NEWS & DIARY
ANNOUNCEMENTS
VARUNA/SCRIBE SHORT STORY COMPETITION SHORTLIST
This is the first program in which Varuna has explored what’s happening in the short story in Australia – and as we suspected, we kept making new and exciting discoveries.
It all started with Scribe’s New Australian Stories. This is an astonishingly rich collection: you can keep going back to it, always finding something new, always finding a new way to read a story that you’d thought was familiar. A short story can be an aria, a glimpse, a freeze-frame, a dance: writers can –and do– go anywhere with the short story.
When Aviva Tuffield of Scribe announced a second collection of short stories –New Australian Stories 2– we were thrilled to partner Scribe in this competition –1) to shortlist some fantastic stories for possible inclusion in New Australian Stories 2, and 2) to explore and listen to the range of voices working so skilfully in this perennially fresh medium.
The shortlisted stories are wonderful, and wonderfully varied. By no means are these shortlisted stories the only stories or writers that have voice and song –indeed, there is voice and song and promise and excitement in the majority of stories submitted. Sometimes a story can be radiant with promise, but not yet at concert pitch: one of the joys of short fiction is that it’s possible to reconceive, to rewrite, to work it again to get it to that point where yes, it sings.
These are the stories that Aviva is reading for New Australian Stories 2:
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Clare Aman |
“Love me Tender” |
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Jewelene Barrile |
“The Geometry Lesson” |
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Peter Barry |
“The Gesture” |
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Penelope Chai |
“Mina” |
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Angharad Dalton |
“Catching an Angel” |
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Louise D’Arcy |
“The Fountain” |
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Sonia Dechian |
“The Cats of Unspeakable Kindness” |
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Danielle de Valera |
“No Through Road” |
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Adrienne Ferreira |
“The White Gloves” |
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Peter Fraser |
“Meeting Henry Bech” |
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Anne Jenner |
“The Way We Wed” |
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Boris Kelly |
“Mow” |
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Georgina Luck |
“Paul’s First Day” |
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Suzanne McCourt |
“Keating’s Girlfriend”; |
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Kerrie McCure |
“Click” |
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Jane McGown |
“The Witches of Siqidjor” |
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Sarah Michell |
“Going Without” |
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Jennifer Mills |
“Moth” |
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Favel Parrett |
“The Little Kingfisher” |
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Joanne Riccioni |
“Can’t take the country out of the Boy” |
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Laurie Steed |
“Girls up the Back” |
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Annette Trevitt |
“My Uncle” |
Our warmest congratulations to the shortlisted writers.
NEW ALUMNI WEBSITE SECTION
We'd like to extend a huge thank you to Charlotte Wood for many years of
dedicated service as Varuna's Alumni Website Manager. Charlotte has
distinguished herself in having built the website into the impressive
writers' resource it is today, and it is hoped that her efforts will now
find a wider appreciative audience. As of this month the Alumni
website, hitherto a members only site, has gone public! Take a look here.Tessa Hockly - Varuna’s executive director.
PENGUIN VARUNA WINNERS
In consultation with Penguin, we've decided to defer the announcement of the Penguin/Varuna Scholarship until October 30.
This is the first year we've run the Penguin/Varuna Scholarship as an application program. We were wonderfully surprised by the response of 560 submissions, and wholly delighted with the range and quality of the shortlist of 30 we were able to deliver to Penguin, after a very full an interesting month of reading and pondering for the Creative Team.
The extended deadline allows Penguin editors to have the option of asking for more of a writer’s work, as a clearer choice is often more possible when the extent of the work can be seen. In the interests of providing the best possible environment for each project to be fully considered before making this very important award, we've agreed with Penguin that the announcement date will now be October 30.
