Author Archives: Maddy Sexton

An Interview with: Claire Morey, Intern

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Meet our wonderful intern, Claire, who recently completed her Honours degree in history (and then plunged right into a two-week stint at Wakefield Press!). Claire talks about the importance of self-aware history writers and the impact university has on reading habits.

 

What is the first book you ever read?

One of the first novel-sized books I can remember reading is probably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. It seems to be the most memorable, maybe because I loved the edition and Quentin Blake’s illustrations so much.

What attracted you to doing your internship at Wakefield Press?

I’ve wanted to work in publishing for quite a long time but I hadn’t really thought to pursue it while I was studying. Now that I’ve graduated and have a lot more spare time I thought it would be a great opportunity to get involved with the publishing industry.

At the end of your internship, what are your thoughts about working in publishing?

I really enjoyed the internship! It’s helped me to solidify my interest in editing and proofreading, but it was also very interesting learning about other roles and how things operate behind-the-scenes.

You’ve done an Honours degree in history, so you must have read a few history books. What makes a history book engaging? And do you think history can tell us about the present as well as the past?

I really enjoy history books and historians that acknowledge their subjectivity and their inability to present a set of complete truths. In particular, history books that really cleverly weave together narrative and history with the past and present are the most engaging to me. A good example of this is Slicing the Silence by Australian historian Tom Griffiths. He is really fantastic at communicating history through interconnecting stories and historical figures in a constant conversation between past and present. Engaging historical writing can often read much like a novel.

What’s the last book you read and loved? What did you love about it?

Mary Lee: The life and times of a ‘turbulent anarchist’ and her battke for women’s rights by Denise George (published by Wakefield Press)! I really loved learning about a woman who, despite being so integral to the women’s suffrage movement of both South Australia and Australia as a whole, is hardly remembered or talked about in schools or general society. Reading such a captivating book has me thinking that primary and secondary school history could be far more interesting if we focus on incredible local historical events, such as women’s suffrage in South Australia and the women who fought so hard for it, rather than learning about the First Fleet over and over again.

What’s the last book you read and hated? what did you hate about it?

I don’t think I ever really hate books! It’s possible I only pick things up that I think I will like at least a little bit, so maybe I’m not that experimental in my reading choices. One book that I remember really struggling with was The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. Perhaps it was a bit too postmodern for me back in first year university, I think I could handle it a bit better now (maybe).

How do you find out about books you want to read?

I get a lot of recommendations through friends, family, my boyfriend and uni. I also follow a YouTuber (Leena Norms) who works in publishing in London, so that has been a great way to discover contemporary titles that are being published.

Where do you buy your books? (In a bookshop, online, second-hand … Or do you use libraries?)

A combination of all of them! If there’s a book I really want then I’ll buy it, and if it’s a lot cheaper online then I am a bit guilty of buying books from Book Depository. I do like finding second-books and recently I’ve been trying to use libraries more often, but I do enjoy owning books, especially if I’ve really enjoyed it and want to reread it.

Does studying influence the kinds of books you read? (Other than set texts, of course!) If so, how? 

Yes, I did English and History at uni so studying English got me very interested in a lot of classics as well as postcolonial literature.

Only in the last few years have I read many history books, which I never would have known about if it weren’t for studying history at uni. Studying history has also given me a far greater understanding and interest in Australian history.

How do you feel about reading on-screen? Do you read e-books as well as print books? (And if you do both, what’s the split, time-wise?)

I much prefer reading print books, I only really read e-books if a print book isn’t available.

If you were banished to a desert island and could take three books with you, what would they be and why?

This is very hard! First I think I’d pick The Art of Time Travel  by Tom Griffiths because it’s a great compilation of Australian and Indigenous history and it’s really well written. Next maybe The Story of Art by EH Gombrich because it is so incredibly packed with information so would use up a lot of time while stuck on an island. The last one would probably be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë as it is such a lovely, easy read that never gets old.

Claire recently reviewed Mary Lee: The life and times of a ‘turbulent anarchist’ and her fight for women’s rights by Denise George. Lauded by Natasha Stott Despoja as a book that should be in all schools, click here to find out what Claire thought!

Stephen Orr on growing up in suburban Adelaide

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The #tenyearchallenge has been dominating social media for the past few weeks, but today author Stephen Orr looks even further back in this 2006 article about his childhood in the suburbs of 1970s Adelaide.

