Smashing works | Posted: Monday Sep 17th, 2007 | Categories: Novels A classless violent work that paints a picture of a world where people no longer care for each other? NYWF guest Andrew Hutchinson launched his new book Rohypnol recently and the critics are split (like a lip after a good fight). And that can be a good thing.
After receiving an Express Media mentorship, Andrew worked on a manuscript with Christos Tsiolkas and picked up the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Rohypnol, and it is easy to see why, Louise Swinn writes in the Sydney Morning Herald. ‘The book stands out. It is a tight, topical tale, told with assurance. Nevertheless, at the same time, it appears to be angling for shock value…’
The story of a group of young men who use a date-rape drug to prey on unsuspecting girls and women, Rohypnol is splattered with the manifesto of The New Punk, Radio Adelaide’s Writers Radio program, Gillian Dooley says:
‘The New Punk, Andrew writes, “is not about guilt … Guilt is for people who think they can be forgiven … The New Punk is about rejecting guilt … Note to psychologist: I do not feel guilty about what I have done … I refuse to be a safe little nobody … The New Punk is not about guilt. What’s done is fucking done”.’
‘These so-called New Punks are white, spoilt, middle-class, private-schooled, affluent,’ reckons Thuy On in The Age. ‘They don’t appear to have been psychologically damaged in any way that would explain their behaviours.’
Make up your own mind about the New Punk when Andrew gets stuck into violence and culture with Bryce Wolfgang Joiner and Jo Waite on the Smashing Works panel at NYWF.
Read Thuy On’s review in The Age.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/book-reviews/rohypnol/2007/08/14/1186857497953.html
Read Louise Swinn’s review in the Sydney Morning Herald.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/rohypnol/2007/08/17/1186857751281.html
And Gillian Dooley’s thoughts on Radio Adelaide’s Writers Radio. http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/handle/2328/1706
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Just another manic Monday with Charles Firth Charles Firth. Chaser. Co-founder of The Manic Times (www.manictimes.com.au). NYWF participant. Here, the NYWF team delves deep in an emotional interview that reveals the man and leaves us all a little misty eyed.
NYWF: Charles, it is the virtual eve of the election and you are choosing to spend a weekend, which could otherwise be spent researching the pros and cons of forming your own political party, with a bunch of writers. Could you describe your motivations for this?
CF: Really. Is that what I’m doing? I thought I was attending a political rally. Next time I should really ask what an acronym actually stands for before accepting an invitation. Finding out what I’m doing in interviews is starting to become embarrassing.
NYWF: What do you expect your experience to be at the National Young Writers’ Festival this year?
CF: Short and sweet.
NYWF: Why is it important for young and emerging writers to have a rant about the upcoming election in the Election Soapboxing Match at NYWF?
CF: Because it’s the only place where someone will listen to them.
NYWF: In the Soapboxing Match, young Howard-wannabes and aspiring Ruddettes will have 120 seconds to convince the audience of something to do with the upcoming election. What words of advice would you have for them?
CF: Go hard and go early. If you haven’t won me or the audience over in the first five seconds, forget it. It’s all about the soundbite in grown-up politics so it’s no different for the young and aspiring wannabes. My other advice is the same advice I have for everyone. Subscribe to Manic Times, my new newspaper and online news site. www.manictimes.com.au. Weekly newspaper out on Saturdays around NSW and the ACT. Or available nationally by subscription.
NYWF: What would you say to that sweaty and by then quite inebriated crowd in your two minutes?
CF: The first step to knowledge is a subscription to Manic Times. The second step is to accept Paris Hilton into your life. The third step is to enjoy that. The next 22 steps in a political life kind of take care of themselves after that. In summary, the two pillars for success in politics are Manic Times and Paris Hilton. And if there’s any babies there let me at them. I want to kiss them all.
NYWF: Will the Election Soapboxing match have any direct influence over the upcoming election? Can you describe its effects?
CF: You must be kidding. The election is as good as over. There’s no way Kevin Rudd can win while the rest of his party have no faith in his leadership and they think he’s too old for the job. Oh, that’s the Liberal Party you say? No, it definitely sounds like the Labor Party. I’ll check that and get back to you.
NYWF: Do festivals like NYWF have any influence over anything at all?
CF: Studies show they have a positive influence on the profits of the multi-national brewing companies, which ironically many festival participants despise. And isn’t that what the world’s all about. Rich industrialists benefiting without young foolish idealists even realising it.