We're thrilled that the winner of the first Penguin/Varuna Scholarship, Shirley Walker, has so honoured the Scholarship with her beautiful book The Ghost at the Wedding, and that she's gone on to win the excitingly contested Nita Kibble Award, and is now shortlisted in the Non-Fiction category of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
PETER BISHOP
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
VARUNA -THE WRITERS' HOUSE
THE BYRON BAY WRITERS FESTIVAL UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARDS
There are five most impressive manuscripts in the running for the second year of the Byron Bay Writers Festival Unpublished Manuscript Awards. This has been a wonderful year for the writers of regional NSW, with two writers, Maris Morton and Shirley Walker, taking out major national awards, and another, Tracey Sorensen, winning the Penguin/Varuna Scholarship. Join us in the Chat Room of the Festival at 9.45 am Sunday 8th August to find out which three are to be declared official winners. The three writers will be talking with Varuna’s Creative Director Peter Bishop and reading from their work.
BILL LANE THE HORSES
(Northern Rivers)
SIMON LUCKHURST THE WALKING WOUNDED
(South Coast)
RYAN O’NEILL COLLECTED STORIES, AND OTHER STORIES
(Hunter)
JANE SKELTON THE EARTH EATERS
(Blue Mountains)
LISA WALKER THE GREATEST CHILD FAILURE IN HISTORY
(Northern Rivers)
The Varuna Creative Team – Carol Major, Helen Barnes-Bulley and Peter Bishop – had a marvellous time reading the manuscripts and could enthuse about them for hours – but here are some brief comments:
BILL LANE: THE HORSES
This is a novel that occupies with beautiful unease a world where the real is surreal. It’s the world of a boarding school, and we’d like to think that boarding schools were never and could never be anything remotely like this…Resonant and mysterious and wonderful.
SIMON LUCKHURST: THE WALKING WOUNDED
A novel about grief and loss could be heavy –but this one is infinitely touching, full of humour and affection, and the first person narration is a model of tact.
JANE SKELTON: THE EARTH EATERS
Haunting and spare, this novel explores the relationship of two sisters in outback Queensland, and the battle between the demanding and daunting country and the people who inhabit it. There’s a gothic and carnival-like atmosphere here that is provocative and intriguing.
RYAN O’NEILL: COLLECTED STORIES, AND OTHER STORIES
Ryan’s title takes us right into his sense of play and adventure. If you said to Ryan: of course, no-one could write a story using only the Broken Hill Telephone Directory –he’d be thinking about it long into the night. And he’d find a way. And it would be a story to make you smile.
LISA WALKER: THE GREATEST CHILD FAILURE IN HISTORY
We’ve known Lisa’s work for some years, and last year her novel Liar Bird was selected for the HarperCollins Varuna Awards for Manuscript Development. Lisa is growing novel by novel into her own sure voice: deft, entertaining and at once friendly, engaging and thought provoking for readers.
Our heartiest congratulations to these five wonderful writers.
Varuna Creative Team
LAUNCHING FIVE NEW PICARO TITLES
Poetry has the power of prayer and is that place in language where we are most human. –Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate
Picaro Press, the Byron Bay Writers Festival, Varuna – The Writers' House and the poets of Australia are doing something special. A national anthology of poems, The Green Fuse, edited by Carmel Williams, and four 28-page collections of poems will be launched at Poetry Night at the Byron Bay Writers Festival, Friday 6th August in the SCU Room, Byron Bay Community Centre, at 7.30 pm.
Carmel Williams has had a joyous time editing the anthology she has titled The Green Fuse. It’s a reference, of course, to Dylan Thomas’ poem The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower – and for Carmel it symbolises the raw, elemental powers and movements that poets work with. She found plenty of green fuse among the poets who so generously submitted: there are 46 poets represented in the anthology, and there are many more poems from the 46 and from the 40 not able to be included that are alive with it.
What Carmel has done is create an anthology where the individual poems talk to each other, and the reader has the feeling of joining in an exhilarating and enthralling conversation.
Carmel Williams came to Varuna’s attention through the Macquarie Group Foundation LongLines Program. With fellow Alice Springs poets Meg Mooney and Michael Watts, she was invited to read at the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2006. Her work is represented in the three wonderful anthologies of Central Australian writing published by Ptilotus Press – Living Room, The Milk in the Sky, and Fishtails in the Dust. Picaro Press are hoping to publish her first collection in 2011.
