In this globalised world, we’re increasingly drawn to stories from other places; tales that immerse us in faraway cultures. And where better to find our stories than in fellow UNESCO Cities of Literature, Reykjavik and Dublin? Icelander Sjón and Irishman Roddy Doyle each draw inspiration from the local, transforming the lives and literature of their native cities into stories that take place on the page, the screen – and through music.
Icelandic author Sjón is a rock ‘n’ roll renaissance man. He writes poetry, pens lyrics for Björk, wrote a whale-watching ‘splatter film’, and won the Nordic equivalent of the Man Booker for his novel The Blue Fox. His latest novel, From the Mouth of the Whale, has just been shortlisted for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His passion is melding ancient Icelandic traditions with the avant garde, mixing ‘myths and crackpot theories together with my need to tell a story’. A.S. Byatt has called him ‘an extraordinary and original writer’.
A former ‘neo-surrealist’ who started his career as a poet aged just 15, Sjón was nominated for an Oscar for ‘I’ve Seen it All’, the song he co-wrote for Dancer in the Dark with Lars von Trier and long-time collaborator Bjork. He is on the board of the Bad Taste (Smekkleysa) record label and a member of the advisory board for Kraumur Music Fund, which aims ‘to strengthen Icelandic musical life, primarily by supporting young musicians in performing and presenting their works’. He is currently adapting his novel The Whispering Muse for the opera and completing his eighth novel.
When Roddy Doyle self-published his first novel, The Commitments, in 1987, he was told he’d struggle to attract readers beyond Dublin. Decades later – after a Booker Prize (for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha), numerous novels, two films based on his books, and several screenplays – he’s gone from cult hero to cornerstone of the Irish literary establishment. And while his fan-base is worldwide, Ireland remains at the heart of his art.
Roddy’s latest novel, The Dead Republic, closes a trilogy on twentieth-century Ireland, told through the colourful life of IRA man Henry Smart. Talking about the first novel, A Star Called Henry, in 1999, he said, ‘I wanted to make sure that Henry wasn’t an evil character because I think that’s too easy and lazy … if Henry had been born in a more sedentary, more solidly working-class environment, rather than that underclass environment, he’d have had a perfectly normal life like the rest of us.’
Inspired by his friend Dave Eggers, Roddy founded Fighting Words, a creative writing workshop for children based in Ireland, in 1999. He is a frequent presence there, along with neighbour Anne Enright.
]]>Who says science is dominated by men? Well, it might be, but these two remarkable women – Barbara Arrowsmith-Young and Dava Sobel – are at the top of their fields. Barbara Arrowsmith-Young recognised the potential of neuroplasticity – the ability to rewire the brain – long before it became the latest hot concept. And Dava Sobel’s writing brings scientific discovery thrillingly to life: her readers come for the stories and stay for the science.
Dava Sobel has always been fascinated by science and the stars. A former science reporter for the New York Times, she became a publishing supernova in 1995 with the publication of her page-turning popular science bestseller, Longitude. Her fourth book, A More Perfect Heaven, blends narrative history, science and the techniques of drama to tell the story of a theory that literally reversed the way we see the world: Copernicus’s discovery that the earth revolves around the sun.
Dava says she is drawn to astronomy ‘because I love the big questions. Astronomy asks some very big questions, and I’m drawn to it for that, and also just the beauty of it.’
She has wanted to write about Copernicus since even before Longitude: ‘He’s the person who turned the universe inside out, and I’ve been interested in him forever.’
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young turned her life-defining learning disabilities into an unlikely asset. Unable to process language or decode symbols, she compensated with her fierce determination to learn, fuelled by a formidable memory. In graduate school, she chanced on research that held the key to reprogramming her own brain. This was in the 1970s and 80s, before neuroplasticity became a widely accepted fact. Her pioneering Arrowsmith Program has since helped countless children and adults with learning disabilities to unlock their potential.
‘In most traditional special education programs, the premise is that the learner’s fixed. The learner is the learner, with their strengths and weaknesses,’ says Barbara. ‘The premise of our work is, we’re going to take this learner, and we’re going to change the capacity of the learner.’
