chairs that will furnish the space, and sit alongside a curated and evolving collection of environmental books. If funding allows, I will also commission a series of handmade books on an annual basis — bespoke, hand-printed volumes by artists, writers and thinkers responding to our environmental crisis. Everything created in and for the library is to be a response to the historical era of climate collapse — and, I hope, restoration — we are living through.
That's enough for one post! Thanks for reading.
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