Five Questions with Christine Sykes
Each month we bring you behind the literary world of one of our authors. This month we’re chatting to Christine Sykes about the inspiration behind her debut novel, The Changing Room, and her work for Dress for Success.
Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.
The lead up to Summer holidays means an influx of book buyers looking for the next best beach read. The Changing Room, a story of hope, second chances and the power of female friendship, ticks all the boxes for a lazy afternoon at the beach. In November, Better Reading chatted to author Christine Sykes about the inspirations behind the book.
Tell us a little more about The Changing Room.
The novel tracks the lives of three women from diverse backgrounds and generations, who are strangers in the opening scenes.
Anna is in her sixties and faces a life of loneliness and purposelessness when she loses her dream job and the man to match. An interfering friend introduces Anna to Suitability, a styling service for women seeking employment, where she meets Claire. Claire is a forty-six-year-old philanthropist who appears to have everything – the renovated mansion, the perfect family and a full life. When twenty year old Molly enters Suitability, having been through more strife than anyone should, the three women learn the true value of friendship.
The journeys of Anna, Claire and Molly are bumpy and become more entwined when Suitability faces closure. Through mutual support, these women find the strength and courage to rebuild their lives and a way to ensure ongoing support for thousands of women.
2. You were involved in Dress for Success, the inspiration behind The Changing Room. Can you tell our readers a bit about this organisation and why it inspired your book?
Dress for Success ticks all the boxes. It’s about fashion and style, as well as social justice and the environment. In NSW, over 3,500 women a year are assisted by the organisation. I became a volunteer over 7 years ago after meeting the founder, Megan Etheridge. As a stylist I was able to put into practice all the lessons I’d learned about dressing for work during my long career as a public servant. In the space of an hour, I watched women being transformed by both the outfits and the styling experience. As Molly says, it’s not just the clothes, but the self-confidence that goes with the whole experience.
When I retired, I extended my role to include coaching and became the volunteer coach co-ordinator. This provided women who were struggling to find work with one-on-one support in their quest. It also provided me with a sense of value, much as it does for Anna.
3. What do you hope the reader will take away from this book?
My main hope is that the reader enjoys the novel and is engaged with the characters. Story can be a powerful way of learning and gaining insight into our lives and the way we can support each other to face challenges. While it is a story of hope and the value of female friendships, the novel touches on some gritty topics. In particular, as Claire says, there is no excuse for domestic violence.
The novel is a celebration of the resilience and empowerment of women through organisations like Dress for Success and it would be wonderful if more people learn about the value of and realise the need for a range of services for women. The importance of services by women, for women and with women in daily life cannot be overestimated.
I think it is critical to showcase services like DFSS in literature, to explore their contribution and to validate their existence and use by women as both volunteers and clients.
4. What is something that has really influenced you as a writer?
At an early age I discovered a love of reading where I found both escape and knowledge in novels. When I was older, I discovered amazing women writers who influenced me and who I longed to emulate. Some of my favourite Australian women writers throughout the years are Elizabeth Jolley, Kate Grenville, Stephanie Dowrick and Liz Byrski. Through writing I have met some of these writers and they have inspired me to persist and to invest in my writing and myself.
When I retired, one of the first things I did was to enrol in the Year of Writing a Novel course with the brilliant Emily Maguire at Writing NSW. After the course I was privileged to meet up with Emily in Paris over coffee where she was completing a well-earned residency. Emily read an extract of The Changing Room and encouraged me to pursue publication.
5. What’s your daily writing routine like and what are you working on at the moment?
My routine varies depending on what I’m working on and what else is happening in my life. I prefer to write early in the day, and my favourite time is from about 6am to about 11 am. I’ve also enjoyed the times I’ve had the opportunity to retreat and write full time for a week or more, when I minded a friend’s apartment.
I have a memoir and a novel which are close to completion and I’m looking at publishing options. There are several other projects and ideas which are at different stages.