Norman Doidge shared Barbara’s story in his bestseller The Brain That Changes Itself; she speaks for herself in her new book, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain.
]]>Some writers – and readers – like to play it safe. Others test the cutting edge of literature, defying conventional wisdom to invent new genres or dare to follow their obsessions. Chad Harbach has written a sprawling sports novel in the style of Franzen, while Jeanette Winterson threw the literary playbook out the window long ago.
Literary young man Chad Harbach (an editor at Brooklyn lit-mag n+1) has hit a home-run with his first novel, The Art of Fielding. Ostensibly about an unlikely baseball star in a liberal arts college, this big American novel is also about male friendship and team spirit, written in the intelligent, addictive prose style of Jonathan Franzen and Dave Eggers. The Art of Fielding is a book about baseball in the same way that Moby Dick (Harbach’s inspiration) is a book about a whale – absolutely and not at all.
Chad spent ten years working on The Art of Fielding; he was unemployed when it sold (for $665,000) in what Vanity Fair called ‘the biggest fiction auction in recent memory’. ‘Until then I’d been living hand to mouth,’ he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
In the New York Times, Michiko Kukatani called The Art of Fielding ‘a magical, melancholy story about friendship and coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer’.
For Jeanette Winterson, truth is just as strange as fiction. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, borrowed from her Pentecostal upbringing, and the eccentric tyrant mother who tried to exorcise her after she fell for a girl. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? revisits this fertile territory under the mantle of memoir. But Winterson is no fan of realism: her stories are playful and inventive, resisting the boundaries of both sexuality and genre – and revelling in the pure sensuality of language.
Talking to Salon about her frustration with the constrictions of genre, Winterson says she prefers to call her latest book a ‘cover version’ rather than a memoir. ‘If I want to use myself as a fictional character, why can’t I? … Paul Auster, Henry Miller, Milan Kundera, any of those writers who quote themselves directly, Philip Roth, for God’s sake! We all say, “That’s so great! That’s so interesting!” But if you do that as a woman, it becomes confessional and autobiographical.’
Chad Harbach will be joined in conversation by Jenny Niven.
]]>What could be better on a cold winter’s night than curling up in a nice intimate spot to hear some of your favourite writers spin a tale? This winter we present three nights of storytelling in The Moat, featuring three stories each night from the best talents in town. All you have to do is turn up, wrap yourself around a warming beverage, picture an open fire and let yourself be carried away on a wave of imagination.
Our story begins with three chilly travel tales with a twist, all set in a cold climate. Brr!
Featuring George Dunford, Meg Mundell and Paddy O'Reilly. Curated and presented by Chris Flynn.
]]>There’s a certain appeal to stories that keep us guessing; that take us beneath the surface to explore subterranean intrigue. Secrets and lies, betrayal and espionage: these are the tools perfectly wielded by Hisham Matar, who explores his father’s political kidnapping in his fiction, and spy novelist extraordinaire Stella Rimington.
Stella Rimington is the latest in a literary club that boasts the likes of Graeme Greene and John Le Carre as members: spooks turned spy novelists. Dubbed ‘housewife superspy’ when she was appointed director general of MI5, she was the first woman in the world to lead a major spy agency. Liz Carlyle, the intelligence officer heroine of her six novels, brings spy-lit up to date, out-thinking her enemies rather than shooting them. Her latest is Rip Tide, an adventure involving Somali pirates and Islamic terrorists.
‘The intelligence service of John Le Carre’s Cold War books really is quite reminiscent of the MI5 I joined,’ she told Kerry O’Brien on her last visit to Australia, in 2009. Rimington says that intelligence work is nothing like a James Bond adventure; she never used a gun in her time at MI5.
The agency still vets her novels to ensure she’s not giving away state secrets; which is somewhat ironic, given that they ‘outed’ her with little warning on her appointment to the top job. She had to move house after the media found her address; the IRA was still active in London at the time. She says it’s the only time she really felt her life was in danger.
