Friday, April 28, 2017
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Special message from the Memoir Club: October session cancelled
Randwick Literary Institute
60 Clovelly Road
Randwick 2031
We’re very sorry to say that at this late date we have to cancel our October session. Due to unfortunate circumstances, Rosie Scott is unable to be our guest this month. We send our warm wishes to Rosie and her family.
Change of date for next session: Patti Miller in conversation with Beth Yahp on Tuesday Dec 1st
The good news is that our next meeting, the last for the year, will be Patti Miller in conversation with Beth Yahp about Beth’s memoir, Eat First, Talk Later. It’s a treat – a memoir of family, feasting, and the travelling self, evoking life in Malaysia and telling some of its diverse history. Patti Miller writes memoir and nonfiction - her latest book is Ransacking Paris - and is a much admired teacher of life writing. It’s the last Memoir Club meeting for the year, so we’ll make it a celebration! The date has been changed to Tuesday 1 December, put it in your diary now.
The not-so-good news is that it may be the final meeting of the Memoir Club. We’ve been going for three years now, with the support of our guest speakers and our members (you!), and much hard work behind the scenes from Beth, initially with Brent, Alison and Barbara. This year the sessions have been organised and run by members of our committee. But life is unstoppable and work commitments, family commitments, and illness have made it impossible for some to contribute and difficult for others to continue. If you can commit to helping us, come along in December and hear more.
Memoir Club Committee: Alison Lyssa, Bindu Narula, Beth Yahp, Barbara Brooks, Josephine Grieve, Jessica Kirkness, Betty O’Neill, Emily Chantiri and Nasrin Mahoutchi
“What could be simpler to understand than the act of people
writing about what they know best, their own lives? But his apparently simple
act is anything but simple, for the writer becomes, in the act of writing, both
the observing subject and the object of investigation, remembrance, and
contemplation.”
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
For more news see Memoir Club Sydney on Facebook, or http://bethyahpwritingworks.blogspot.com.au/
Barbara Brooks
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
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August
at the Memoir Club: PROGRAM CHANGE!!
Tuesday 25 August 2014 6.00—9.00PM
at Randwick Literary Institute
60
Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031
RSVP by 23 August: MemoirClubSydney@gmail.com
Donation:
$30/$25* (to cover teaching component)
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Rosada’s delicious menu: Chickpea
curry. Spinach and potato curry with tomato, coconut and coriander. Brown rice
and basmati rice. ($15, please book by texting: 0450 907 422)
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News flash:
Sadly, we have to postpone Rosie Scott’s session in August for personal
reasons. We wish Rosie and family all the best and we’ll let you know asap
the new date for her session.
Instead, join our
Memoir Club Writing Masterclass with
Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa
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This masterclass was
hugely successful when we ran it in 2014, helping participants to grapple with
writing craft particular to memoir. Once again, you are invited to fire your
writerly imagination and gather crafty writing advice with fabulous writing
teachers Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa. The focus is on generating new
writing - helping you get started on a project you have in mind - or delving
into your own writing and memoir project. Not to be missed!
Alison and Barbara will introduce you to a page from the award-winning memoir H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, revealing the way she achieves, with unflinching honesty and intensity of emotion, a sense of momentum in brilliant descriptive writing. Then some writing exercises to
fire your imagination, stimulate memories and generate new writing. After a break
and Rosada's delicious vegetarian meal, we’ll divide into small groups to discuss your writing exercises
and insights.
For the writing exercises please
bring:
- writing materials and
- your sense of adventure and your imagination
(The extract from H is for Hawk that we'll talk about is from pp85-86 of the Vintage paperback; when you rsvp we'll send you scanned pages.)
*PLEASE NOTE: the donation for the
masterclass session this meeting will be $30, to cover the teaching component.
Barbara Brooks is a
writer & teacher of writing. She has taught at the University of
Technology, Sydney & other universities, and runs her own Masterclasses in
memoir & fiction – see her blog at http://bbwritinglife.blogspot.com.au/.
