It is in this constant back-and-forth between structural inequality and personal resistance which Evaristo locates her personal voice, rippling like a moonlit breeze through the eclipsed amphitheatre.
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“People just have to expect that students will sometimes have ‘way out’ views, but those views may ultimately become tomorrow’s orthodoxy, and students have to speak up and have to be involved.”
Tame writes of a life shaped by trauma, but by no means a life defined by it. Instead, a message of love, humour and connection — coexisting with, and overwhelming, the ongoing impacts of child sexual abuse and grooming — emerges.
Grant and I spoke about Country — the notion of a place which transcends something as simple as geography. It is who we are, it is everything that we are.
Zevin stressed to the audience that the best thing you can do for yourself is to get more comfortable in the creative place that is failure: “To be hopeful or positive in this world, at least for me, takes great intellectual effort.”
“In the modern era, many people have come up with hare-brained ideas about how to change the world around us, and more recently, to ‘settle’ new planets. I don’t know if that’s viable. But I think it’s the stuff of science fiction, rather than reality.”
“Ask yourself if you’d want to write even if a ray of light came out of the sky and said, ‘Nothing you write will ever be published.’ If the answer is yes, you’re a writer.”
“Asian Australians (and other racial minorities, for that matter), are then fed the idea that if we’re model citizens—if we’re successful, well-behaved, and grateful, then we’ll get to belong. But that’s not true, either.”
“As Australians, we’re all so accustomed to consuming culture about foreign places. I think reading stories set at home can be really powerful. It sort of gives us permission to think of our lives as worthy of artistic attention.”
Harper’s thrillers bridge the gap between commercial and literary because, in her own words, she is always asking of her characters: “What pressure are they under…what’s keeping them awake at night…what kind of family dynamic do they have?”