Born to Libyan parents in New York, growing up between Tripoli and Cairo, Hisham Matar is perfectly placed to translate the tumult behind the Arab Spring to western readers. His perceptive, multi-layered novels evoke the knife-edge vulnerability of life under dictatorship – and in exile. Matar’s father, a Libyan dissident, was kidnapped and imprisoned in 1990; he is counted as one of Libya’s ‘disappeared’. This tragedy is at the heart of both Matar’s novels: the Booker-shortlisted In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance.
In an interview with NPR last year, he said, ‘I wanted to try to make something hopefully beautiful from this … being able to sing about the terrible things to me is an act of resistance. It is a way to say I will make art even out of this’.
Since the death of Qaddafi in 2011, Hisham has been a much-sought-after commentator on the country of his birth; he answered reader questions on the subject of Libya’s future for the New Yorker last year.
Hisham Matar appears with the support of British Council.
]]>A four-day lecture series from Thursday 14 to Sunday 17 June at BMW Edge, Federation Square.
A day or so after September 11, graffiti appeared on a wall in New York: ‘Dear God, save us from those who believe in you’. Despite the many-layered irony, the message is clear: temptation to murderous fanaticism may be intrinsic to religious belief. Since at least September 11, 2001, hostility to religious voices in politics has been an important reason why so many people throughout the world have embraced ‘the new atheism’. The words of the graffitist could serve as a rallying cry for its militant wing.
People who belong to the faiths most often under attack – Christians, Muslims and Jews – often do not recognise themselves in in the portraits that inform the hostility and condescension towards them. With the support of the Sidney Myer Fund, the Wheeler Centre is proud to present Melbourne’s first Faith and Culture Lecture Series.
Over four days this June, our speakers – philosophers and theologians, historians and writers, believers and non-believers – will consider what it can mean to be religious, and what role the voice of faith may legitimately have in the conversations of citizens in a multicultural, democratic state and in the community of nations.
Curated by celebrated moral philosopher and author Raimond Gaita, the Faith and Culture lectures will aim to do justice to the depth and difficulty of the issues under discussion. Seldom are the sources of our deepest moral, political, and spiritual commitments clear to us. They are mediated by historically deep traditions in which science, art, philosophy and theology have played large, sometimes cooperative, sometimes contesting, roles. Simplifying or edifying polemic will have no place in these lectures and the panel discussions that follow them. We are set on understanding and are confident that our attempts to achieve it will interest atheists, agnostics, people of faith and the many people whose lives have been enriched by religious traditions and art, but who are not believers.
In his letter of invitation to speakers, Gaita wrote: ‘I have chosen people whose authority to speak on these matters strikes me as undeniable. Their authority lies not only in the fact that they “know their subject”, but also in the seriousness and authenticity of their engagement with it.’
Event details to be announced in mid-May.
]]>Join the Emerging Writers' Festival and editor Karen Pickering for the book launch of The Emerging Writer, an insider’s guide to navigating the writing world. This event will include the presentation of the Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript 2012.
]]>Join us to celebrate the launch of the fabulous Emerging Writers' Festival program 2012. Three writers from a wide range of genres discuss the art of storytelling, and how they create compelling narrative whether they’re building new sci-fi worlds or surreptitiously drawing patrons at the NGV. Chaired by Triple R’s Ben Birchall, and featuring highlights of the EWF Program from director Lisa Dempster, this event also features Oslo Davis, Mel Campbell and Max Barry.
]]>From the moment French/Spanish bass wunderkind Renaud Garcia–Fons first held a double bass in his hands at age 16, the future of the instrument was destined to change.
]]>Three-time Grammy Awardwinner Antonio Sanchez is ‘one of the standout jazz drummers on the contemporary scene’ (New York Times).
]]>Gay marriage, rituals and drawing inspiration from disaster: can we be secular and be spiritual? Is this a threat to the old guard? What will be destroyed if more people ask questions of religious leaders?
Hosted by Associate Producer, Next Wave: Ashley Dyer.
Next Wave Artists: Mark Pritchard and Bridget Badalois (Shotgun Wedding), Michelle Sakaris (The warmth of the curve), Dewey Dell (The Exchange)
International speaker: Laura McDermott (Fierce Festival)
]]>Since Rirkrit Tiravanjiya cooked some curry for gallery-goers in the 1990s, contemporary artists have been increasingly interested to feed, share and exchange food obsessions with their audience. At the same time the restaurants scene and celebrity chef craze continues its upwards stratospheric orbit. Art and food have been friends for a long time. So what’s new? Why now? And is it delicious?
