When Lisa Walker sent her heroine out on a pilgrimage to visit all the Big Things in the Northern Rivers and Queensland for her latest novel, it added a wonderfully irreverent twist to the idea of a sacred quest writes Candida Baker.

It’s not often that you get to meet a writer who knows how to build an igloo, but Lisa Walker, the author of the recently released Arkie’s Pilgrimage to the Next Big Thing, could, if push came to shove, rustle you up an igloo in less than a day.

“A small one,” she says, recalling her days as a guide for Wilderness Expeditions in the Snowy Mountains. “We used to take people skiing to the back country and we’d teach them snow skills experience. We could build an igloo and sleep in it for a couple of nights, and of course it’s much warmer than sleeping in a tent. It’s a half-day job for two or three people.”

There’s not much need for igloos in the Northern Rivers where Walker and her husband have lived for the past sixteen years, but Walker’s love of adventure and travel has stood her in good stead for creating the delightfully quirky Arkie, who sets out on a personal pilgrimage to find Australia’s ‘Big Things’.

“Mind you,” says Lisa, “Arkie doesn’t actually like adventure and camping, and I do, but she makes these decisions which lead to a life on the road, and she learns that she has to embrace her pilgrimage in order for it to teach her anything.”

Lisa Walker: “One of the things I do myself, and my characters do a lot of, is dreaming of places where you’re not.”

Walker, who is quickly becoming a writing hit with novels such as Liar Bird and Sex, Lies and Bonsai preceding Arkie’s Pilgrimage, begins the novel with a cliffhanger. Arkie is in Byron Bay on New Year’s Eve, her marriage and her career in ruins, and she has decided to throw herself under the next train into Byron Bay. Those of us who know the town well, will immediately spot the flaw in this plan. There is no train service in and out of Byron any longer, but Arkie hasn’t checked, and is sitting, waiting on the platform. Along comes the enigmatic Haruko who talks Arkie out of the suicide she wouldn’t have been able to commit anyway, and off the two set, partners in a wonderful Australian version of the classic pilgrimage.

One of the reasons that Arkie has decided to personally view as many Big Things as she can is that until recently, she herself was a trendspotter – someone who could spot the next big thing coming along a mile off, and alert the consumer market that it’s coming.

“I got the idea when I read an article about Li Edelkoort, the Dutch trendspotter who is the oracle behind Trend Union – a company that forecasts trends for retail industries,” says Walker. “She’s known to have amazing intuition. She consistently gets it right.”

But Arkie is in trouble. Bored in her marriage, she had an affair that ended badly, and she’s convinced that she’s lost, as well as her husband and lover, her mojo. Her husband has decided to divorce her, and has hired a divorce lawyer to pursue her and force her to accept the divorce papers, and Arkie is doing her absolute best to avoid them, whilst darting all over Queensland and Northern New South Wales, ticking off our fabulously tasteless Big Things – the Big Pineapple, The Big Prawn, The Big Macadamia etc. Japanese temples they are not, but it brings a wonderfully irreverent touch to the idea of the pilgrimage as a sacred journey.

As for the presence of Haruko in the novel, she serves many purposes. “I’ve been to Japan quite a few times in the past few years,” Walker says, “and I was really surprised by how wild and crazy the Japanese girls are. We have this idea that Japanese girls are very proper, but they’re not at all like that. We – the family – went for the skiing, but I fell in love with the culture. I did a temple tour as well, and loved it, and I’ve been back three or four times since then.”

Haruko is a cheerful character – inscrutable, with a great dress sense, and apparently not only sure of herself but happy to take on the somewhat hapless Arkie and re-instill her with a sense of self-worth. It becomes obvious as the novel progresses that theirs is an almost karmic connection, and much of the novel has a sense of unfolding destiny, which gives the narrative a layer of extra meaning. It isn’t often that fiction writers manage to combine the themes of comedy, philosophy and religion successfully, but Walker pulls it off.

“I watch the highway go by and ponder my situation. I am on the run from my husband’s divorce lawyer, my mojo is still missing in action and my demon ex-lover is lurking . . . But, all things considered, my pilgrimage is going well …”

Walker tells me that her next novel is about a girl living in Brisbane but with an obsession about Paris, and it occurs to me that obsession is a common occurrence in her books. Characters become fixated on other characters, or on places, or on an idea, and I wonder if she is at all obsessive in her personality. She laughs. “Just a bit,” she says. “One of the things I do myself, and my characters do a lot of, is dreaming about where you’re not. I dream about places, obsess about them, read travel books…in a way it’s like the writing process, except that by the time I’ve created this full-on picture of the place I’m obsessing about I don’t want to go there anymore – I’ve lost all interest!”

Despite having three books published over the past few years, Walker says that each book is a challenge. “People have said I’m prolific, but I don’t feel prolific,” she says. “I struggle to get my 1000 words a day done.” These days her wilderness experiences are a bit more mild than igloo-building – she works across the Northern Rivers as a Community Relations Ranger with National Parks and Wildlife. She and her husband and their two boys live in Lennox Head – within, as it turned out, easy reach of Arkie’s Big Things. “I did start out with much more ambitious ideas for her ‘pilgrimage’,” Walker says, “but in the end containing the journey made the book more manageable.”