Read more about Christine and her latest book The Changing Room, or head to our events page to save the date as The Changing Room goes on tour.
This Q&A was originally posted on Better Reading.
You can read Better Reading’s review of The Changing Room here.
Five Questions with Katherine Johnson
Each month we bring you behind the literary world of one of our authors. This October we’re chatting to Katherine Johnson about the inspiration behind her fourth book, Paris Savages.
Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.
October is often a big month in publishing, so it’s fitting that Katherine Johnson’s fourth novel steal the limelight for our fiction release. Following six years of research and a PhD, Katherine Johnson brings a little-known but true story that traces the darker side of P.T Barnum's Greatest Showman to blazing life. Paris Savages was inspired by the story of three Badtjala people, Bonangera (Bonny/Boni), Jurano and Dorondera, who journeyed from their home on Fraser Island to the heart of Europe in the 1880s to perform as ethnographic exhibitions, otherwise known as 'human zoos'. We chat to Katherine about the inspirations and experience of crafting her masterpiece work of fiction.
What do you love about writing and literature?
Writing and literature can both take you deep inside a person’s interior reality and can transport you across oceans and continents. It can be revelationary and transformational; it can also be quiet and reassuring. It can show us new and imaginative ways of seeing the present or the past and can point to imagined futures, whether familiar or far-fetched. Fiction, by definition, is imagined, and there-in lies its strength. It provokes contemplation and conversation, opening potential new doors to understanding, empathy and connectedness. And, perhaps most powerfully of all, it can hold a mirror up to ourselves and make us question old assumptions and imagine new futures.
2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind Paris Savages. Why was it so important to write?
Paris Savages was inspired by something I heard on the radio – a documentary about the discovery, in a museum basement in Lyon, France, of a full body plaster cast of a young Aboriginal man from Fraser Island, Queensland. The cast was in storage and hadn’t been on public display for many years. I went to France and visited the cast and it was incredible – almost as if I had gone back in time to the 1880s. As the museum attendant wound the handle on the enormous storage stacks, opening them up, a shape emerged – a man standing proudly, a boomerang over his head. The man was Bonangera (Bonny/Boni), and it transpired that he and two fellow Badtjala people had been taken to Europe for exhibition. They were shown throughout Germany and in France and Switzerland, and I could not stop thinking about what this might have been like for them. They danced and sang, threw boomerangs and climbed poles, meant to resemble trees. Just as thought provoking was what this period in history says about the western people looking on, and the scientists who studied the visiting performers. Not long after seeing the cast, Adam Goodes was called an ‘ape’ on the football field, and he called on Australians to be educated about prejudice. The more I looked into the story of ‘human zoos’, the more it struck me that the stereotypes and misrepresentations that still exist in some sectors today have their origins in this little-known period of history. It seemed to me essential to contest those old stereotypes and turn the ‘camera’ back out to the audience looking on – to ask, who were the real savages?
3. What are you currently reading?
I’ve just started reading – literally a page in – Leah Kaminsky’s The Hollow Bones. We have an event together at Readings in Hawthorn and I’m very much looking forward to meeting Leah and reading the book. I’ve also recently started Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, which was chosen by my bookclub. I loved Gilbert’s Big Magic and look forward to getting into this book, too. So far, I’m enjoying its ‘light/fun’ but sharp and witty voice. I’m also listening to Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe as an audiobook. And I’ve got about two other audio books on the go to. Must try to stick to one at a time!
4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.
I’ll go back in time to my early adolescence to answer this one. Growing up, we had on our family bookshelf Thoreau’s Walden, and I remember being completely captivated by the ideas in that book. The concepts that stayed with me were: the value and importance of wildness and nature in our lives, the value of simplicity, and the value of carving your own path/taking the path less travelled and how quickly we tend to find ourselves beating the same old path out of habit and routine if we’re not careful.
5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?
