I’ve been thinking about writing a lot recently. Even more, perhaps, than is usual for a writer. There’s a few reasons – the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival is fast approaching, I have a children’s book out in a month or so, and I’ve recently had an Eureka moment with a novel I’ve been working on for – I kid you not – ten years. And then, of course, there’s my online forum – Verandah Magazine, which often features interviews with writers, or reviews of local books.

It’s also 30 years ago that I started my three-book series, Yacker – Australian Writers Talk About Their Work, published by Picador over a ten-year period during which time I interviewed 36 writers. The books were a critical success, and in the process of writing them, I learned much about the craft of writing, and what makes writers tick. Even now, decades later, I often hear their voices in my head – the succinct summing up a particular writerly condition.

Glenda Adams spoke of the “outcrop of shale” that requires attention; Helen Garner of the need of reviewers to “grant the writers their material”; David Malouf of the fact that Australia tends to pigeon-hole their writers, that in Germany there is “one word for a writer – ‘Dichter’, and it simply means writer”.

Author David Malouf. Photo: Conrad dal Villar.

For myself, what I’ve learned – and what I tell aspiring writers – is that at some point they will have to cross Mordor, the black volcanic plain in the Lord of Rings ruled over by Sauron, the chief Lieutenant of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. I also think of this place we have to go to as ‘The Swamp of Despair’ in The Never Ending Story, where anyone who touches the dark water is imbued with a sense of such hopelessness they simply want to lie down and die.

In other words, writing is not always easy – and when it comes to surviving these dark phases, all a writer has is the torch of imagination, and a cape of creativity – both of which seem to go missing at regular intervals.

So all this said, it was with great pleasure that I recently launched a new book of interviews with Australian writers by Bellingen based Annette Marfording – Celebrating Australian Writing – Conversations with Australian Authors – who has interviewed 21 Australian writers about their writing and work habits.

Marfording, who has been the program director of the relatively new Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival, is also a broadcaster at Bellingen’s community radio station 2BBB FM. Originally from Germany, Marfording emigrated to Australia, studying and working as a lawyer.  When she left her job as a legal academic and moved to Bellingen, it was initially in her role as a broadcaster that she began to be interested in the idea of collecting the interviews, and her interviewing talent combined with her passion for Australian writing makes this a deeply rewarding book.

In her introduction Marfording comments upon on what she believes is still wrong with Australia’s general attitude towards its writers, and specifically the inequities she believes are still at play. The space given to international writers in the press, for example, the tall poppy syndrome, the lack of attention given to small, independent presses, the amount of review space given to international authors in comparison to Australian writers, and so forth.

In the main of course, the writers themselves are not concerned so much with the level nature of the playing field, as with getting their work done, and all 21 one of them are eloquent on the subject of what is grist to their mill. With writers as diverse as David Malouf and Di Morrissey, or Robert Dessaix and Bryce Courtenay Marfording has chosen to talk to writers across the board, irrespective of perceived literary worth, and the book is the richer for it. Other writers include Cate Kennedy, Alex Miller, Georgia Blain and Michael Robotham – all varied voices on the subject of writing.

Annette Marfording: “I fell in love with Australian writing.”

The brilliant Robert Dessaix talks about the ‘coup de foudre’ – the thunderbolt of almost falling in love with a creative project; Cate Kennedy talks about the almost oppositional feeling of detachment at the end of a book once it’s done and dusted; Charlotte Wood speaks eloquently on the nature of writing about violence and abuse, and there is a knock-out interview with novelist and legal academic Larissa Behrendt who talks openly about the auto-biographical elements in her books, and the continuing difficulties facing Indigenous writers today. Working in Indigenous affairs, her writing she says: “Saves me…without being too dramatic about it, it kind of saves my life.”

One of the most fascinating interviews in the book is the one with David Malouf, and Annette’s story about how nervous she was to approach him, and how happy he was to say yes. I loved it at many levels, not least of which was because it was so fascinating to read Malouf talking about his work 30 years after my interview with him in Yacker. In that time of course, he has won almost every major literary prize there is to be won, is translated into dozens of languages and has cemented his place as one of the world’s great writers.

Apparently the perceived wisdom these days is that books of interviews don’t sell. I hope that is not the case – both for Marfording and also for the Indigenous literary Foundation of Australia, to which she has donated any profits from sales.

These are important interviews. They provide – as I hope the Yacker series once did – a framework for their time, and a reference for future lovers of Australian literature to go back to and to learn from.

I hope that here in the Northern Rivers, and in the North Coast where Marfording lives, the culture of writing is flourishing strongly enough with our festivals and writers centres, and the staggering amount of writers of all kinds that live in these areas, for us to be able to prove that Australian writing is alive, well, and more than that, flourishing. Marfording’s book is an important one and I am sure it will go on to have a life in the cultural world of Australia for a long time to come.

Annette Marfording’s book: Celebrating Australian Writing – Conversations with Australian Authors is available from Lulu www.lulu.com you can contact Annette on [email protected].  The book will be on sale at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival.

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