NYWF: What do you hope to bring to NYWF this year?
CF: Hope. Joy. Harmony. Paris Hilton. She’s getting back to me, but I reckon you can count on it if you want to spread the word.
NYWF: What do you expect to get out of NYWF?
CF: Piers Ackerman’s autograph. He will be there won’t he? No? What about Janet Albrechtson? Hmmm … I’m not sure I’m coming anymore.
NYWF: Are you thinking of forming a party to run in the next election?
CF: Those rumours have no foundation. That’s what my campaign manager said to say anyway.
NYWF: If so, please describe the benefit, if any, that your leadership might have for the writing community?
CF: None at all. I’ve already got a speechwriter. Or I would have, if I were forming a party. Which I’m not. And if I did, and if I had a speechwriter, I wouldn’t need any more, let alone a whole community of them.
NYWF: Can we expect any ‘Chaser’s’ action at NYWF?
CF: Is this a question about how now we’re incredibly popular and well known that we don’t have the element of surprise anymore?
Charles Firth will be MCing The 2007 Election Soapboxing Match at NYWF. See the program for details.
Charles is co-founder of The Manic Times - a weekly newspaper, and daily video-driven website – with another festival participant, Martin Robertson.
link:
www.manictimes.com.au. |
1000 words = ... | Posted: Wednesday Sep 12th, 2007 There are so many stories at the NYWF. 'Obviously,' you say. 'It's a writers' festival.' Then you steal my pen. But, I continue, using one of those awful plastic click pencils with a breaky nib, it's the way in which we tell these stories that makes NYWF so bloody fun. In just over three weeks Newcastle will be filled with writers from all over Australia telling tales in whatever way they choose. Through poetry, performance, spoken word, noise, dance, rhythmic gyrating word art, fiction, non-fiction and, of course, through illustration.
For each of the thousand words that a picture tells, there will easily be that many people flocking to the festival to take part in the Zine and Independent Press Fair, comics panels, workshops and general zine-swapping, picture-making madness. Two illustrators and graphic novelists, Shaun Tan and Nicki Greenberg, will be amid the throng. Nicki, who has recently completed the graphic novel version of The Great Gatsby (Allen & Unwin), and Shaun, author of the award-winning The Arrival (Lothian Books, Hachette Livre Australia), will appear and disappear over five days in many manifestations: as punters, as panelists, as people having a conversation in front of heaps of other people, and Shaun will even conduct a master class.
Take a peek at some of Shaun Tan's latest work:
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The creatures in Nicki Greenberg’s ink bottle | Posted: Tuesday Sep 18th, 2007 There’s a giant pink squid with silver suckers staring at us from Nicki Greenberg’s living room. That’s Derek, the star of her non-fiction children’s book about squids, explains the writer and comic artist whose imagination will spill all over the festival later this month.
Derek’s googly eyes are disconcerting. ‘I had the flu and I was nearly dying, but I had to go to an authors’ talk dressed as something from my book. I got it in my head that I had to make a squid. All the other authors had a bit of a scarf or something token, and I turned up with a bloody great electric-pink squid on my head.’
Nicki fills her pages with strange creatures, from Derek the Disco Squid to the beyond-human characters in her graphic interpretation of The Great Gatsby, which after seven years is now in bookshops.
‘Daisy’s my favourite,’ says Nicki of the dandelion shape she devised for Gatsby’s great love. ‘She’s a rotten piece of work, morally compromised, but beautiful. You can’t even say she means well, because she doesn’t really.’
‘Gatsby’s been the one constant thing in my life (apart from family and friends) for seven years – between the ages of 25 and 32 there are a lot of changes,’ she says. Without knowing if publishers would be interested, each morning before work as a lawyer she would go through the painstaking process of editing and interpreting F Scott Fitzgerald’s text.
‘It’s the gorgeousness of the era, the storytelling and characters are beautifully drawn. It was just crying out to be in comic form, to be interpreted and paid tribute to. And the dialogue is so sparkling,’ she says.
Now that her own Gatsby is out in the world, Nicki is absorbed in the graphic telling of another classic, Hamlet. The characters are sprawling splotches of ink, haunted by what crawls around the page, and she is painting luminescent sets on which she can stage scenes from the play. She has finished 100 of an estimated 400 roughs, and gives herself three years to complete the book.
