'The Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2011'

The Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror, 2011

Aurealis judges recently stated that it was an epic year for Australian short fiction, so it's a privilege to have a story nestled among the wonderful writers listed in this Ticonderoga collection. I can't wait to read it myself! 

Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene should be congratulated on the challenging task of compiling 32 stories and poems.

The contents are:

• Peter M Ball "Briar Day" (Moonlight Tuber)
• Lee Battersby "Europe After The Rain" (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Deborah Biancotti "Bad Power" (Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Jenny Blackford "The Head in the Goatskin Bag" (Kaleidotrope)
• Simon Brown "Thin Air" (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• David Conyers and David Kernot "Winds Of Nzambi" (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Stephen Dedman "More Matter, Less Art" (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Sara Douglass & Angela Slatter "The Hall of Lost Footsteps" (The Hall of Lost Footsteps, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Felicity Dowker "Berries & Incense" (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Terry Dowling "Dark Me, Night You" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Jason Fischer "Hunting Rufus" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Christopher Green "Letters Of Love From The Once And Newly Dead" (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Paul Haines "The Past Is A Bridge Best Left Burnt" (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)
• Lisa L Hannett "Forever, Miss Tapekwa County" (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Richard Harland "At The Top Of The Stairs" (Shadows and Tall Trees #2, Undertow Publications)
• John Harwood "Face To Face" (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperCollins)
• Pete Kempshall "Someone Else To Play With" (Beauty Has Her Way, Dark Quest Books)
• Jo Langdon "Heaven" (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Maxine McArthur "The Soul of the Machine" (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Ian McHugh "The Wishwriter's Wife" (Daily Science Fiction)
• Andrew J McKiernan "Love Death" (Aurealis #45, Chimaera Publications)
• Kirstyn McDermott "Frostbitten" (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Margaret Mahy "Wolf Night" (The Wilful Eye - Tales From the Tower #1, Allen & Unwin)
• Anne Mok "Interview with the Jiangshi" (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Jason Nahrung "Wraiths" (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Anthony Panegyres "Reading Coffee" (Overland, OL Society)
• Tansy Rayner Roberts "The Patrician" (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Angela Rega "Love In the Atacama or the Poetry of Fleas" (Crossed Genres, CGP)
• Angela Slatter "The Coffin-Maker's Daughter" (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
• Lucy Sussex "Thief of Lives" (Thief of Lies, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Kyla Ward "The Kite" (The Land of Bad Dreams, P'rea Press)
• Kaaron Warren "All You Can Do Is Breathe" (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)

The volume will also include a review of 2011 and a list of recommended stories.

The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011 is scheduled for publication in July 2012 and can be pre-ordered at indiebooksonline.com. The anthology will be available in hardcover, ebook and trade editions. 


I've been told that in Perth, both Planet Books and Crow Books will be stocking it too. 

Writers [on Writing]: Nicholas Delbanco

'Imitation is deeply rooted as a form of cultural transmission; we tell our old stories again and again.'

Nicholas Delbanco                                                                

Food, the Night Sky and the Aurealis Awards

Food, the Night Sky and the Aurealis Awards


Dinner in Sydney

In the movie A Touch of Spice the Pappou says to his grandson, Fanis, that in the word gastronomos (gastronome) is hidden the word astrononomos (astronomer). Well, stargazing is something I love—not in a scientific sense (ask me the zodiac signs and I'd fail you every time)—the glitter in the night sky for me is more of a whimsy, the same kind that lures me towards food. There's something fanciful about them both.

On my first night in Sydney, I enjoyed a sumptuous Greek dinner at Xanthi restaurant with my old childhood friend, Andrew Lui. The watermelon and manouri salad was a winner. I haven't eaten manouri cheese since my six month sojourn in Greece some eleven or so years ago (it's more subtle than feta). The pork belly baklava was an inventive success, the souzoukakia compared to my own father's 'special' recipe, and the tuna souvlakia were chunky and satisfying. The octopus was a little too well done and they served the baby kind that never seem to taste quite right, but the rest of the meal was 'five-times tasty' as they say in Greek.

The Aurealis Awards

The following night, after a starry walk from the hotel to the Independent Theatre, I saw some other stars—the literary kind—at The Aurealis Awards. My category was won by Thoraiya Dyer, who made a gracious speech. It's her second win running, which did not deter Margo Lanagan, DC White and me from having a fabulous time.