Hosted by Director, Forest Fringe: Andy Field.
Next Wave Artists: Robin Hungerford (Organic Shamanic Contemporary Cuisine), Lara Thoms and Jodie Whalen (Fresh Produce)
International speaker: Harun Morrison (Fierce Festival) Guest speaker: Susan Gibb (curator)
]]>The arts aren’t immune to their own kind of sexism. So let’s talk about it. What can current generations of feminists learn? What’s different and what sticks? How are our public and media figures affected by expectations of women’s role? And how can art contribute to political change?
Hosted by Joint Artistic Director, Fierce Festival: Laura McDermott
Next Wave Artists: Alice Lang, Courtney Coombs and Rachael Haynes (Food for Thought), Atlanta Eke (Monster Body)
International speaker: Ianto Ware Guest speakers: Sophie Cunningham
With LEVEL Artist Run Initiative.
]]>What role does creativity play in creating liveable environments? What kind of things can squash the creation of a good city? Can we save the post-Spencer St end of our city? Whose job is it to do that? What conditions are required for good times and beautiful spaces? No one wanted it to be this way…
Hosted by Associate Producer, Next Wave: Briony Galligan
Next Wave Artists: Pip Wallis and Jess O’Brien (New Babylon), Joseph L Griffiths (Shelters)
International speaker: Ma Yongfeng Guest speakers: Ianto Ware, Renew Adelaide
]]>The Breakfast Club is a series of talks events, presented in partnership with the Next Wave Festival, and held at breakfast time: on weekdays at 8am, on weekends at 10am.
We’re interested in how the world and art collide. In a time of intense political confusion, it’s hard to articulate the changes so many want to see. Artistic practice, with its complex arsenal of the subconscious, is well placed to be a key player.
We’re not interested in expert-led formats; we want big opinions, good discussion and personal stories. And coffee (that’s important).
Each event runs for two hours, and will be punctuated by a series of provocations from artists, key thinkers and our international curators-in-residence.
Arrive at any point. Pull up a chair and a croissant. And dive on in.
In the 1990s when their economy was having a truly excellent time of it, the exporting of their culture was known as the ‘Gross National Cool.’ It must be obvious to everyone now that Asia is where it’s at, and it’s going to remain that way for some time. Good news is that Australia is geographically and economically part of this movement. So when will our culture catch up? That is – when will Australia finally be cool?
Hosted by Artistic Director, Next Wave: Emily Sexton
Artists: Casey Ayres, Nathan Beard and Abdul Abdullah (Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere), Michele Lee (Talon Salon), Phuong Ngo (Fresh Produce)
International speaker: Edward Sanderson
Guest speaker: Roj Amedi (The Global Foundation)
With the Global Foundation.
]]>The Breakfast Club is a series of talks events, presented in partnership with the Next Wave Festival, and held at breakfast time: on weekdays at 8am, on weekends at 10am.
We’re interested in how the world and art collide. In a time of intense political confusion, it’s hard to articulate the changes so many want to see. Artistic practice, with its complex arsenal of the subconscious, is well placed to be a key player.
We’re not interested in expert-led formats; we want big opinions, good discussion and personal stories. And coffee (that’s important).
Each event runs for two hours, and will be punctuated by a series of provocations from artists, key thinkers and our international curators-in-residence.
Arrive at any point. Pull up a chair and a croissant. And dive on in.
Look after people, or look after planet? Is climate change something that only those who can afford it can think about? Perhaps this extreme context is something we must learn to live within, and can it be seen as fertile ground for artists and creatives to consider our personal, social and civic humanity?
Hosted by Director of Tipping Point Australia, Angharad Wynne-Jones.
Next Wave Artists: Elizabeth Dunn (FLYWAY), Aimee Smith (Wintering), Patrick McCarthy (LIBERATE YOURSELF FROM MY VICE-LIKE GRIP!!!)
