Indigo Owl is smart, thoughtful YA fiction for modern teens. Equal parts thrilling entertainment and thought-provoking social commentary, Indigo Owl discusses the ‘what ifs’ around the future of the human race.
This week features Anne Black, author of Pendragon: The life of George Isaacs, Colonial wordsmith. Anne writes about her first encounter with little-known literary icon George Isaacs, and the death certificate that sparked an obsession and a biography.
As our fearless leader, Michael Bollen, considers the daunting ‘For Official Use 
Only’ headers that have plagued his inbox as late, he also ponders his own official use as a publisher. In Diary of a Publisher, a brilliant new series launched on InDaily, Michael talks about publishing as a whole, and Wakefield Press’s ever-evolving role in the world of books.
Publishing, as Michael (and dictionaries) say, is the act of ‘making things known’. Information and stories that authors and publishers bring to the world, to make known facts, fictions, and half-lie-half-truth tales that captivate and inform us. It’s quite a grand and romantic thought then, when you really think about it. As publishers, it’s our goal to bring important stories to the fore, from South Australia’s women’s suffrage movement and the little-known woman who got it started for our small colony, to the art of absurdity and silliness, to flowers and art in Australia.
For us, Love Your Bookshop Day is a great way to meet with our customers, both old and new, and to showcase the amazing range of books we publish every year. It’s also vital to our existence; without our customers, we would not be. If we don’t exist, South Australian stories will struggle to find the spotlight they so deserve.
Local bookshops live and die by the sword of the customer, so word of mouth, events, and being different are vitally important to us. This Saturday 10 August, Wakefield Press will be open from 1.0 pm to 5.00 pm. We’re running our classic 3 for 2 special, and have a great range of new arrivals and reprinted favourites ready and waiting to be cherished. Around the traps though, there’s plenty going on. Consider supporting one of South Australia’s other independent bookshops (and huge supporters of Wakefield Press).
on Hindley street will have bubbles, cake, music and giveaways all day, as well as their wonderful range of niche and hard-to-find books in their cosy, welcoming store. You might even be lucky enough to see Wakefieldean Jo working her bookselling magic there. Ask her for a book recommendation, or see what she’s been reading recently over at InDaily.
is the Adelaide Hills favourite bookstore, although we could be a little biased. Gavin and his team will be open all day on Saturday – pop by for a great range of food and gardening books, including our own Tori Arbon and Lolo Houbein’s Magic Little Meals.
in Rundle Mall is a booklover’s dream; an emporium-like cave full to the brim of a huge range of books, it’s an old faithful for many of us. Check out the little Wakefield window in the front of the shop, and browse their wares all day. If you’re super keen, Dr Karl’s new book is launching Saturday evening as well – head to their website for more details.
Most importantly though, don’t forget the other 364 days of the year that your local bookshops exist! We love to see customers returning and telling us about books they’ve loved, or would love to see. We love getting these stories to our readers, and expanding our own knowledge and experiences, but most of all we love being here, existing, making things known.
This is a great question!
For me, I think the biggest key to writing a book that is interesting the whole way through is to keep assessing whether I myself actually find what I’m writing interesting. I am a bit of a selfish writer, so I definitely write the kind of stories that appeal to me and that I find interesting personally, and I think that does make it easier to ensure my story is satisfying (for me at least! Ha!).
The flipside of this is that of course through the process of writing and editing a book, a writer is forced to read it through a MILLION times, so definitely don’t get worried if you end up finding your manuscript less interesting as time goes on. That doesn’t mean your work is no good, it just means you have read it a MILLION times, and that is totally okay.
Although I do take tiny snippets from everyday life, I don’t think I have ever based a character entirely off myself or someone I know.
One of the main joys of writing for me is the opportunity to explore the things that make people tick, and often when I begin writing a story I don’t even know a huge amount about the characters myself! It then becomes part of that process of writing just to explore who they are and figure them out.
Actually, one of the most interesting things that has come out of the release of my debut novel, is that I have realised a LOT of people have presumed that the protagonist in my novel is based on me and my high school experience. Funnily enough, this is definitely not the case, and I actually had a lot of fun writing a character like Alice who is quite different to me in almost every way.
Did you base the story on something?I did!
The original idea was sparked by a cute viral video I watched on the net a few years ago, which featured a caught on camera goofy impromptu dance on the street by two teens walking home from school. I saw the video and just couldn’t stop thinking about who they were and what their friendship might be like, and that really morphed into this love story.
From there I was also influenced greatly by the cute romantic animes (Japanese animation shows) I was watching at the time and also by a book I adore, which is fun and light and moving all rolled into one (Jaclyn Moriarty’s fantastic #LoveOzYA novel Finding Cassie Crazy).
This is another excellent question, and it made me sit down and think, because actually I’ve never stopped to wonder what I learned!