The 46 poets included in this inaugural Byron Bay Writers Festival anthology are:
Ursula Beaumont (SA), Kathryn Boorman (NSW), Catherine Camden-Pratt (NSW), Monica Carroll (ACT), Anne Carson (Vic), Louise Carter (NSW), Emilie Collyer (Vic), Koraly Dimitriades (Vic), Rebecca Edwards (SA), Susan Fealy (Vic), SJ Finn (Vic), Stephanie Green (Qld), Kathy Hale (NSW), Peter Hall (NSW), Diana Harley (NSW), Barbara Hatten (NSW), Susan Hawthorne (Qld), Noelle Janaczewska (NSW), Leah Kaminsky (Vic), Karen Knight (Tas), Rasata Knight (NSW), Christopher Konrad (WA), Jeri Kroll (SA), Marjorie Lewis-Jones (NSW), Debbie Lim (NSW), Radhiks Mecredy (NSW), Peter Mitchell (NSW), Meg Mooney (NT), Bob Morrow (Vic), Trudie Murrell (Qld), Paul Nolan (NSW), Colleen Reddy (Qld), Kathryn Riding (NSW), Kristen Roberts (ACT), Matt Roberts (ACT), Max Ryan (NSW), Megan Schaffner (Tas), Leni Shilton (NT), Laura Jan Shore (NSW), Benjamin Smith (Vic), Diana Solomon (Qld), Garth Tohmas (NSW), Ray Tyndale (SA), Kelly Watson (NSW), Gemma White (Vic), Jessica Wilkinson (Vic).
A copy of The Green Fuse will be sent, courtesy of the generosity of Picaro Press, to each poet who submitted for the program.
Originally, two 28-page single-author collections were to be published by Picaro for the Festival –one by a NSW LitLink poet and one by a poet from anywhere in Australia. In the event, Picaro – and once again we thank their enthusiasm and generosity– is publishing four single-author collections:
DAEL ALLISON (Hunter, NSW)
NANDI CHINNA (Perth, WA)
MEG MOONEY (Alice Springs, NT)
MAX RYAN (Northern Rivers, NSW)
These four were selected from a shortlist of eight, which in turn was distilled from a long shortlist of over 30. There are so many exciting short collections awaiting publication!
Each of these four takes the reader on a journey. Each of them says: come with me and I’ll show you something astonishing – fragile, touching, entirely unexpected. Each one reminds us constantly that poetry is that place in language where we are most human.
Dael Allison and Max Ryan will be at the Poetry Night to introduce these outstanding collections.
Anthology and chapbooks will be on sale at the Byron Bay Writers Festival for the very special price of $35. Individual copies of the anthology will be available for $15, and each chapbook is $5. Copies of any or all may be ordered at these prices from Picaro Press:
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PENGUIN VARUNA SCHOLARSHIP 2010 SHORTLIST
We’re thrilled to announce the shortlist for the Penguin/Varuna Scholarship. We always knew we would receive a wide and striking range of applications but we were totally surprised by the number of applications received –560! The Varuna Creative Team devoted the month to careful and considered and often excited reading and the result is a shortlist of remarkable projects. As always, the shortlist could have been longer –and there are many projects that we hope to see again later in the year for the HarperCollins Varuna Awards for Manuscript Development and the Varuna Publisher Fellowships. That’s 37 more valuable professional development places available for writers. Opportunities also exist to further develop your work via Varuna’s Writing Development Program or a Varuna Professional Development Residency.
The Penguin/Varuna Scholarship was originally instituted to bring the marvellous range of Australia’s regional writers to Penguin’s editorial desks. The first winner was Shirley Walker, from the Northern Rivers of NSW –and her book The Ghost at the Wedding, published in 2009, recently won the Nita Kibble Prize. We’re keeping the strong emphasis on regional writers, and it’s a great pleasure to note that of the 30 writers on the present shortlist, 17 meet our definition of regional. Our thanks to all writers for your wonderful response to this opportunity –and a smile for the Penguin editors who won’t have any spare time for a while but will think back on the time of reading and choosing as a really exciting time.
For a Penguin Varuna Scholarship essay from the shortlisting committee, click here.