Winners in other categories can be found via the link. Once again, congrats to both them and all the finalists, especially Thoraiya.

http://www.aurealisawards.com/media-release_winners2011.pdf



Lunch

Nick Stathopoulos' portrait of  artist, Shaun Tan.

For lunch the next day we salivated over and then ate moussaka made by the talented artist, Nick Stathopoulos. With Nick's culinary magic, perhaps he also finds the stars above something to delight in.

Nick and renowned movie critic, David Stratton. That's Gloria Swanson from Sunset Boulevard in the background.

And finally, scientific proof that food in stories makes reading a sensual experience (see the attachment below). I'm sure that someone will soon discover a similar link between reading and writing and the night sky...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?pagewanted=all

Currently Reading and off to Sydney

Currently Reading 

I've just finished The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, a novella made up of poetic vignettes set in a crowded and predominantly Latino street; the dystopian classic Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; and the comical parody Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

In addition, I've also read the short story 'Fossil Figures' by Joyce Carol Oates from the anthology Stories (ed. Michael Gaiman and Al Sorrentino).  I regard Oates as the ultimate writers' writer, and as such, I'm in fearful awe of her work. 'Fossil Figures' was a deserved winner of the World Fantasy Award and I can already say that it's one of the better stories I've read. My preferred works are often those that blur 'literature' and 'genre' and Joyce Carol Oates is an exceptional exponent of this. 

Currently, I'm reading the anthology Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates. Each story so far has impressed me, so much so, that I think Yates is comparable to John Cheever in terms of accomplished and assured narratives. Richard Yates' writing is both humorous and poignant and he successfully encapsulated the hopes and failures of 'everyday' Americans.

Richard Yates                         

Afterwards, I'll read The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Stevenson is a favourite of mine. Vladimir Nabokov aptly described it as 'delightfully winey'. I think I enjoyed an abstemious red or two while reading it..

And after that it will be my newly arrived secondhand novel The Midnight Examiner by William Kotzwinkle. I discovered The Midnight Examiner in ABC's 1001 BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE. The Fan Man is also listed there and it's the funniest novel I've read; I also devoured  Kotzwinkle's The Bear went over the Mountain, so you can see why I've been keen to read The Midnight Examiner for a while now. 

Sadly, despite being widely praised for The Fan Man, Doctor Rat, The Midnight Examiner and a number of short stories (including an O'Henry Award), Kotzwinkle is most recognised for his novelisation of ET. Mind you, Steven Spielberg specifically requested Kotzwinkle as he loved his work.

On the Personal Side

Off to Sydney for the Aurealis Awards where I'm honoured to be a short story finalist alongside Margo Lanagan, Thoraiya Dyer and DC White. I've never been to Australia's version of the 'big smoke' so it should be fun. I hope to go to a Greek restaurant, see some sites and generally celebrate the occasion. I'm also catching up with an old friend, Andrew Lui. I have been in contact with Andrew since kindegarten where I wore a yellow Popeye t-shirt and he a t-shirt with stripes. Both of us were terrified of kiss-chasey.

Books Out of Print

Books Out of Print

I am not supposed to walk much—I do a little—but sport has become more of the seated viewer variety. And as for the cathartic 'zeimbekiko' dance, I've been forced to civilise my  inner-Dionysos. On the bright side, my traitorous knee has freed me up some time for reading and writing.

It is the reading, or more specifically the publishing, that vexes me. So many great books are out of print - or were when I bought them. I have a quirk that if an author is alive I like to pay them (buy their book). It's my way of giving thanks for the privilege of reading their work. Recently however,  I ordered four secondhand books, two by a living writer: Doctor Rat and The Midnight Examiner both by William Kotzwinkle. And although Roger Zelazny passed away in 1995, I still would have bought a new copy of This Immortal over the tattered copy I ordered in, the same applies to Folktales of Greece by the Greek literary scholar, Georgios Megas. Why the orders? Because they are (or were at the time) all out of print.

With the exception of the more obscure Megas book, the others are still written about and discussed - at least in my circle of friends. I'll forgive the publishing world regarding Megas (it's a highly specific text) but not for William Kotzwinkle; Doctor Rat won a World Fantasy Award (WFA) and Kotzwinkle still has quite a name for himself. The Fan Man's (Kotzwinkle's cult-classic) first chapter was released before the novel and immediately became a critically acclaimed short story ('A Fugue in A Minor') -  a well-merited selection by Richard Ford in The GRANTA BOOK of the AMERICAN SHORT STORIES .  ABC Books also have The Midnight Examiner (along with The Fan Man) in their 1001 BOOKS YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE . With two novels in the ABC's book of recommendations you'd think some publisher out there would make them available.