International speaker: Alia Swastika (Co-Artistic Director, Gwangju Biennale 2012)
Guest speaker: Matt Wicking (Senior Corporate Sustainability Consultant at Vic Super)
With Tipping Point, Australia.
]]>The Breakfast Club is a series of talks events, presented in partnership with the Next Wave Festival, and held at breakfast time: on weekdays at 8am, on weekends at 10am.
We’re interested in how the world and art collide. In a time of intense political confusion, it’s hard to articulate the changes so many want to see. Artistic practice, with its complex arsenal of the subconscious, is well placed to be a key player.
We’re not interested in expert-led formats; we want big opinions, good discussion and personal stories. And coffee (that’s important).
Each event runs for two hours, and will be punctuated by a series of provocations from artists, key thinkers and our international curators-in-residence.
Arrive at any point. Pull up a chair and a croissant. And dive on in.
We all know something about poverty – its hardship, misery and human toll. In a world where we are saturated with images of the poor and starving, how can we start to see poverty in a way that is meaningful, comprehensive and sensitive to the subject? Does art have a role to play here? With a video camera in every pocket we are increasingly savvy to the way we communicate difficult social issues. So who will rise to the challenge?
Hosted by Director, Format Festival/Renew Adelaide: Ianto Ware
Next Wave artists: Alison Currie and Kel Mocilnik (In pursuit of repetition), Tiffany Singh (Drums between the bells), Ben Kolaitis (Creo Nova)
International speaker: Andy Field (Forest Fringe)
Guest speakers: Hugo Lamb (Oaktree Foundation)
With Oaktree Foundation.
]]>The Breakfast Club is a series of talks events, presented in partnership with the Next Wave Festival, and held at breakfast time: on weekdays at 8am, on weekends at 10am.
We’re interested in how the world and art collide. In a time of intense political confusion, it’s hard to articulate the changes so many want to see. Artistic practice, with its complex arsenal of the subconscious, is well placed to be a key player.
We’re not interested in expert-led formats; we want big opinions, good discussion and personal stories. And coffee (that’s important).
Each event runs for two hours, and will be punctuated by a series of provocations from artists, key thinkers and our international curators-in-residence.
Arrive at any point. Pull up a chair and a croissant. And dive on in.
“Artists are the people trying to make meaning in the world, and making meaning in the world is very difficult today because we live in an extremely coercive landscape… ” – Nato Thompson, Chief Curator Creative Time NYC. Next Wave 2012 began with the provocation of generosity and urgency as key issues for contemporary arts practice. The result is a festival with strong political awareness, grounded firmly in discussion not didacticism. What impact does this have? What does it say about the role of artists in society?
Hosted by Joint Artistic Director, Fierce Festival: Harun Morrison
Next Wave Artists: Laura Delaney (Hull), Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris and Marcel Cooper (Curators, Bellowing Echoes)
International speakers: Inza Lim (Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival), Ma Yongfeng (Founder/Initiator, Forget Art)
Guest speakers: Cat Jones (Artistic Director, PACT centre for emerging artists)
]]>Sex, sex, sex… and celebrity. Not all storytelling is about boarding schools, bloodsuckers and bow-slinging lady killers. In this adults-only night of fantastical tales, anything goes. Four writers share a short piece of self-penned smut about a celebrity or fictional character in Erotic Fan Fiction – a crowd favourite and unstoppable cultural phenomenon.
]]>The past two years have seen people take to the streets in more and more countries, seeking out change without knowing how to articulate it yet. As Spring warms up the city streets, a different and much harsher kind of authoritarian resistance has greeted New York’s occupiers. So what can we expect from public space in our cities? Where are the spaces that allow the fluid spontaneity and the cut and thrust of debate – city squares, football fields, theatres, libraries, media, the internet? When public space and politics collide, art that creates those cracks of light may be the best tool we have.
Hosted by Artistic Director, Next Wave: Emily Sexton
Next Wave Artists: Liesel Zink (fifteen), SJ Norman (Bone Library)
International speaker: Andy Field (Director, Forest Fringe), Ben Pryor (Curator, American Realness)
Guest speaker: Adam Bandt MP
]]>