Naomi Bailey (Vic) “A Guide to Bird Watching in Bad Weather”
Stephen Bills (SA) “You Don’t Know Jack”
Gillian Britton (SA) “Secret Grace”
Diana Brown (ACT) “Core Sample”
Robyn Cadwallader (NSW regional) “The Anchoress”
Felicity Carter (NSW) “Marco and The Skull”
Felicity Castagna (NSW regional) “The Incredible Here and Now”
Keryn Clark (WA) “Bloom”
Sonja Dechian (Vic) “The Museum of Paper and Wires”
Jane Dickenson (Vic) “The Story of Being Here”
Robert Dielenberg (NSW regional) “Stargazer”
Annah Faulkner (Qld) “Never Let her Go”
S.J. Finn (Vic) “Moral Inconvenience”
Michael Fitzgerald (NSW) “The Pacific Room”
Margaret Geddes (Vic) “nicklives.com”
Kristen Hilton (Vic) “In the Shadows”
Richard Holt (Vic) “The Rainbow Orrery”
Sally-Ann Jones (WA) “Stella’s Sea”
William Lane (NSW regional) “Over The Water”
Suzanne Leal (NSW) “Eulogy”
Angie Oakley (Qld) “The Stretcher Bearer”
Maria Papas (WA) “Familiar Places”
Lynne Parsonage (NSW regional) “Society of Souls”
Clare Strahan (Vic) “Cracked”
Alison Stewart (NSW) “Cold Stone Soup”
Tangea Tansley (WA) “A Line in the Sand”
Lucy Treloar (Vic) “Sometimes in Life”
Polly Valentine (WA) “Sugar”
Elizabeth Ward (ACT) “The Australian Legend”
Greg Woodland (NSW regional) “Pangs”
BYRON BAY WRITERS FESTIVAL VARUNA PICARO PRESS POETRY ANTHOLOGY SELECTIONS
When faced with a group of 326 poems from some 76 writers, its worth considering what you believe to be the potential of poetry. New voices and new poems are that potential. The only task more difficult than choosing poems for an anthology is to choose one winner from amongst such a selection, so, thanks to Varuna and Picaro Press, a much greater number of excellent voices can be acknowledged.
The following writers have had poems selected for the Anthology but it must be said that the standard of entries was very high and a number of poets missed out by a sliver. It is an exciting collection of poems for all to enjoy.
Kathryn Boorman NSW
Catherine Camden Pratt NSW
Monica Carroll ACT
Anne Carson VIC
Louise Carter NSW
Emilie Collyer VIC
Koraly Dimitriadis VIC
Rebecca Edwards SA
Susan Fealy VIC
S J Finn VIC
Stephanie Green QLD
Kathy Hale NSW
Peter Hall NSW
Diana Harley NSW
Barbara Hatten NSW
Susan Hawthorne QLD
Noelle Janaczewska NSW
Leah Kaminsky VIC
Karen Knight TAS
Rasata Knight NSW
Christopher Konrad WA
Jeri Kroll SA
Marjorie Lewis-Jones NSW
Debbie lim NSW
Radhika Mecredy NSW
Peter Mictchell NSW
Meg Mooney NT
Bob Morrow VIC
Trudie Murrell QLD
Paul Nolan NSW
Colleen Reddy QLD
Kathryn Riding NSW
Kristen Roberts ACT
Matt Roberts WA
Max Ryan NSW (two submissions)
Megan Schaffner TAS
Leni Shilton NT
Laura Jan Shore NSW
Benjamin Smith VIC
Diana Solomon NSW
Garth Tohmas NSW
Ray Tyndale SA
Kelly Watson NSW
Gemma White VIC
Jessica Wilkinson VIC
PICARO SINGLE AUTHOR COLLECTIONS - WINNERS
Picaro would love to have been able to publish all eight single-author collections – but in the event have extended their service to Australian poetry to choose four instead of the promised two: thank you Picaro! And the winners are:
DAEL ALLISON (Hunter, NSW)
NANDI CHINNA (WA)
MEG MOONEY (Alice Springs, NT)
MAX RYAN (Northern Rivers, NSW)
These four collections present a most exciting range of voice and thought and presence.