‘For seven years with Gatsby I worked with a nib, and for Hamlet I wanted something smooth and flowing. I just found this silicone brush – it’s a revelation. I want shapes rather than lines, because the text feels so heavy and there is lots of blackness and the grotesque in the play,’ she says.
Researching and exploring epic tales and maintaining the stamina to translate them into graphic form is something Nicki and Shaun Tan will talk about on their NYWF panel ‘One thousand pictures paint a million words’. Nicki will also settle in at the Festival Club for the Live Comics Jam, and the NYWF comics exhibition, ‘Taking eye-candy from strangers’.
Blog: There’s a bug in my ink bottle
link:
Web: www.nickigreenberg.com |
Words from the West Side Patrick is a journalist, editor, activist, broadcaster, pseudo-academic and web geek from WA. He has written for many publications, is a presenter on RTRfm, managing director of Papercut Media, and co-founder of The Concrete Organisation. You can rub up against him at two of the NYWF roundtables: ‘Much ado about blogging’ and ‘Unprofessional cultures’. And here. Rub against his words here:
> Have you been to the festival before?
Yep, a couple of times. I attended the Student Media Conference in 2000 as the editor of Grok (Curtin Uni) and got my first taste of this wonderful, strange and beautiful event. And of Newcastle ginger beer. One or the other of those led me to come back a couple of years later to play more of a part in the NYWF and the student media conference -- I spoke on a few panels, went to parties in crumbling buildings, crashed on Marcus Westbury’s floor, and had one of the best weekends of my life.
> What are your impressions of the festival?
I don’t think people realise quite how significant it has been in the development of nascent talent and minds in this country. Newcastle over that weekend feels like a mad space outside of the normal rules, where anything might be possible and where you don’t feel like a second-rate citizen for daring to call yourself a writer. Whether or not what happens in Newcastle one weekend of the year makes that much of a difference to Australian society, I can’t honestly say. But it does give me faith in the creative soul of this country. Shucks.
> What will you be doing at the festival this year?
Does everybody answer ginger beer to this question? I believe I’ll be speaking on a panel about blogging (Much ado about blogging) and another about creating on your own terms and not selling out to the man (Unprofessional cultures). But mostly, I hope I’ll be spending the weekend being inspired by people infinitely more talented than myself, and debating long into the night about things that really, really matter. Or that, at least, seem to after that many drinks.
> What are Concrete Dialogues?
This city (Perth) has a few strange ideas about itself. One of them is that it has no stories to tell, that it lacks cultural memory and history and that everybody interesting buggers off somewhere else. We wanted to try and argue against that, to show that this city does have a story, a collective one, and that hopefully in the shared memories of a city’s young-to-middling, you can find something of its true identity. Concrete Dialogues was/is a web-based project that mashes together Google maps, some arcane government mapping data which took years to pry from their hands, and the works of some amazing young writers from this city. On the site, you can journey between the works, search by street name, by suburb, or by theme, wandering geographically or conceptually. It was also a print zine and a collection of cards featuring snippets of writing, which we left in strategic locations around the city. We also crashed a gallery space for the launch, exhibiting writing on the walls, which confused people.
> Can you tell us about Boom Town?
Boomtown is two things: firstly, the plan is to produce our very favourite magazine, one which people anywhere in the world could pick up in a bookshop and think ‘fuck yeah, subscribe me up’. We wanted to create something that we’d actually want to read, not just something that existed for the sake of funding or publishing people that feel they want to be writers. Boomtown will be about great writing, great journalism and rules broken. There’s also going to be an audio component that will turn Boomtown into sound in a few different ways -- firstly, as a broadcast radio series, secondly as a real piece of plastic compact disc stuck to the magazine, and thirdly as podcast. We’re in love with the possibilities of radio as much as we are with the possibilities of print, but sadly it seems to be a neglected medium in this country.
> Why ‘Boomtown’?
It’s not necessarily a project about Perth, but we’re using that as a springboard, to explore some ideas about how all cities work, or how they should. We’re constantly told in this city that we live with ‘unprecedented prosperity’, and yet we don’t see the gain of that, just rising rents and more drunk miners outside my front door on weekends. The word ‘boomtown’ has become an ironic refrain, one we repeat far too often, as we see yet another friend kicked out of their house or another pub closed down for noise complaints, or another former premier in his Panama hat exposing the filthy side of frontier politics. It’s coming together. boomtown.org.au
> Does the WA art scene differ from the East Coast?