And Roger Zelazny's This Immortal (originally a two part serial called ...And Call me Conrad in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) was a Hugo winner. Whether past WFA and Hugo Awards are dated is not the issue here. People still want to read them - if I do (along with some of my friends) then other readers out there must be curious too.

Reprint, publishers! Reprint!

Writers [on Writing], Carolyn Chute

Writers [on Writing], Carolyn Chute

"I am not much of a reader. No time."

After I simmered down I began to value Chute's honesty, realising that it's a frank and courageous (although still disappointing) confession for any writer to make.

Ben Payne and 'Reading Coffee'

I've read that Ben Payne has been editor at ASIM and Aurealis, and co-editor (with Alisa Krasonstein) of the Ditmar Award winning 2012 (from the multiple award winning Twelfth Planet Press), so it was nice to see him highly commend 'Reading Coffee'. 

My name is spelt wrong here but that's a frequent and forgivable occurrence. There are two separate posts:

http://benpayne.livejournal.com/58389.html

and 

http://benpayne.livejournal.com/58121.html

Congratulations to all the other names mentioned -  especially Margo Lanagan, Thoraiya Dyer and DC White who are fellow Aurealis finalists for the same short story category as 'Reading Coffee'. I am eager to read their stories. Margo Lanagan is a superb voice in not only Australian fiction but also world fiction, Throraiya Dyer is a multiple award winner and DC White's story has been published by Ticonderoga Pubublications. I bought two Ticonderoga collections recently: Angela Slatter's The Girl with no Hands and Kaaron Waaren's Dead Sea Fruit, and if they are anything to go by then DC White is in fine company.

And yes - I feel terribly ostentatious posting this. My finger lingered over 'publish' far longer than usual. 

Writers [on Writing], Rosellen Brown

Writers on Writing [Rosellen Brown]

On characters:

"... our first obligation is to create interesting, suggestive, realistic, possibly even challenging situations, set our character down in them and see where they go."

Writers [on Writing], Anne Bernays

Writers [on Writing]: Anne Bernays

"No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep."

Writers [on Writing] Saul Bellow

Writers [on Writing]: Saul Bellow


On reading literary novels in the electronic age:

‘The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful. They want more than they are getting. Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.'                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                             Saul Bellow

Writers [on Writing], Rick Bass

Writers [on Writing]: Rick Bass

"The wild landscape becomes the widened boundaries of my life."

Aurealis Award Finalist: 'Reading Coffee'

Aurealis Award Finalist: 'Reading Coffee'

Euphoric? Gracious? Humbled?

A 'yes' to all three on being announced a finalist for the short story award. I wish Margo Lanagan, Thoraiya Dyer and DC White the very best. I look forward to reading White and Dyer's work - and I already admire Margo's prose (more of a fan really).

I think that the nominations signal a win for 'longer' short stories over flash as well as 'literary' genre over pulp.

Regarding the award, its nice that you're not required to attend some prior function or have to be affiliated with some group. The fact that there is no mass-voting system prevents populist politics. Basically, the fiction editor at Overland, Jane Gleeson-White, kindly submitted the story and the rest was history.

For finalists in all categories, see the press release below. Congrats to all: http://www.aurealisawards.com/finalists2011.pdf

Writers [on Writing], Russell Banks

Writers [on Writing]: Russell Banks

In his comical essay, Russell Banks uses a personal anecdote to convey the idea that we spin fiction all the time, even within our own memories.

"When you witness your distant past, your memory tends to improve."

Writers [on Writing] Andre Aciman

Andre Aciman, Alexandria and my Pappou

Andre Aciman is a displaced Alexandrian. My Pappou on my father's side was the same, albeit it Greek rather than Jewish. The Alexandrian-Greeks I knew as a child always seemed so cultivated. Pappou was a history buff who sculpted and painted; like Aciman, he was a polyglot, speaking Greek, Arabic, Italian, French, English and Turkish. Here in Australia he owned and ran a fish and chip shop, which illustrates, as with so many migrants, that the surface veils a much larger story.


Alexandria and Egypt were never too far from my Pappou's thoughts, even though he tragically lost his brothers to typhoid there.


Aciman writes about 'place and displacement' but ensures the reader that he is actually writing about dispersion, evasion and ambivalence. His essay struck a chord with me .