Keep an eye out for Stephen’s next novel, This Excellent Machine, which will be released in April 2019.

 

Smith Street

I want to tell you about the street I grew up in. We’ll call it Smith Street, although some of you will work out where it really is.

Smith Street was asbestos homes on stumps. One family (I’ll call them the Hanrahans) had a brick home, and they were the envy of the neighbourhood. Mr Hanrahan was a policeman and often brought his work home (unless that was someone else’s paddy wagon parked in his driveway). That was the most exciting thing in Smith Street. Everyone else’s parents worked at Woolies or drove taxi trucks. The milkie left two bottles, scummy with cream, and the baker always pulled up in front of our house (something to do with finger buns).

Mrs Jolley lived next door with a dozen cats and her middle-aged son, a doctor who’d retired early and gone on to grow a Catweazle beard, spending his days writing poetry and slashing waist-high grass with a scythe. Mrs Jolley would often babysit me and my sister after school. With her yellow smoker’s fingers and teeth and a Scottish accent she was a marvel, serenading us with stories of the old country as she drank one cup of tea after another.

            The gardens of Smith Street were filled with diosmas and rampant mint, and overgrown with soursobs in winter. We had dirt footpaths, lined with cracks, carpeted with three-corner jacks. The local Ford dealership tested their cars up and down our street and the Kentucky Fried Chicken on North East Road filled our yards with the aroma of the Colonel’s luscious thighs. The smell came into our bedrooms and laundry, and even snuffed out the stench of laurel sulphate on the freshly waxed floors.

Further along Smith Street there was a basketball stadium. It had a barren car park of blue metal, gum trees and rubbish blown over from the main road. Opposite the stadium there was an old hall, hemmed in by wild oats and heliotrope. It was called Polish Hall, and as a little person I always thought this meant the floors would be extra shiny. Eventually I worked it out, looking for small people in peasant clothing whenever we went past. But it was always empty. It seemed hard to believe there were or ever had been any Poles (or Russians, or anything exotic) in Hillcrest. Sometimes the hall was used for dances on Saturday night – mostly DJs, but sometimes a band. I used to sit at my window and listen, watching the moon cast tree shadows across our freshly mowed Santa Ana.

Back in the seventies, Smith Street kids formed gangs and rode around on dragsters. But then we grew up and moved out, and our parents left, leaving those old homes to go to seed – weeds, always weeds (the only plants that flourished in that soil), homes cracking down the middle because they hadn’t been restumped, and brick cladding broken and falling off (and anyway, everyone knew it was only brick cladding – only the Hanrahans had the real thing).

            Smith Street finished at 78 (as did most of its inhabitants). Then there were just empty paddocks – Elysium fields full of Paterson’s Curse – where kids fought on the ‘mound’ after school. That always had a good turnout. And further still, Housing Trust ‘half-houses’, and our primary school, distributing free milk to every student, five cent cups of soup for winter lunch and the promise that we’d all grow up to drive Kingswoods.

And that was, or is, Smith Street. The only street to fill the only childhood I’ll ever have, for better or worse, weedier or landscaped, DJ or live. Beyond number 78 there’s nothing except the knowledge that the whole lot will soon be gone, the wreckers already beying (courtesy of a greedy government) for the hundred house plots where I learned to read and write. Homes knocked down and rebuilt – the smell of Sunday roasts and rosemary hedges, the sight of husbands coming home tanked at eleven pm, the stories of people who died of cancer or heart attacks, who were there one day and gone the next – all of this lost, our songline subsumed for units and Tuscan townhouses (their yards still heavy with eleven herbs and spices).

All gone – which isn’t as bad as it sounds. That’s the story of our city, and suburbs, and life. I think we’re all extras in a crowd scene from some film that never got great reviews. And one day, years later, we see the re-run on Gem. We watch it and say, ‘There I am, there!’ We see our face for a second or two. Then we go back and watch it again, thinking, I thought I had a bigger part than that.

 

Stephen Orr was born in Adelaide in 1967 and grew up in Hillcrest. He studied teaching and spent his early career in a range of country and metropolitan schools. One of his early plays, Attempts to Draw Jesus, became his first Australian/Vogel shortlisted novel, published in 2002. Since then he has published seven novels, a volume of short tories (Datsunland) and two books of non-fiction (The Cruel City and The Fierce Country). He has won or been nominated for awards such as the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the International Dublin Literary Award.

Stephen Orr is married and lives in Adelaide.