I can only speak for the writing scene (and the broadcasting one); the artists intimidate me with their strange rituals and robes. The main difference is that in Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle and so on, there are much more established communities and support networks. Out here, we’re on our own. There aren’t really many opportunities for publication, there hasn’t even really been a proper open mic in years (not that you’d find me at one if there was, I only speak into microphones in dark radio studios). We’ve tried to do our bit to change that, small as it is. We don’t have a vibrant inner-city here, so creation and collaboration is much more ad-hoc. We also don’t have the support infrastructure in place -- there aren’t that many experienced folks who actually have made a decent crack of it here without leaving, so every generation seems to have to figure it out for themselves. Still, I’m told the beaches are nicer here. So there’s that.
link:
www.patrickpittman.com |
Smarter than your average bogan ‘Once upon a time you could easily spot a bogan - ACDC t-shirt, cheap trainers.’ Callum Scott, who is wearing just that, leans out the window and fires a round at a couple of rabbits, swearing as he misses them completely. It might be the four longnecks he’s downed since the start of the interview. The ute swerves and then straightens. Next to him, I pull at my jeans. Camel toe. Callum’s mullet puffs in the breeze. ‘But there’s now a new dimension to boganality,’ he continues, pulling a cigarette out from behind his ear. It’s the last one and there’s no servo in sight. ‘We live in the age of the cashed up bogan, a Kath and Kim culture where a lot of people who used to be bogans earn huge amounts and are now mass consumers.’ The car screeches to a stop. Mass consumers? The cashed up bogan? We need to change the scene here.
The ute disappears and in its place is a suped-up car with sub woofers that pound at the backs of our heads like hangovers. Callum’s mullet is gone, replaced with something spikey. I have very long, very straight, very blonde hair, the same crotch-hugging jeans and a regularly swiped credit card. ‘People who have never had money are now spending as much as they possibly can – compensating for years of not having anything. It’s now extremely difficult to spot a bogan.’ Callum yells over the din. ‘In Europe, Burberry (a clothing brand) were horrified to find that bogans, called ‘chads’ over there, were buying their products. They put the prices up and up but the bogans were one step ahead. They were making more money than every before and becoming savvy consumers.’ I mention something about young, white men and smile at a couple of them in the car next to us at the lights, but Callum disagrees. ‘Boganality has gone beyond the white paradym in Australia. It has embraced all cultures. And the bogan uniform has changed too, a lot of bogans who are not cashed up – the children of bogans – have embraced hip hop culture and become home boys. So instead of utes and ACDC you get supped up cars and sub woofers.’ I nod approvingly along with the bass. ‘Are you a bogan?’ I scream. ‘No.’ he answers. Shit. Scene change.
No car, just chairs. Callum looks every bit the lecturer and writer that he is; me: like a volunteer for a writer’s festival. Callum has bought us beers. I’m broke. He rethinks his statement. ‘Well…within all of us there is an inner bogan, sitting just next to the inner child.’ Beneath his funky shirt I can see the glint of a gold chain and a saggy wife beater singlet. I smile encouragingly. ‘I’m from Scotland and have lived here on and off for eight years. The first time I came here I was broke and worked as a furniture removalist. Within three months I was supervisor. Within seven I was the operations manager in charge of the firm and running money scams through the business. That’s where I got the idea for my novel, “Dead rabbit”.’
Callum, along with four other artists and writers exploring Australian culture, will feature in the ‘Smarter than your average bogan’ panel at NYWF this year. ‘The artists at NYWF who are looking at boganality are embracing the spirit of our time,’ he says. ‘While graduates wallow in call centres, people who have done apprenticeships are raking in the cash. The class system has been turned on its arse. Fiscal capability used to be a way of defining class but we’re now living in an age where the nouveau rich are almost reigning supreme, changing the whole fabric of Australian culture. The bogan is an integral part of Australia’s history – take Bob Hawke and his [one time] Guinness World Record for the fastest yard glass – but now bogans form a whole new class.’
Callum’s manuscript, which tried on the titles ‘Boag nation’ and ‘Sex, drugs and nori rolls’ before settling with ‘Dead rabbit’, depicts the life of Kevin, a regular bloke who, for all his flat-screen TVs, drives a 1970s Ford to the tune of his favorite song, ‘Highway to hell’, on his way to ‘church’, otherwise known as the pub. He’s a bogan. ‘I’m not so much looking at the cashed up bogan here as hyper masculinity and performativity – how people perform and compete in public spaces – in bogan culture. I also wanted to give the Australian bogan an authentic voice. Too often bogans are portrayed as either stupid or vicious. In my mind they get a bad run in the cinema and from the media. Writers like John Birmingham touch on boganality and others have addressed it with flare and authenticity but Australian publishers don’t go for dirty literature and as a result Australian literature is horribly conservative.’