"Thus I turn to Alexandria, the mythical home of paradox. But Alexandria is merely an alibi, a mold, a construct. Writing about Alexandria helps me to give a geographical frame to a psychological mess...Ask me to be intimate, and I'll automatically start writing about Alexandria."
                                                       Andre Aciman, 'A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past'

'Writers [on Writing]. Collected Essays from THE NEW YORK TIMES'

'Writers [on Writing]. Collected Essays from THE NEW YORK TIMES'

There is no mythical spring that all writers draw from. Some writers will say you must do certain things. Some will say write a thousand words every day, others two thousand, and others will demand that you have down time. What is apparent is that my process is different from others and others are different from others in turn. It's a world of 'otherness' and the spring is, in fact,  an ever-changing waterbody. We all envisage and drink from it in different ways . 

I don't know anybody who writes in the same habitual fashion as somebody else. Some writers run and ideas stream in, some writers have ideas come to them in dreams, some writers are inspired through reading, some through their own past; the list goes infinitely on. There are writers whose sources are numerous and blended, others singular and bizarre. Perhaps there is a sprinkling of clones out there but I have not unearthed any - and I have been digging.

I feel that my own personal connection is often with place or event(s)-and-place combined. From these memories more vivid stories grow and, with some tuning, I can transfer these events to other time periods. For instance ‘Reading Coffee’ is based well before my time (Kalgoorlie 1916) but many of the cultural aspects, especially the funeral opening scene, come from my own childhood experiences at wakes.

I often feel a connection with natural settings. The mud squelching under my feet as we pushed the red dinghy into the Mandurah estuary is still vivid to me. Mudskippers, hopping away like miniature amphibious-fish from prehistoric times, the sandflies, the spiky reeds, the colourless wooden jetty whitened by birds and the birds themselves: pelicans, cormorants, darters, egrets, herons, ospreys, sea eagles and gulls. The estuary speaks to me as clearly now as it ever did, its waters more welcoming and warmer than the ocean, even though it largely speaks to me from my primary school years.

Other places talk to me too but future posts will be more suited to explore those landscapes with the description and time they deserve.

So, much of my own fountain comes from place; whether I like it or not, I cannot ignore it. It is the great aunty and uncle that remain at your house - don’t speak to them at the table and they still have a presence. You can feel their bony or fleshy embrace; taste their tobacco-stained skin when they insist on kissing you; you can hear their playing cards land on the table in a magnified manner, as if they are far heavier than mere aces or jacks; you can hear their voices too, accents from another era, either enchanting or haunting you. Ignore them but they will still be there. It is the same for me with place. It remains with me, whether or not I choose for it to be there. It has its own ever-present imagery: tastes, touch, sounds and smells.   

Where is this all heading? Well, I felt obligated to give a little insight into my own craft before introducing Writers on Writing, a wonderful collection of essays from THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Rather than summarise or rehash the essays, I thought I'd provide sporadic posts with a quote from an essay, with or without some general comment, depending on my mood.

These quotes may or may not relate directly to the essence of the piece -  but they will certainly resonate with me and hopefully with you too. Readers form a reciprocal relationship of sorts with a writer, however brief it may be. I hope these quotes inspire or stimulate or interest you.

Relating to the collection itself, I can only recall reading seven of the writers’ fictional works: Richard Ford, Carl Hiaasen, Gish Jen, Joyce Carol Oates, William Saroyan, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.  Naturally, it could be that I have read more which I fail to remember. Many of the other names will be familiar to you – as they were to me.

So, starting soon, I will post something from ‘A Literay Pilgrim Progresses to the Past’ by Andre Aciman (the first essay).

On an end note: I have just read Red Spikes, an anthology by one of our short story magicians, Margo Lanagan. Lanagan writes with a strong, heartfelt voice that leaves objectivity by the wayside. This particularly honest and astute narrative voice means that even the worst of her stories is impressive (Lanagan is incapable , in my opinion, of writing a terrible story). My personal favourites in this collection are: ‘Baby Jane’, ‘Winkie’, ‘Hero Vale’, ‘Forever Upward’ and ‘Daughter of Clay’. Favourites aside, in Red Spikes there is something to admire in each and every tale.

And with a final-very-end-of-the-tail-note, I am currently reading Oxord University Press’ A Very Short Inroduction to Aristotle by Jonathon Barnes. From what I have read so far, I think Barnes must be an understated kind of guy. If it his idea of a 'very short introduction' than the Swiss Alps or the Urals are probably just sand dunes to Barnes. I'll have to thank him for keeping my neuron synapses firing away. 

Happy Writing and Reading!