Transcript
Page 1: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

Kill yourdarlings

A M A G A Z I N E O F N E W A U S T R A L I A N W R I T I N G

Page 2: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

Kill Your DarlingsPO Box 271, Seddon West Victoria, 3011, AustraliaEmail: [email protected]: www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com

Kill Your Darlings 26, 2016Publishing Directors Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent Associate Editor Hop DacOnline Editor Veronica SullivanDeputy Editor Ashleigh HansonOnline Deputy Editor Alan Vaarwerk Interviews Editor Gerard ElsonPodcast Coordinator Meaghan DewDesign and Illustration Guy Shield

Published by Kill Your Darlings Pty LtdThis collection © Kill Your Darlings 2016All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of Kill Your Darlings. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors are not necessarily those of the editors.

Cover illustration: Guy ShieldDesign and layout: © Kill Your DarlingsPrinted and bound by Griffin Press.Kill Your Darlings accepts unsolicited submissions. Please visit the website for all guidelines.

This book is printed on paper certified against the Forest StewardshipCouncil Standards. Griffin Press holds FSC chain-of-custody certificationSGS-COC-009448. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, sociallybeneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Page 3: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

Contents5 Editorial

First Person11 A Homage to the

NewspaperHugh Jones

25 The Famous Five in Kuala LumpurLian Low

Commentary35 Simple Pleasures

Matilda Dixon-Smith

45 The Space Of HoursJerath Head

59 Rewriting Identity Through CreativityMadeleine Hamilton

73 My Inner FangirlEmma Maguire

Dispatches85 Postcards from

North KoreaAshley Kalagian Blunt

Conversations97 Conversations

Ann Goldstein

Fiction115 Sounds Like Low

David sornig

Culture Files133 Art In Limbo

Jane Howard

145 We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to SurviveKali Myers

Page 4: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26
Page 5: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

5

Editorial

Welcome to the 26th issue of Kill Your Darlings. The future of the arts in Australia was much on

our minds as we prepared this edition. The full force of the Coalition government’s recent gutting of the Australia Council has been felt by many arts organisations around the country, with dozens losing operational funding, meaning their futures are now in jeopardy.

Kill Your Darlings is grateful that our support from the Australia Council, as well as our other government-funding partner, Creative Victoria, continues. Their assistance enables us to continue publishing and promoting this country’s most exciting and diverse voices, and to support, in turn, the careers of many Australian writers.

But we also could not run our organisation without you, our wonderful readers and subscribers. You are the lifeblood of this publication. Thank you for supporting Australian literature, and for your avid and ongoing interest in the creation and celebration of contemporary culture.

It is timely, then, that we begin this issue with an essay from Hugh Jones, a former journalist with Murdoch’s News Corporation, reflecting on his career and how the company’s

Page 6: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

k ill your darlings | i ssue 26

6

reluctant acceptance of the digital revolution would ultimately endanger the livelihoods of its staff.

Traditional media has long been under siege: the realities of changing reading habits, the proliferation of digital news sites, and the growing scepticism towards tabloid journalism and their commercial agenda has contributed to the slow death of the newspaper. As the reports of more savage redundancies among Fairfax staff around the country reverberates, ‘A Homage the Newspaper’ is essential reading.

Elsewhere in this issue, Lian Lowe recalls how Enid Blyton’s classic The Famous Five series helped her traverse a difficult adolescence in Kuala Lumpur, while Matilda Dixon-Smith writes a paean to the independent bookshop. In other Commentary, Jerath Head describes the meditative pleasures of his Finnegans Wake book club, where the Brisbane-based group read only a couple of pages each month and indulge in the joys of ‘slow reading’.

Female adolescence, trauma and creativity is examined in Madeleine Hamilton’s profile of five artists, in which she details how artistic practice enabled these women to create new lives and new selves, and negotiate (and overcome) mental illness. Writing in response to GQ’s sneering disparagement of the ‘fangirl’, Emma Maguire defends the legitimacy of this cultural movement, and – like Hamilton – examines the possibility of empowerment in the creation of identity through the celebration of art and music.

In Dispatches, Ashley Kalagian Blunt travels to North Korea, where she must grapple with some tricky questions about the ethics of touring the so-called Hermit Kingdom, and in New Fiction, we feature a short story, ‘Sounds Like Low’, from David Sornig, author of Spiel.

In Conversations, Gerard Elson speaks with Ann

Page 7: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

7

editor ial

Goldstein, editor and translator of Italian writer Elena Ferrante’s bestselling novels, while in Culture Files, Jane Howard examines the limitations and possibilities of collaboration and appropriation between the screen and stage industries, and Kali Myers explores the patriarchal roots of one of our best-known fairytales in the context of Angela Carter’s exalted feminist retellings.

If you haven’t already, please visit our brand new website: killyourdarlingsjournal.com. There you can access a wealth of additional content, listen to our monthly podcast, learn more about our upcoming events and writers’ workshops, and stay in touch with all our other updates.

Finally, we farewell our online editor extraordinaire, Veronica Sullivan, who has managed the KYD website for the past two years with tremendous skill and vision. Our website has been transformed under her editorship, and we thank her for all she has done to ensure our writers reach larger and more diverse audiences that ever before. Veronica’s departure is a great loss for us, but we look forward to seeing her star continue to soar as she takes on new endeavours. Ronnie, you will be greatly missed!

Alan Vaarwerk, who has served as Veronica’s deputy, now takes his new position as online editor. We congratulate him on the new role.

Happy reading!

Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent, Publishing Directors and Editors-in-Chief

Page 8: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26
Page 9: Kill Your Darlings - Issue 26

first person


Top Related