Books have infinite value in our modern world. Essentially, I think that stopping to read a book has the capacity to slow us down. It’s meditative in that it makes us focus on only one thing at a time, which seems to have become a luxury given all the competing demands and overstimulation we’ve become so accustomed to. But they are a bit magical, too, books, in that they can also wake us up. Indeed, maybe we have to slow down to be able to reflect and contemplate and ‘wake up’.
Read more about Katherine and her latest book Paris Savages, or head to our events page to save the date as Paris Savages goes on tour.
Five Questions with Melanie Dimmitt
Each month we bring you behind the literary world of one of our authors. This September we’re chatting to author of Special, Melanie Dimmitt.
Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.
September brings us new life with Spring, but more importantly, we’re celebrating the release of Special by Melanie Dimmitt. Curious, casual and conversational, Special gives honest and uplifting advice to those new to the special-needs club - shaped by her conversations with parents to children with disabilities, researchers, specialists and experts.
As a journalist by trade, and now a published author, what do you love about writing?
A lot of the time I don’t love it. It tends to be an agonizing process of obsessing over every sentence until (hopefully) things start sounding about right. But in writing’s defence, it does hold my attention like nothing else. I’ll be bashing away on the keys and five hours will pass in what feels like minutes. I also feel incredibly lucky to be paid to do it. I
2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.
I wrote Special out of desperation. When my six-month-old son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy I felt lousy. To my mind, this was a completely unacceptable situation to have wound up in. So I reached out to dozens of other parents raising kids with disabilities and said, “help me!” – what did you do to feel better at the start of this gig? How do you feel now? Tell me this isn’t what I think it is! It was an entirely selfish pursuit and it really helped. I hope Special can do the same for other parents.
3. What are you currently reading (or watching or listening to)?
I’ve just finished Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (lived up to the hype) and Melissa Broder’s The Pisces (weird but in a good way) and am now tucking into A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (delicious writing). I’m watching Younger and eternal replays of Sex and the City. I’m listening to The High Low, No Filter and Lit Up podcasts.
4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.
There are a couple of stories that really stuck with me from my childhood – The Fairy Rebel and The Indian in the Cupboard, both by Lynne Reid Banks. The Bronze Horseman trilogy by Paullina Simons saw me through my romance-deprived teen years, and when I started writing articles, Annabel Crabb’s The Wife Drought made me realise that research and statistics needn’t make for boring copy. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic has helped me out of many a creative block… and I’ll wind it up there because you asked for one book and I’ve listed seven.
5. Do you believe books have the power to create change? How do you imagine Special to impact the world?
I certainly think books can broaden perspectives and give us glimpses into different people’s lives. They can also be a nice little escape into other worlds (thank you, JK Rowling). I’m hoping Special lands in the hands of the people who need it – parents who’ve discovered their kid is travelling a not-so-typical path – and helps to make the emotional shit-storm at the start of this journey just a little less shitty.
You can find more about Melanie and Special (and pick up a copy for yourself) here
Five Questions with Jane Sullivan
Each month we bring you behind the literary world of one of our authors. This August we’re chatting to literary journalist and author, Jane Sullivan.
Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.
August is for celebrating all things wonderful about childhood books. In Storytime, author and literary journalist Jane Sullivan takes us on a journey of self discovery, enchantment and wonder as she explores her favourite childhood stories (and even some she hated). As she re-reads the books so important to her as a child, Jane makes some surprising and emotional insights into how books have shaped the woman she is today.
What do you love about writing and literature?
I love how both reading and writing books, and perhaps particularly fiction, can transport me into an entirely different world which is yet somehow very similar to my own world. This double vision of the world is vitally important to me, it’s how I get my perspective. It’s been that way for me ever since I was a child, even though I didn’t understand why at the time – I just felt I had to get my nose into a book as often as I could.
2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.