 

 

An interview with: Layla Moseby Read, work experience student

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Layla Moseby-Read, a year 10 student at Scotch, recently completed a week of work experience at Wakefield Press. Layla comes from a strong publishing background; her dad’s book, Dear Grandpa, Why?, was published by Wakefield Press earlier this year.

Layla Moseby Read, work experience student

What is the first book you ever read?

The first children’s book I ever read properly myself was called A Year on Our Farm by Penny Matthews. I had actually won the book at school and I think that I was about five or six years old when read it. The first sort of novel that I can remember reading was Geronimo Stilton Christmas Catastrophe by Elisabetta Dami.

What attracted you to doing work experience at Wakefield Press?

I wanted to do work experience at Wakefield Press because I have always had a keen interest in English, and for as long as I can remember I have loved to read. At the start of this year I had to complete a test called the Morrisby test that assesses all of your strengths and weaknesses through a variety of different investigations. It collaborates all of the results and gives you a few ideas around potential career options that you would suit. For me my number one suggestion was an editor so I wanted to get a bit                       more of an idea about this job and if I wanted to pursue it in the future, and that’s why I chose Wakefield Press.

At the end of your work experience, what are your thoughts about working in publishing?

I really enjoyed doing work experience here and I do think that it is one of my higher ideas for a career. I really liked the environment that is associated with editing and publishing and how relaxed yet productive Wakefield Press is. This sort of flexible and strong work ethic really suits me, and I like the idea of working in a job like one at Wakefield Press. If I did go into a career to do with publishing there are so many different jobs within publishing and I think that this would help me to get on the right track but not have to be locked down into a specific role just yet.

Do you think boys read differently from girls? If so, how? If not, why do you think so many people believe that?

I think that boys and girls don’t necessarily read differently but there are different expectations for books that they should read. There are definitely books that are specifically aimed at each gender and I think this impacts the way boys and girls read. In our society it is typically thought that girls read more romance or classics whereas boys are more into the action and adventure side, but this is not necessarily true. So, I don’t think that boys and girls read differently but just they read different types of books.

 

What’s the last book you read for fun? What was fun about it?

The last book I read for fun was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and it was about a middle age lady suffering from a mental health issue. I believe that it was a ‘fun’ book for me to read because it was really intriguing and there was this big mystery throughout the entirety of the book. This drew me in and kept me hooked the whole time. It is also something a bit different to my typical reading style so I enjoyed the unpredictability and uniqueness about it.

What’s the last book you read and hated? What did you hate about it?

I can’t remember ever reading a book and hating it but I do remember starting the book Maze Runner and disliking it enough to not finish it. It’s not that it was written badly it’s just that it’s not really my preferred style and genre. It was also a bit unrealistic and incorporated too much science fiction to suit me. I prefer books that are true-to-life or that are partially based on past events.

How do you find out about books you want to read?

To find books that I want to read I either choose books that were suggested to me by friends or family members, or I take my time browsing the library or bookstore reading the blurbs of books to find one that I think sounds good. My mum is often the main way I find out about new books because she reads quite often and knows what sort of books I like and enjoy reading.

Name a book or books that changed the way you think- in any way at all, large or small.

When I was around 12 I read the Once series and this really opened my eyes to how horribly innocent people were treated in WWII. By reading about what Jewish people went through, it made me realise again how lucky I am to not be faced with that much hardship or distress in my life.

Based on what you see around you, do you think teenagers read more or less than they used to?

I think that there are quite a few teenagers that still do read a lot but because many different influences, like technology, it’s not as much as what it used to be. I believe that not everyone has to love reading or read every day just that they have to be able to read quite extensively and understand what they are reading. Reading is still in the school curriculum so I believe that most teenagers still read books even if it is the one that is assigned to them in class.

Who is your favourite author and why?

I don’t really specifically have a favourite author and it really changes the older I get. A few years ago I really enjoyed Robyn Bavati’s books and although I still, do my reading style has matured. If I had to pick an author now it would probably be Sunni Overend because her books are enjoyable to read and I think that they have a good plot line.

If you were banished to a desert island and could take three books with you, what would they be and why?

I would probably take Pirouette by Robyn Bavati, Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Dangers of Truffle Hunting by Sunni Overend. Pirouette has been one of my favourite books for a long time and it is a pretty easy book to read and that is what I like about it. Both Animal Farm and The Dangers of Truffle Hunting are books that haven’t read yet but have wanted to for a long time. I have read other books by Sunni Overend, so I think that I will enjoy this one, and Animal Farm is a classic, with an allegorical style that interests me.