I’m not going to give away whether Arkie discovers the meaning of life, recovers her mojo and repairs her marriage – you’ll have to take your own journey with the book to find out, but you won’t be disappointed.

Arkie’s Piligrimage to the Next Big Thing published by Bantam Australia, RRP $32.99, 368pp

See more at: randomhouse.lisa-walker/arkies-pilgrimage-to-the-next-big-thing

For more information on Lisa Walker go to: lisawalker

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From left to right: Lisa Walker, Jane Camens, Helen Burns and Jessie Cole

For the past ten years Jane Camens has lived in the Northern Rivers but her work has taken her all over Asia organizing the annual conferences for the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators conference.  This year, she writes, it’s taking place in the Philippines in October.

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to work from my home in the Northern Rivers and yet bring together writers—established and emerging— with literary translators, publishers, agents, and teachers of creative writing in different cities around Asia.

Last year, working with Singapore’s National Book Council, we held the event in that city’s grand old Parliament House, now called The Arts House. And I was delighted that, for the first time, writers from the Northern Rivers – Jessie Cole, Lisa Walker, Helen Burns and Victor Marsh— were able to be part of the event. They joined me with about 150 others from Asia and beyond, for four culturally fascinating – and fun – days.

Jessie Cole (author of Darkness on the Edge of Town and Deeper Water), wrote afterwards that it: ‘gave me my first international platform in which to share my work’ and that it was also ‘really lovely to be exposed to different works from around Asia.’

Lisa Walker, whose books to date include Archie’s Pilgrimage to the New Big Thing; Sex Lies and Bonsai, and Liar Bird, wrote: ‘Mixing with such an eclectic and talented group of writers from around the region is highly addictive.’ She chaired several panels, including one which asked what writers can do when their novel gets stuck. On the panel were Tim Tomlinson (co-founder of the New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing), Nury Vittachi, author and humorist from Hong Kong, and Filipino/Australian author Merlinda Bobis. Walker shared the hot tips: ‘Tim says read around the topic, Nury says set yourself a deadline and Merlinda says dance!’

Dance, sing, eat, drink and laugh is what the writers do, particularly at the social events and book launches, getting to know each other and the work of writers from around our greater geographical region. This year in the Philippines won’t be different, if I know my Filipino friends, our hosts, who are renowned for their ability to enjoy themselves.

Nury Vittachi, an author and humourist from Hong Kong at the APWT conference.

These events aren’t ‘conferences’ in the academic sense, although they started that way when APWT began as an initiative at Griffith University. Apart from panels on which writers talk to themes relevant to their writing, there are readings, chances for writers to launch new books (some of them self published), and master classes in writing and editing workshops with mentors from some of the best creative writing schools in the world.

Many of the same people, and a lot of newcomers, register each year. Not only have friendships developed but also the writers offer each other new platforms to promote their work. It’s not unusual, for instance, for invitations to come in afterwards for attendees to appear in festivals in India, Tahiti, Indonesia and even the World Literature Festival in the UK.

Some of the authors I know are coming this year include Sri Lankan born author Romesh Gunesekera (curtsey of the British Council); Robin Hemley who runs NonFiction Now (an initiative of the Creative Non Fiction at the University of Iowa); Xu Xi who started the low residency MFA in Creative Writing at City University Hong Kong (in which some writers from the Northern Rivers have enrolled); Dai Fan who runs an English language creative writing unit in China; Nick Jose who is one of Australia’s foremost spokespeople on engagement with Asia, and Filipino-Australian author and performer Merlinda Bobis. It’s possible that you haven’t heard of these authors, but that is the point. APWT brings the literatures of Asia and the Pacific to wider readerships. The Australian book market is comparatively very small; not big enough to support many fulltime writers. (The slogan of the APWT, and our new online magazine LEAP Plus—developed with the help of the Verandah Magazine team—is ‘Taking Writers Further’.)

I do this because it’s a passion of mine. I lived in parts of Greater China (Hong Kong, Shanghai and Macau) for around 15 years and felt isolated from a writing and English-language publishing culture until, with Nury Vittachi, I started Asia’s first annual literary festival that showcased writing (in English) from and about Asia. The Asian literary scene has changed hugely since 2001 when that first festival was run. Now, literary agents and publishers are keen to hear the voices of Asian writers with new ways of showing us the world we live in.

Most people who come to APWT conferences organize their own funding, either through universities, arts bodies, or they self fund. I can apply for limited funding from the Arts Council, the Copyright Agency Ltd, and sometimes the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which together last year paid for about 11 Australians to go to Singapore. I ask for funding for a range of authors, always including one or more indigenous Australian authors, Asian-Australian writers, and writers whose work speaks of engagement with Asia.

APWT’s conference this year is titled ‘Against the Grain: Dissidence, Dissonance, and Difference in Asia-Pacific Writing and Translation’, and will take place in Manilla between October 22-25. It will be hosted by several of the universities, and will be led by the University of the Philippines and the Book Council.

Details of the event will be available on the APWT website soon after my return. (apwriters)A teaser about the event is up on LEAP+: leap-plus.com/manila

If you’re interested in what happened at our conference last year in Singapore, there’s a wrap up of the conference on our website here:  apwriterswrap.up.

Jane Camens is Executive Director of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators. She is currently co-editing an issue of Griffith Review entitled ‘New Asia’, published in August this year.

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