Probably the biggest challenge for me with writing ALICE was in figuring out how to ensure that the romantic tension between Alice and her new friend Teddy lasted the whole book. I think one of the most difficult parts of writing a love story is in keeping readers invested in that romance until the end of the book. That was a major challenge for me, and I hope that I learned how to accomplish it with this novel.
To be completely honest, although in hindsight I can see there are themes in ALICE about standing up for others and not buying into stereotypes etc. when I was actually writing it I never thought much about trying to teach anyone anything. There are ideas in it that I definitely wanted to explore myself, but none that I felt like I wanted to teach.
In a lot of ways, and this may sound bad or weird, but I don’t know if it matters to me if readers can learn anything or not from what I write. I have always been of the mindset that fiction should make you feel something, and that is what I mostly set out to do. By writing the kind of story that I find realistic and romantic, that makes me feel happy, I think I hoped to make readers feel happy too.
Right here you have hit on my absolute most favourite element of any story! Actually, I am obsessed with getting emotion across within my work, and one of the hugest parts of writing ALICE for me was to develop a love story that felt ultra possible and realistic, and create characters whose emotions readers could recognise and identify with.
I think every writer probably has different story elements that they most identify with and that they most want to bring out in their work (for instance, twisty plots or interesting fresh ideas etc.) but for me, embedding emotion into my characters and stories is always highest on my list. The easiest way I have found to do that is to really think deeply about a character’s reactions and actions, and think about how everything that occurs within the story might truly impact them and make them feel if they were real.
I think a great way to almost ‘learn’ emotions is also to read other books and watch movies and tv, and start analysing the character’s reactions within their stories. I often think, if that person was real, as in truly alive and real within that world, would they truly react that same way or would their emotional reaction be different? This is actually the thing that can make or break a story for me. For instance, a story could have the most interesting satisfying plot in the world, but if the emotions and emotional arcs of the characters don’t ring true, if it doesn’t make me feel anything, then I won’t be able to love it.
Sometimes I think the stories we read or watch can almost occur in heightened realities, and therefore emotions in those stories can sometimes lose their grounding and depth, and end up feeling less impactful because they don’t feel true. I think that is okay to have stories like that, but personally I am always more moved by, for instance, a love story that feels grounded in true emotion, where the characters feel like they might actually continue to love each other long after the credits roll or the final page.
Gosh what a huge answer! Sorry! But you got me started on a very special topic! 🙂
Oh, this is a fun one to answer! Endings for me are very difficult, because I usually have only a very vague idea of where the story is going to end up when I begin writing it, and definitely no end scene or final plot point in mind. Which means I am usually left in a state of indecision by the time I make it to the end, wondering how to make it work and how to keep it interesting.
With ALICE, I really didn’t know how I was going to end the story, but I guess for me, as we discussed above, it does always come back to the emotion in the narrative. Most of all I wanted to write an ending that had a good emotional resolution for the characters, and when figuring out how to finish the story, I focused mostly on what felt right in terms of the character’s journeys, their emotional arcs and the love story itself. In some ways, I suppose the plot came second, and I figured it out later as a framework to prop up how I wanted the emotional side of the story to end.
Now that I think about it, I suppose that is the way I usually approach the ending of all the stories I write!
The book recounts the many challenges in establishing the Memorial and then in developing further its galleries and displays, the extensive collection, associated events and the overall supporting facilities. It also goes behind the scenes to provide insights into the many facets of a major, modern cultural institution.
In this extract from the final chapter of the book, Gower reflects on the importance of the Memorial, as well as the way the Australian people. have interacted with the Memorial over the years; some with disdain and contempt, others with a sense of solemn pride. He notes that directors past, present and future have always had the betterment and preservation of the Memorial at the front of their mind.
It seems relevant to ask why so many people are interested in what happens at the Australian War Memorial and why such passion is aroused at different times. I would suggest the reason is that the Memorial deals unmistakably with an agreed, major Australian narrative, not the only one but. arguably the principal one, which had its origins in the Gallipoli campaign and which has resonated with successive generations. That narrative has been challenged and dismissed by some: others demand that it be interpreted their way. Minorities have attached what they believe it stands for and have confidently predicted its imminent demise. Notwithstanding, the narrative has survived and is probably stronger now than it has ever been. It belongs to the Australian people, with all their strengths, weaknesses, pride, foibles. and innate decency, who by their support have expressed their satisfaction with its very essence. it comes from the people voluntarily, not imposed from above.
The Australian War Memorial, as a custodian of the narrative, belongs to all Australians. It’s not owned by the defence force, whose members carry the burden of the nation’s expectations that they live up to the values implicitly recorded there. I have no doubt that can be a source of strength and resolution for them in fulfilling their duty. The .institution is not owned by veterans, despite their service and sacrifice and the fact that some regard it as the sacred cathedra of a secular Anzac religion. And it’s certainly not owned by the staff of the Memorial, the Director, historians, curators, or the like. Having said that, every Director and staff member down the ages has believed strongly in the Memorial and had its interests and advancement to the forefront of their minds.
