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Australian author Q&A videos
Aug. 15th, 2020 04:38 pmIt's rained! It's cooler! It's continued to rain, and I am so happy!
The cooler weather cleared away the brainfog which was preventing me from being able to focus on anything, and as a result I read all five of the Hitch Hiker's Guide books in a few hours.
I've been really enjoying a series of videos posted on Guardian Australia, where children's/YA authors answer questions sent in by readers (or in some cases parents). They've only done a handful so far, but two of them are authors whose work I love, and whose books I've been reading in some cases since before I could actually read.
The first is Alison Lester, who started out as an illustrator, and then went on to mostly write and illustrate her own picture books. These are massively popular and beloved in Australia (and in fact I discovered that, in the past week, my mother — who linked the videos to me — had bought a couple of Lester's board books to give to the newborn baby of a school friend of my sister's). She answers questions mostly from young children, and some of the videos are really adorable.
The second is Garth Nix. I was reminded in his video of how friendly and warm a speaker he is. Back when I was a newspaper reviewer, he was the first author I ever interviewed. I was only about nineteen or twenty, I was extremely anxious, and I showed up at his office in Clovelly in Sydney as a complete bundle of nerves. But he was wonderful to talk to — we went to a cafe, the interview was basically just like having a conversation, and the resulting publication read really well.
Highlights for me from this video include:
The anecdote about hanging out with Philip Pullman in Oxford
The story behind how he came up with the lore/mythology of the Old Kingdom books
His response to a question about LGBT representation in his books — where he basically said he had been bad with all kinds of representation in the past, because he had felt it was sufficient for him, the author, to know everything about a character's (marginalised) identities, but never spell it out. He had not originally understood (perhaps because he, himself, had always seen himself in his meaningful childhood stories) that people need to see these things stated clearly on the page, and that if a character shares their marginalised identity it can be extremely powerful.
I'd also forgotten that he was a Canberran, like me, and actually let out a little exclamation of happiness when I remembered that! With prompting, I remember that he had spoken with me about the same things re: his Canberran childhood when I interviewed him, namely that his favourite place was a public library no longer in existence. Since one of my favourite places in Canberra growing up was also a public library that closed,* I can relate.
He's from the wrong side of the lake, though.
This started as a post about books, and ended up on a long rambling trip down Canberran memory lane. I'm feeling quite emotional about Australia, and the distance between it, and where I live now. I'm generally quite happy with the fact that I migrated, and that I live so far away. But the fact that I won't see my mother this year, and probably won't be able to go back at Christmas as I planned suddenly hit me like a tonne of bricks recently. The two videos reminded me forcefully of how much I miss hearing other Australian voices, particularly when they are the voices of people who are good speakers and really clear communicators.
*Amusingly, next to this very old online news article is a link to a fiercely raging debate in the comments section of an opinion piece about whether private school in Canberra is 'worth it' — the author of the piece having gone to all three state/public schools that I also attended (and being roughly in my age group, so I'm wondering why I don't recognise her name). This is one of those perennial Canberra arguments, and I'm kind of dying with laughter that the comments section could have been time-travelling from 1985, 1995, 2005, etc and it would still be exactly the same, with people making exactly the same points about the exact same handful of schools. Canberrans gonna Canberra, is all I can say.
The cooler weather cleared away the brainfog which was preventing me from being able to focus on anything, and as a result I read all five of the Hitch Hiker's Guide books in a few hours.
I've been really enjoying a series of videos posted on Guardian Australia, where children's/YA authors answer questions sent in by readers (or in some cases parents). They've only done a handful so far, but two of them are authors whose work I love, and whose books I've been reading in some cases since before I could actually read.
The first is Alison Lester, who started out as an illustrator, and then went on to mostly write and illustrate her own picture books. These are massively popular and beloved in Australia (and in fact I discovered that, in the past week, my mother — who linked the videos to me — had bought a couple of Lester's board books to give to the newborn baby of a school friend of my sister's). She answers questions mostly from young children, and some of the videos are really adorable.
The second is Garth Nix. I was reminded in his video of how friendly and warm a speaker he is. Back when I was a newspaper reviewer, he was the first author I ever interviewed. I was only about nineteen or twenty, I was extremely anxious, and I showed up at his office in Clovelly in Sydney as a complete bundle of nerves. But he was wonderful to talk to — we went to a cafe, the interview was basically just like having a conversation, and the resulting publication read really well.
Highlights for me from this video include:
I'd also forgotten that he was a Canberran, like me, and actually let out a little exclamation of happiness when I remembered that! With prompting, I remember that he had spoken with me about the same things re: his Canberran childhood when I interviewed him, namely that his favourite place was a public library no longer in existence. Since one of my favourite places in Canberra growing up was also a public library that closed,* I can relate.
He's from the wrong side of the lake, though.
This started as a post about books, and ended up on a long rambling trip down Canberran memory lane. I'm feeling quite emotional about Australia, and the distance between it, and where I live now. I'm generally quite happy with the fact that I migrated, and that I live so far away. But the fact that I won't see my mother this year, and probably won't be able to go back at Christmas as I planned suddenly hit me like a tonne of bricks recently. The two videos reminded me forcefully of how much I miss hearing other Australian voices, particularly when they are the voices of people who are good speakers and really clear communicators.
*Amusingly, next to this very old online news article is a link to a fiercely raging debate in the comments section of an opinion piece about whether private school in Canberra is 'worth it' — the author of the piece having gone to all three state/public schools that I also attended (and being roughly in my age group, so I'm wondering why I don't recognise her name). This is one of those perennial Canberra arguments, and I'm kind of dying with laughter that the comments section could have been time-travelling from 1985, 1995, 2005, etc and it would still be exactly the same, with people making exactly the same points about the exact same handful of schools. Canberrans gonna Canberra, is all I can say.