She has published Leaving Queensland, & Eleanor Dark: a
writer’s life. Her latest work, Verandahs, is
memoir/fiction. To read published extracts, go to http://uts.academia.edu/BarbaraBrooks.
Alison Lyssa is a playwright, editor and writing mentor. She has published plays, poetry,
short fiction & essays. She has mentored documentary film-makers at AFTRS,
run community theatre projects, & taught Writing at UTS, UWS &
Macquarie University. Her new play, Hurricane Eye was written
as her doctorate in creative writing. Pinball, first performed at
Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre in 1981, was revived for the 2015 Mardi Gras, to
acclaim.
Randwick Literary Institute, 60 Clovelly Rd Randwick. Street parking available. Clovelly
bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/
Friday, August 7, 2015
This month the Memoir Club presents award-winning author Rosie
Scott in conversation with Beth Yahp about Rosie’s latest book: The Intervention: An Anthology, co-edited
with Anita Heiss. The book is a compelling challenge to the 2007 NT Intervention by the Howard Government and
its ongoing breach of human rights. In fiction, memoir, essays, poetry and communiqués, the dramatic
story of the Intervention and the despair, anguish and anger of our First Nations peoples comes alive through
the work of twenty of Australia’s finest
writers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, together with powerful
statements from Northern Territory Elders. Many of these stories are about how people’s lives are lived and
their experiences determined by forces beyond their control, usually out of sight of mainstream Australia.
Randwick Literary
Institute
60 Clovelly Road,
Randwick 2031
Tuesday 25 August
2015, 6.00-9.00PM
$15/10 – RSVP:
memoirclubsydney@gmail.com
Rosie Scott, a writer, teacher, mentor and activist, has long
experience in listening to and enabling the telling of such life stories, through her own writing and the anthologies she
co-edited with Tom Keneally, AnotherCountry (2005) and A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Seekers
(2013).
‘The Intervention to us was
like Australia declaring war on us and in the process
they demonised and dehumanized
Aboriginal men women and children.’
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks
Dr Rosie
Scott has published six novels, short stories,
poems, essays, a
play and three anthologies. Well known and
admired for her
commitment to social justice, she was nominated
with Tom Keneally
for the Human Rights Medal, and awarded the
2015 STARTTS Humanitarian
Award for her work with refugees.
She was co-founder
of Women for Wik in 2007.
‘My writing is fuelled by me as a totality, but also by my political feelings,’ Rosie writes. ‘I’m particularly interested in writing about the outsiders of society, people way outside my own experience.’ Join us for a discussion of Rosie Scott’s new anthology of moving, impassioned, spiritual, angry and authoritative documentation of a most controversial event, as well as the way her own‘totality’ and ‘political feelings’ have influenced the writing life and work of this committed and inspirational author.
Beth Yahp is an award winnning novelist who has also published nonfiction and lyrics for opera. She is a highlt regarded teacher of writing, currently teaching the writing program at Sydney University. Her memoir, Eat First, Talk Later, will be published by Random House in September.
For a delicious vegetarian
supper ($15), please book by texting
Rosada at 0450 907 422 before
Sunday 23 August.
Barbara Brooks
Thursday, June 25, 2015
what we're reading
I'm reading Griffith Review's 'great reads' emails, and the latest put me onto Chart Collective.
Chart Collective is a not-for-profit publishing venture from Melbourne, started under the auspices of The Lifted Brow. Chart Collective looks beyond the idea that people are separate to nature, to explore the ways our stories are woven into the Australian environment. Our publishing model incorporates online and printed publication of text, image and sound, as well as in situ events, affording us the freedom to explore ideas in whichever format best suits a concept, a community or a contributor.
Within our malleable model we invite people from across disciplines and Australian communities to consider and respond to the ways their own and others’ experiences are mapped in place and time; the ways these places inform our belief systems and sense of self; the ways we influence ecological systems, and the ways they influence us. In doing this, we want to uncover and strengthen the connections we have to our places, in order to better understand, respect and nourish the ecosystems that we, as people, are embedded in.
http://www.chartcollective.org/project/the-longer-light-series
It's just past the winter solstice, so I'm including the link to the 'Longer Light" series.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
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