The greatest privilege conferred on all staff is holding temporary stewardship of the narrative. and its contemporary meaning. In accepting this task, it’s their challenge to meet the collective high expectations the general public has of this great. and uniquely Australian institution. This sometimes requires a degree of resilience and fortitude not usually associated with museums and a sensitivity to nuances and subtleties.
In 2015 I asked Peter Burness, that long-serving. servant of the Memorial, what he thought Bean’s reaction would be were he to come back now. Burness thought he’d be thrilled. Bean’s vision had not only blossomed. but flourished, perhaps well beyond his original dreams. he might even be a little surprised by. the esteem with which it is held by the public, and its prominence as the central repository of .Australia’s remembrance of war. The Memorial is a great tribute to his. determination, persistence, and powers of persuasion in seeking the fulfilment of his vision.
As for Treloar, I believe he, too, would be pleased, but as an undemonstrative, hard-working, self-contained man, it is probable that he would suppress any satisfied smile. But inwardly, he’d be very proud of seeing how the place to which he’d devoted his life had progressed. His life’s work has become a lasting legacy, as he had hoped.
Both would be well pleased with how the record has been guarded over the last century. And so should anyone else who has been associated with the Memorial, in whatever capacity.
To purchase a copy of The Australian War Memorial: A century on from the vision, visit us in our Mile End bookshop, give us a call on (08) 8352 4455, or find the book in our online web shop.
Pens and Bayonets gives voice to the young Australia soldiers who volunteered to fight for our freedom in the Great War. They answered the call willingly, with many thinking it may be all over before they got there. How wrong they were. Author Don Longo gathered many of the moving letters sent to the fronts, and set them in their historical context, to bring these soldiers back to life.
Anzac biscuits, baked in Australia and New Zealand for over a century, have a powerful connection to the national identity and culture of both countries. But what is the story of this national icon? Were they eaten by troops during the First World War? When did coconut make an appearance?
Author Allison Reynolds traces the origins of the humble Anzac Biscuit, delving into war files and family cookbooks to investigate the provenance of this extraordinary everyday biscuit.
In 1915, the second year of the Great War, Mabel Marryat joined the newly-formed League of Loyal Women. Mabel was active in the League’s emergency corps, ‘women who are prepared to give their service in any need that may arise’.
This book gives voice to the women of South Australia’s first 110 years of European settlement and opportunity to reflect on the changing position of women in society. But the spotlight shines on Mabel. Her long and devoted community service – particularly to her ‘Diggers’ – was extraordinary.
Close to 35,000 South Australians enlisted for service overseas during the Great War. Around 5500 never came back. Countless more returned with physical and psychological injuries that would affect them for the rest of their lives.
Drawing on the work of the many who have written on the subject previously, Valour and Violets provides a wholly South Australian perspective on the impact of the Great War on individuals, on families and on our state’s coastal, regional, and outback communities.
In August 1914 South Australians – much like their fellow Australians around the country – enthusiastically displayed their patriotism when war was announced. It’s a story we know well, but what do we know of South Australia in the lead up to the First World War? What was it like to live there at the time? What were South Australians talking about?
South Australia on the Eve of War considers unique aspects of the state in this pre-war period, including the political reverberations of Federation, the town planning of what was then Australia’s third-largest capital, Adelaide, and the shifting social positions of women, Indigenous Australians and minority groups.
Whilst reading this text I have fallen in love with, become exasperated by, and completely related to Alice Dyson, the protagonist Poppy Nwosu has so artfully created. The text delves into issues of social anxiety, peer pressure and bullying, self-identity, the feeling of being trapped on a path that you are unsure that you want to go down, and the ability to be brave and be yourself in the face of all of it. And of course, young love.
The catalyst of the plot revolves around one Teddy Taualai, who in his endeavour to enter Alice Dyson’s life upsets the balance with her friend May, her relationship with her demanding parents, and Alice’s carefully-planned future.
Throughout the novel Poppy threads through brilliant one liners that give her characters and their struggles an achingly realistic relatability. The characters practically jump off the page. It is these one liners that are both humorous but also incredibly real, that allow her to tackle hard issues like bullying in such a way that feels less like you are being lectured rather than you are getting a glimpse behind the curtain of adolescence.
But I do decide I need to do something. May holds her head high every day even when she’s bullied… and it makes me want to be brave too.
Alice’s personal growth is the shining light of the story, and her commitment to her own feelings and desires, while flawed, feels incredibly real. Her relationship with Teddy Tauali is awkward and gentle and incredibly genuine, and Teddy’s character is the sort of person many readers will find themselves wishing they had a chance to meet. This is a beautiful, tender story about endeavouring to be true – to your friends, to your family, but most importantly, to yourself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
I much prefer reading print books, I only really read e-books if a print book isn’t available.
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.
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.