Storytime came out of a desire to explore why it was that although I’d spent a lifetime in love with reading, no book I’d ever come across had the same deep impact and resonance as those I read when I was a child. Why did Enid Blyton trump Tolstoy or George Eliot? I decided to go back and reread some childhood favourites to find out. And my discoveries were so surprising and far-reaching, they turned themselves into a book.
3. What are you currently reading?
At any one time I’ve probably got two or three books on the go, plus others I skim for my column. One I’ve read recently that particularly struck me is Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys, a story of two African-American youngsters in a brutal correction centre (sadly, based on a real institution). Also Rick Morton’s memoir 100 Years of Dirt, another story of overcoming poverty, disadvantage and violence, this time in the Australian bush. Currently there seems to be a huge wave of these stories; you don’t always want to pick them up because you might get compassion fatigue, but the best of them are both shattering and inspiring.
4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.
I can’t really get that answer down to one book, so many have had so much impact at different stages of my life – but when I was rereading my favourite children’s books, the one that delighted me still and delighted me the most was Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. It is a surprisingly daring and masterful tale that marries very different styles and perceptions into what at first seems a simple jolly story about talking animals. It made me feel both happy and queasy, which a good book should.
5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?
Words on the page open up vivid spaces in my head that can’t be reached through film, TV, computer screens and smartphones. Reading a book is a different kind of addiction to the social media habit: it’s not about the fear of missing out, it’s more about the fun of getting out. It’s a gentle, meditative, highly enjoyable immersion that slows the frantic speed of superficial day-to-day contact and encourages the intellect and the imagination to go exploring. But reading isn’t always gentle: it can also knock your socks off.
Read more about Jane, and her latest book Storytime, or head to our events page to see how you can be involved in the launch.
Five Questions with Lee Kofman
Each month we bring you behind the literary world of one of our authors. This time we chat to established author, essayist and editor Lee Kofman.
Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.
June’s release was Split, an anthology of work from author, editor, essayist and Ventura alumni Lee Kofman. Split features candid essays from prominent Australian writers, including Lee herself, on leaving, loss and new beginnings.
What do you love about writing and literature?
There are many things I love about both, but if I have to sum it up succinctly, the best that the experiences of reading and writing offer me is a kind of transcendence – a delicious way to escape myself. At the same time, paradoxically, they also offer me ways to forge a better self – a more relaxed, slowed-down, thoughtful and reflective self. In fact, these two activities serve for me the same functions that religion serves for many, helping me to understand the world and myself better. I particularly need reading, the way one needs meditation – to ground myself and improve my mental health. I cannot imagine a day go by without reading.
2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.
My latest work, Split, is a collection of personal essays by known Australian writers which I curated and edited. My own essay, Bruised, is a story of how in my mid-twenties I struggled to end two passionate yet damaging relationships at once: with a man and with a city I lived in. I wanted to unpick that experience of lasting indecision, both to reconcile myself with my younger self and also in the hope that some readers can recognise something of their lives in my story and possibly feel less alone. When I was trapped in those relationships, shame and loneliness were my dominant emotions. I thought then that it was just I who couldn’t summon enough courage to leave what I needed to leave, that everyone else had it all together. Only years later did I realise how wrong I was and how non-exceptional my story is. Perhaps if I knew it earlier, I’d have left what I needed to leave quicker. But then, this might be just wishful thinking…
3. What are you currently reading?
I’m reading the final instalment of My Struggle, the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-book opus. My Struggle is an autobiographical novel depicting Knausgaard’s life from childhood until his early 40s, but it is much more. Proustian in flavour, and genre-defying, Knausgaard’s life story is punctuated by essayistic prose that can go for dozens, and even hundreds, of pages. At 1153 pages, the last book is the longest and dryly named The End. Here, Knausgaard examines the aftermath of his literary success, and the personal costs of writing about his life he’s paid, as well as reflecting on dystopia, Paul Celan’s poetry, familial intimacy, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf no less. Its formidable size notwithstanding, I’ve been reading The End quickly, greedily, possibly because deep in me lurks the foolish hope that some tiny percentage of Knausgaard’s brilliance might trickle into my own future pages...