The chairs and the beer have disappeared. I wouldn’t have a clue if Callum owns a wife beater. We’re on a phone call, with me desperately hoping that I don’t run out of credit or that my shonky old mobile doesn’t die on me. On the other end of the phone Callum sounds like he works too hard. ‘Boganality,’ he tells me, ‘used to be a sub culture but it isn’t any longer. It has become very mainstream. People should be taking notice. Because it will change things forever.’
Callum Scott will be featuring alongside Chayni Henry, Mitch Harris, Rachel Matthews and Ryan Paine in the 'Smarter than your average bogan' panel.
Photo credit: Lanelle Lee Chin |
‘Open Office for an Editorial Committee’ with Ryan Paine Open Office is a collaboration between Voiceworks magazine, Makeshift (http://www.makeshift.com.au/lab/lab_openoffice.html) and NYWF. A portable, self-powered open-air magazine production office situated in Newcastle’s Civic Park from September 27 – October 1 2007. A zine will be published during the festival, showcasing the depth and quality of writing talent there. Voiceworks’ Ryan Paine takes us on a safari peek-in-the-cadge tour of an Open Office so thrilling, so dangerous that the only ones who’ll survive are the dim-eyed writers who know no fear…
How does one spot an Open Office in the wild?
Seek out your local festival club – an Open Office is never far away from natural sources of Bluetongue Lager. Grab a lager and walk around in the sun for a while. Try not to look too pensive – the Open Office is more scared of earnest people than earnest people are scared of Open Office. Better off closing your eyes and stumbling around until you bump into a desk. Failing all that, grab a loudspeaker and walk from venue to venue yelling out sentences with typos in them, or wave around signs with misplaced apostrophes – an Open Office will not be able to resist the urge to come and correct you.
Where and when can it be found?
The Open Office will be nesting in the parklands of Newcastle for the duration of the NYWF. Right now it’s crouching, scoping out its options, procrastinating, and eyeing off a corner between the festival club, the Octapod and Darby Street. The Open Office has a particular fondness for entangling itself around trees. Closer to breeding season, go to your local festival club and follow the steps above.
What are the distinguishing features of an Open Office?
The most distinguishing feature of an Open Office is its collection of dishevelled editors, otherwise known as ‘minions of yoof litratur’. Whenever an Open Office sets up in the wild, bloodshot, baggy eyes and conspicuous food stains will begin appearing on the minions. An Open Office also has a habit of scrawling all over itself, so look out for confused ramblings and wistful romanticisms etched into its hide.
Is the Open Office a herd or a solitary beast?
The Open Office is a solitary beast in the sense that there is only one Open Office, but the beast relies on the support of its herd. The herd gathers food for one another, cry on each other’s shoulders, build shades and share hats to keep each other from getting sunburnt, and tend to the every whim of the Open Office. The Open Office wants some more paper? Send out the minions. The Open Office stapled its thumb to its desk and can’t seem to cry? The minions will bring bandaids and onions.
How would a human interact with the Open Office? Does it need feeding?
The Open Office is a sentimental beast – it will not survive without human interaction. It needs to be feed fiction, poetry, non-fiction, visual art and anything else that can be flattened, scanned and saved as a JPEG. Sign up to the NYWF mailing list to receive notifications of calls for submissions. NB: approach the Open Office from the front and let it smell your hand before you go in for the ear-rub.
Is the Open Office something that has existed before, or is it a relatively new species?
Voiceworks made a zine last year at the festival, but the production office consisted of a commandeered room, patches of grass and a couch upstairs at the festival club. This is the first time the Open Office will be there to produce the zine.
What is your role in the Open Office? Could you say that you’ll be taming the beast or setting it free? Or are you … gasp… part of it?
I guess you could say that we’re taming it in preparation to set it free at Newcastle. I’ll be running along behind the Open Office, trying to hang on to the leash. The Editorial Committee will be running along beside it, knocking it with sticks every now and then to keep it on track. We can’t be held responsible for its behaviour in Newcastle.
How can you identify the offspring of an Open Office?
