Editors Victoria speaker events usually involve a single speaker, but the end-of-year event on 9 December 2021, “Celebrating EdVic writers”, featured three of our editors who are also creative and highly engaging published writers. The online teleconferencing event took the form of a simulated mini book fair.
Before starting the formal part of the event, EdVic President Stephanie Holt provided an overview of the key events and issues of 2021. She reflected on the challenges we have all faced, and highlighted that the evening’s event was a celebration of fine writing and an acknowledgement of the hard work of those who have continued to edit and write.
Stephanie, as the event moderator, introduced the three guests: Eugen Bacon, Christine Balint and Lyn Yeowart, each of whom gave a short introduction about themselves and read a selection of their work.
Much of the discussion that followed focused on how their experience as editors helped, hindered or influenced their experience of writing. While sometimes a hindrance, it also helped them to improve their work, as they could draw on their editorial skills to polish and refine structure and content. The style and genre of the writing also influenced the extent to which their experience as an editor contributed to the quality of their writing.
For example, Eugen said she finds writing poetry, short stories, non-fiction or novels each requires a different mindset and process— each has its unique merits, but one form can borrow from the strengths of another.
Lyn said it was an absolute delight to work with an editor and to have the time to shape and refine her work. She found the process supportive and appreciated her editor’s feedback and ideas.
Christine spoke about how her personal experience as a choral singer influenced her ability to write in depth about a church in Venice.
This led to a discussion about how their experiences of being in other geographical places influenced the depth and breadth of their writing. Each writer drew on a wide range of sources for their work, including film, fiction, non-fiction and the internet for specific detail or gaining a ‘feel’ for a certain place or time.
Given the quality of the event, in retrospect, it may have been better to have been scheduled earlier in the year, but we are planning to repeat the format and look forward to many more panel discussions.
Many thanks to Eugen, Christine and Lyn for their time, contributions and candid discussions about their work. Thanks also to Stephanie for her outstanding moderation, Marie for her initiative and willingness to test a new format, and the production team for their wonderful behind-the-scenes work.
We look forward to seeing you all through 2022 at our monthly speaker events online and, when possible, face-to-face.
Dr Eugen Bacon PhD, an African Australian, is a computer scientist who’s been mentally re-engineered into creative writing with a focus on black speculative fiction. Her published works include Danged black thing, Saving shadows and Road to Woop Woop and other stories. Eugen has won multiple awards here and overseas. Her creative work has appeared in literary and speculative fiction publications worldwide, including Award winning Australian writing, British Science Fiction Association’s Vector magazine, Fantasy magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, with Bloomsbury Publishing and The year’s best African speculative fiction.
Dr Christine Balint, PhD is an academic teaching English and creative writing at Melbourne University. Previously, Christine taught in the Graduate Writing Program at RMIT. Her two historical novels, The salt letters and Ophelia’s fan, were published to international acclaim in 1999 and 2004 respectively. Her new novella, Water music, published by Brio Books, won the Viva la Novella IX in 2021.
Lyn Yeowart is a professional writer and editor with more than 25 years of experience in writing and editing everything from captions for artworks to speeches for executives. Her debut novel, The silent listener, is a psychological thriller with themes of family trauma, identity and truth, and a protagonist who loves words. It has been shortlisted for the 2022 Indie Book awards in the Debut Fiction category and optioned for a screen adaptation.
The following poem by Eugen Bacon (with an illustration by Elena Betti), titled “An Earnest Blackness”, is taken from Saving shadows, published by NewCon Press 2021.
There’s an animal tacked in my hair, and it hangs like a mirror I can’t see.
It’s full of silence, shadows, asking are we caged, or free? Sometimes
It licks my skin but doesn’t disturb me. When I reach up to touch it,
I can’t remember where it is, if it is. Perhaps it’s more cunning
Than I thought, hiding its pawprints. Patiently waiting to
Catch me with reflections of ebony nights, white stars,
Burnt-orange dust. I know and I don’t, the hum of
Rain on a tin roof. The taste of my grandma’s
Sweetened mangoes—moulded like
A donkey’s ear plucked fresh from
A tree that’s a silhouette above
My mother’s bones.
The following extract is from Christine Balint’s new novella, Water music, published by Brio Books, which won the Viva la Novella IX in 2021.
Later, after she took me home and fed me, Mamma unwrapped the swaddling to inspect me; it was not unusual for a foundling to be missing a limb or a finger. When she lifted me into the air and saw that I was fully formed, an unevenly cut rectangle of parchment fluttered to the floor. My birth mother had left me with half a carefully painted windchart showing the direction of the sirocco wind blowing hot and dry from the Sahara Desert. It was the wind that brought rain and storms; in the south it could bring blood rain. In Venice at high tide, the sirocco wind would bring acqua alta and a feeling of unease. For herself, my real mother had kept the ponente, the direction of the sunset and the tramontane, the north wind and anything foreign or strange. If she ever came for me, I would know her by the perfect reunification of the windchart, the two halves slotting together with a barely discernible seam as though they had never been separated.
The following extract from The silent listener by Lyn Yeowart (published by Penguin Random House Australia, 2021) is from the novel’s prologue. It’s written from the point of view of the protagonist who loves everything to do with words, books and even grammar.
It’s a simple farmer’s belt. Wait – allow me to clarify. Not the belt of a simple farmer, but a simple belt that belongs to a farmer. Correction: belonged. Past tense, which tastes delicious on my tongue.
The belt is made of plain black leather, and has a silver buckle with a silver tongue.
That’s how they’d describe it in, say, a criminal trial. But that’s only its outward appearance. More accurate for the defence counsel to say, with much emphasising and gesticulating, “Yes members of the jury, just an ordinary, simple farmer’s belt. But allow me to tell you what you can’t see when you look at this belt. This belt is thirty-five years long and two children wide, and old blood leaks out of every hole. Children’s blood. Run your fingers down it, and feel not leather, but pain. Hold it up to your nose and smell not leather, but fear. Bend it and hear not leather creaking, but children screaming.”
The people in the gallery would gasp, and the jury members would shake their heads, appalled.
If it ever got to trial.
By Liz Atkinson
edvic.admin@iped-editors.org