Events

Lunchtime Bite: What Can Writers Learn from Magicians?, Writers Victoria, online, April 19 2024

A magic trick is an intricate narrative with a beginning, middle and end teeming with tension, conflict and point of view, set ups, and pay offs. In this session, we will explore writing through the magician’s lens, understanding the elements of a story as the many moving parts needed to create an entertaining and engaging illusion.

Australasian Association of Writing Programs 28th Annual Conference: We Need to Talk, presenting at Panel 9 session, A way of discovering: How artworks represented in fiction can reflect a character’s state of mind, in-person, December 1 2023

Abstract: This presentation will offer insights into the development of my work in progress A Lot Like Joy. A short story cycle using multiple first-person perspectives and informed by the artworks and recorded details of Australian modernist artist Joy Hester (1920—1960), A Lot Like Joy explores three women’s interconnected lives and experiences of isolation caused by trauma. The discussion will examine how artists and artworks can be represented in direct and indirect ways in fiction to create a foundation of knowledge so that even a reader unfamiliar with the artist or their work can enjoy the intricacies of the artwork within the context of central themes and issues in the short stories. I will refer to what A. S. Byatt (2001: 10) describes as ‘invisible things’: things that define character, such as a painting, positioned within a narrative, that reflects the values, attitudes and ‘thought processes’ of a character, exposing their innermost fears or reflecting their ‘attractions’ or ‘repulsions’. I will discuss Byatt’s (ibid: 71) suggestion that sometimes in fiction ‘portraits are a way of discovering […] they are mirrors in which […] identity is reflected’, and how, in this way, a painting represented in fiction can serve as a measure of the protagonist’s ‘state of mind’ (Fishwick 2004: 56). Drawing on Byatt’s essay Portraits in Fiction (2001) alongside her short story cycle The Matisse Stories (1993), my presentation will illuminate the creative choices made regarding the purpose and presence of Hester’s artworks throughout A Lot Like Joy.

Live Write, hosting Writers Victoria’s online writers group, August 4 2023

Live Write, hosting Writers Victoria’s online writers group, July 21 2023

16th International Conference of the Short Story in English, presenting at the ‘The Short Story and the Aesthetics of Narration’ session, A Lot Like Joy: Fractured fragments represented within a composite narrative, in-person, June 21 2023

Abstract: This presentation focuses my (work in progress) short story cycle, A Lot Like Joy: a fractured narrative using multiple first-person perspectives. The cycle explores three women’s interconnected lives and experiences of isolation caused by trauma including sexualised violence, emotional neglect, and difficult experiences of motherhood. I will offer analyses of narrative devices used by authors of epistolary fiction and discuss how such devices, including fragmentation, fracturing, fantasy of presence and the communion of correspondence, have shaped my understanding of how to represent a character’s evolving thought processes and emotional wellbeing over time, and in different relational contexts, throughout a short story cycle. I refer to the ideas of leading scholar of epistolary fiction, Janet G. Altman among others. Altman (1982: 167), describes epistolary composition in terms which suggest an affinity between epistolary fiction and the short story cycle: ‘each individual letter enters into the composition of the whole without losing its identity as a separate entity with recognisable borders’. The work of researchers like Altman informs my approach to depicting damaged or unstable relationships using epistolary modes throughout my work in progress. This presentation includes a reading of A Lot Like Joy and an analysis of the theoretical ideas that inform the development of my manuscript.

Swinburne University O-Week Literary Panel, online, February 2021

Australasian Association of Writing Programs 25th Annual Conference: Rising Tides, speaker at the ‘Encroachments’ session, A Lot Like Joy: Capturing women’s individual and collective experiences of isolation through the short story cycle, online, November 2020

Abstract: This presentation focuses my short story cycle, A Lot Like Joy: a fractured narrative in multiple first-person perspectives. The cycle includes three stories, exploring three women’s differing experiences of isolation caused by trauma including sexual violence, emotional neglect, and difficult experiences of motherhood. I take an interest in the thinking of Philip Heldrich who identifies similarities in composition between cubist paintings and short story cycles. This approach assisted me in my creative problem solving throughout the development of A Lot Like Joy. In particular Heldrich’s ideas about metonymy, described as the ‘touching’ of textual elements, enabled me to reframe my understanding of the disparate parts of my fractured narrative. It allowed me to see the evolving narrative as a composite picture: a shared pattern of experience, rather than a pattern of disjuncture.

Swinburne University Writers’ Festival ‘ZINES’ Panel, May 2017