Want to complete your work experience at Wakefield Press?

Email Maddy to get the ball rolling.

‘There is no finality in human progress’: On Mary Lee

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Wakefield Press intern Claire Morey recently graduated from the University of Adelaide with Honours in History. While she was here, she read and reviewed Denise George’s Mary Lee: The life and times of a ‘turbulent anarchist’ and her battle for women’s rights. Natasha Stott Despoja, who launched the book this month, said it should be in every classroom in every South Australian school. Read the review to see if Claire agrees!

Mary Lee: ‘There is no finality in human progress’

In this book, Denise George offers us the wonderful story of women’s suffrage campaigner Mary Lee. Enshrined in a bronze bust outside Government House in 1994, Lee has often been forgotten from Adelaide’s early history, which has long been dominated by the colonial men whose names adorn the city streets. One hundred years before the bust was constructed, Lee spearheaded the campaign for women’s suffrage and sought to improve the rights of all South Australian women, especially those who were considered destitute.

The book begins with a thorough background into Lee’s Protestant working-class upbringing in Northern Ireland where ‘famine, starvation, disease, poverty and death marked her formative years’. Due to the dire situation wrought by the Great Potato Famine, increasing revolutionary sentiment in 1840s Ireland, and Lee’s basic education (even that rare for a woman of her class), she set out to pursue a long life of social justice to improve the rights of the working class and women.

“famine, starvation, disease, poverty and death marked her formative years”

Before Lee arrived in Adelaide as a 59-year-old widow, she lived in Cambridge and later London with her husband George Lee and their children. Shocked by the lack of education for young women in London, she opened The Young Ladies Educational Institute in Hammersmith in 1860. Here, she taught girls literature, history, geography, natural science, language and religion in order for them to seek the same professions as young men. Despite the success of the school, tragedy struck when Lee’s son, Ben, who had recently moved to Adelaide, wrote home about his tuberculosis diagnosis in the late 1870s. So began Lee’s journey to South Australia with her daughter Eve in November 1879 aboard the Orient.

In South Australia, Lee not only advocated for female suffrage, but she also campaigned for the rights of all disenfranchised South Australians. She was shocked by the poverty and prostitution that ravaged the inner city, and as part of The Social Purity Society she helped to raise the age of consent for women. She travelled to countless country towns advocating the rights of both the impoverished rural working-class and women. Likewise, she despaired for the position of Indigenous people and the mentally ill in South Australia.

Her founding role in the Women’s Suffrage League and her controversial position as an outspoken foreign widow pushed her into a long and spiteful war with the press and much of Adelaide society. In part due to her strong Primitive Methodist faith, which was known for its forward-thinking social justice causes, Lee was a revolutionary who despised the conservative colonists in Adelaide. Reacting to British Prime Minister Gladstone’s opposition to female suffrage, Lee declared: ‘Dear old England swathed and mummified in centuries of tradition and prejudice … Will not, cannot, a young vigorous nation create its own precedent?’

‘Will not, cannot, a young vigorous nation create its own precedent?’

Despite the considerable opposition to women’s suffrage, Lee persisted in her constant campaigning efforts, all the while receiving no wage or benefits. In 1894 when South Australian women gained the right to vote and be elected to sit in parliament, the first place in the world to achieve both reforms, Lee found herself in dire circumstances with no money, deteriorating health, and few remaining children to come to her aid.

George begins the epilogue with a quote by Lee – ‘There is no finality in human progress’ – particularly significant, as the revised Commonwealth Franchise Act (1902) allowed women the right to vote, but prevented any Indigenous Australian, Asian, African or Islander the same freedom. George’s book is a fascinating, well-researched, and touching tribute to one of the most important women in our local and global history.

Perhaps most moving is the way George connects Lee’s remarkable life and achievements to the struggles of women in the contemporary Western world today. In the era of the #MeToo movement, when many women continue to be denied their basic rights to gender equality and Western governments are still largely dominated by men, Mary Lee’s remark is just as pertinent as it was in 1893: ‘What is democracy? A government of the people, for the people, by the people. How can a government of men, for men, by men, be a democracy?’

Mary Lee: The life and times of a ‘turbulent anarchist’ and her battle for women’s rights is available in all good bookshops – and at our bookshop at 16 Rose Street, Mile End (or online).