4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.
It is Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The novel’s hilarious premise is that during the Easter week Satan and his entourage arrive in Stalin’s Moscow of the 1930s, to wreak havoc in this God-less city. I read this novel several times and in three languages (the first time when I was ten years old). I believe its humanist bent helped shape my personality and my worldview. The book taught me about the redeeming power of laughter in the face of the despicable, how irony rather than righteousness is our best friend. This novel has been also partially responsible for my quasi-metaphysical approach to writing where I often use my work to try finding some hidden order in the chaos of life.
5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?
Today we need them even more than ever! Books are our salvations in the midst of the storm of instant views and loud opinions. They create oases in our lives, and support and nourish whatever is still left of our inner lives.
Read more about Lee, and her latest book Split.
Five Questions with Craig Ensor
Each month we bring you behind the literary world of one of our authors. This time we chat to debut novelist Craig Ensor.
Our authors are the heart of Ventura - without them we wouldn’t have the books we do! But what makes them tick? What lies behind their passion for literature? To answer these sought after questions, we’re bringing you the Five Questions With series to give you a little more insight into who lies behind the words you’re reading.
July’s release is The Warming, the debut novel from lawyer-turned-author Craig Ensor. The Warming joins the growing genre of climate fiction in Australia, but at its heart it presents a world of hope and love in even the worst of circumstances. You can read more about the plot here.
What do you love about writing and literature?
As a reader I love the power of stories to move and pull at both the heart and the mind, the beauty of a perfectly made sentence, the sound and look of words rubbing against each other, and the fact that literature – as the nearest thing to life – is the only art form that can get close to representing consciousness or what it feels like to be human. As a writer I love trying – with mixed success – to achieve all of the above.
2. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind your latest work.
The story came to me initially as an image of a couple living in the future who were trying to get away from their past lives – a dark secret, the technologies and obligations of modern urban life – by moving to a remote beach house. It grew from there to be story of how it feels to live in a world nearing its end as a consequence of rampant climate change, and the importance of love and family in the face of such terrifying change. If anything it’s about love – love between husband and wife, parents and children, between each other – and found its inspiration in my love for my family.
3. What are you currently reading (or watching or listening to)?
I just finished reading George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo which is a great example of successful experimentation in fiction; that is, it is formally novel and readable. It shows how the best novels – because they deal with situation and action – can create a poetics of space which is largely unique to that art form. The parts where Lincoln is holding his dead son Willie in the crypt are also heartbreaking. As for watching, like almost everyone else, I watched the last series of Game of Thrones and am looking for something on Netflix to replace it!
4. Tell us about the book that has impacted you the most.
When I was thirteen or so I read Smith by Leon Garfield as part of the school curriculum. It was kind of a Dickensian young adult novel before young adult became the industry it is now. What was so impactful about it was the fact that it took me to another world – Victorian London – but even more so that I had no idea what was going on. Lacking the life experience to comprehend much of the narrative and its themes, it became a challenge for me which lured me into the contest of comprehension (or writing). I learned that books could be like a puzzle of meaning, and that it took skill and hard work to fit the pieces together to complete the puzzle, which was all part of the enjoyment.
5. What is the value of books in the fast-paced, digital world that we live in?
Books slow down and reduce our thinking and attention to the open page. They are real, tactile, sensory. They open up a space for noticing details and things that would be overlooked in a fast-paced digital world. They also open up a space for the imagination to be exercised, not only by filling in gaps of narrative and character that may have opened up in the novel we are reading, but the openness and freedom to let the imagination wander away from the book to other things, other stories we tell ourselves or forms of thinking that have no space to exist in daily fast paced life. They are also the most convenient form of technology – small, light – they don’t need a charger or a password!
Read more about Craig and his latest book, The Warming.