Contrary to popular opinion, Open Offices don’t give birth to small, soggy Open Offices. Their babies look like zines. Open Office will squeeze one out on Sunday morning, to be distributed at the zine fair. After much umming, ahhing and referring to The Little Book of Names: A collection of pre-existing names misspelled to sound original and other mashups, MOOP, the Ministry for Open Office Preservation, has settled on Nanoworks – a fitting name for what was always going to be a small version of Voiceworks anyway. It will be 40-odd pages with a colour cover. It will be able to walk immediately, and it will be predisposed to bouts of puling.
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Anique Vered on The New New | Posted: Monday Aug 6th, 2007 | Categories: Spoken word Anique Vered collaborates. Although relatively new to writing, in the last year and a half the Sydney based writer and spoken word artist has worked with cartoonists, composers and dancers to explore spoken word through various mediums. Now she brings another collaboration to NYWF as part of ‘The New New’ – a showcase of new, in-progress and experimental work by emerging artists. ‘I’m passionate about writing and spoken word but I haven’t been able to focus on it as much as possible because my other work (in community cultural development) is so involved. I was really excited when NYWF acknowledged that I didn’t have much time but did want to work on creative stuff.’
Her performance, ‘Skywalker’, is a collaboration between her and close friend Adam Linder. ‘Adam was poached by the Royal Ballet in London when he was sixteen and has now moved on to join a contemporary dance company. We’ve stayed close and are working together on ‘Skywalker’. As he’s based in London I’m sending him the audio of my spoken word, and he’s choreographing dance to it then filming it. For “The New New” I’ll project his movement while I perform.’ she says.
Trained as an actor, Anique started performing her own work when she became involved with the Knot Gallery Frequency Lab. Although she has never been to NYWF, she has been working with it inadvertently for years. ‘I’ve covered the festival closely as part of my work with FBI (radio). I’m really excited about heading up there and checking out other parts of TiNA, like Electrofringe.’
Anique will be performing ‘Skywalker’ at ‘The New New’ in NYWF. |
Zine and Independent Press Fair Stumbling out of the festival club and into the Zine Fair on a scorching Newcastle-in-late-September day is like entering the market of your dorky adult dreams. The tents and the stalls and the slightly freakish people are all still there, just like in primary school, but instead of dubious jam and candles made to look like animals there are zines. Thousands and thousands of zines. And cds. And books. And the faces behind the work that you’ve been reading for years or just discovered. And the faces of people that you never imagined would spend hours bent over a stapler, now with piles of carefully folded words and images spread out in before them.
‘I think the Zine Fair is a kind of a historical oddity in its own right,’ says Ianto Ware, Co-director of this year’s Zine Fair. ‘The first year I went to Newcastle, in 2003, I got so excited about the Fair I missed my flight back to Adelaide. I bought so many zines I had to buy another bag to carry them in. I think it’s a great event because in Australia it’s hard to track down zines and you tend to end up making friends with other zinesters purely because the connections are so hard to come by. The Fair is a great chance to see that there are actually other people involved in doing stuff like this, put faces to names and see the array of work people are producing,’ Ianto reckons.
Zinesters, comics nerds, general artists and small / independent publishers… this year attendance is confirmed from virtually everyone who could approximately be referred to as a zine or small press luminary as well as a whole bunch of newbys. ‘Every one I’ve attended has been absolutely packed,’ says Ianto. ‘It’s easily the largest zine fair in Australia and I’m told, bigger than most of the largest ones overseas as well. There’ll be people from Breakdown Press and Sticky (a Melbourne zine store), and Sydney zine doyen Vanessa Berry will be there with her new book. So far we’re getting a blend of independent publishers, multiple generations of zinesters, people doing artist books, people publishing comics and broader projects that are hard to catagorise. I think it’s best when events like this showcase different approaches and different ways of doing things,’ says Ianto.
Running for eight years now, the Zine and Independent Press Fair has been a mainstay at TiNA through sheer popularity, expanding over the years to taking on a broader spectrum of independent publications. ‘The aim of TiNA is to make people see that art, writing and all those things I guess you’d call cultural production are accessible and can be far, far more participatory than they sometimes seem,’ Ianto concludes. ’The Zine Fair is probably the finest example of that; it’s living proof that you don’t need to be a script writer for Neighbours or inside the Big Brother house to be actively making the culture that surrounds you.’
How to get involved in the Fair:
Come to TiNA! And make sure you're around on Sunday 30th Sept for Zine and Independent Press Fair action.
Book your stall by contacting fair@nywf.org.au
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