Carmel Williams is presently completing work on the Byron Bay Writers Festival Picaro Anthology, and we’ll have more news on this and on how you can purchase your copies very soon!
Poetry Night at the Byron Bay Festival will be a fabulous celebration of poets and poetry, and the official birth of a most exciting three-way partnership – Picaro, Byron Bay Writers Festival and Varuna –The Writers’ House.
PICARO SINGLE AUTHOR COLLECTIONS - SHORTLIST
What we’ve learned from this program is that there’s an absolutely astonishing range of 28-page poetry manuscripts on offer. Reading through 60 has been an enthralling experience. Making a shortlist – well, how to begin? Each of the 60 had some claim to a place…
The shortest shortlist we could come up with had 22 manuscripts in it, and we felt that was being unfair to at least 10 others. What’s the real difference between 4 and 4-and-a-half stars?
These are the 8 that we’re sending to Picaro Press – a list full of the enchanting, the strange, the joyously unexpected. And how joyous it is to be able to say quite definitely that we could have quadrupled this list…
DAEL ALLISON (Hunter, NSW)
NANDI CHINNA (WA)
SUSAN McCREERY (South Coast, NSW)
RACHAEL MEAD (SA)
MEG MOONEY (Alice Springs, NT)
MAX RYAN (Northern Rivers, NSW)
LENI SHILTON (Alice Springs, NT)
JESSICA WILKINSON (Victoria)
VARUNA GARDEN DAY
Fifteen volunteers participated in the Autumn Garden Day on Sunday May 23 and great progress was made in restoring the garden. Some volunteers elected to come regularly and so there is now an ongoing Garden Morning on the 1st & 3rd Mondays of each month. Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Varuna: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . For photos of May 23 Garden Day, click here.NSW LITLINK RESULTS
The Creative Team has had a wonderful time exploring the many worlds of the many writers of regional NSW. For the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival LitLink Unpublished Manuscript Awards we have created a shortlist of five, from which the Byron Bay readers will select the final three. These are all manuscripts of exceptional quality, sure in the creation of a particular and often startling world, with the skill necessary to draw readers into that world and to keep them there, enthralled.
Three of the shortlisted writers will win Varuna residencies, and the two runners-up will receive readings and consultations. The winners will be announced at the Byron Bay Writers Festival in August.
For the Readings and Consultations we have selected outstanding works in progress – and for the LitLink Varuna residencies also – the range, strength and imaginative vitality of LitLink writers is hugely impressive.
LitLink writers are always prominent in Varuna shortlists, and it’s exciting to think how many major awards have recently been won by LitLink writers – the CAL Scribe Fiction prize (Maris Morton, Northern Rivers), the Penguin/Varuna Scholarship 2008 (Shirley Walker, Northern Rivers), and the Penguin/Varuna Scholarship 2009 (Tracy Sorensen, Central West).
BYRON BAY WRITERS FESTIVAL LITLINK UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARDS SHORTLIST
In July the Varuna Creative Team and the Byron Bay readers will give you a preview of these five very exciting manuscripts.
BILL LANE THE HORSES
(Northern Rivers)
SIMON LUCKHURST THE WALKING WOUNDED
(South Coast)
RYAN O’NEILL COLLECTED STORIES, AND OTHER STORIES
(Hunter)
JANE SKELTON THE EARTH EATERS
(Blue Mountains)
LISA WALKER THE GREATEST CHILD FAILURE IN HISTORY
(Northern Rivers)
LITLINK READINGS AND CONSULTATIONS
Each of these writers will have an hour’s consultation with a member of Varuna’s Creative Team, based on a reading of a full manuscript.
HALE ADESAL
PETER FRASER
JIM HEARN
CAROLYN NOCK
BETSY ROBERTS
JACQUELINE WINN
LITLINK VARUNA RESIDENCIES
Each of these writers will receive a two-week residency, with consultations with the Varuna Creative Team.
CLAIRE AMAN
LYNNE PARSONAGE