Writers on Writing is our regular conversation with a writer or industry professional about the writing craft, industry insights, and their own practice. This week, we spoke with award-winning writer, academic and editor, Roanna Gonsalves, about Writing and Revising Short Stories and her experience being a writer in the world today.
What do you think the role of the writer is today?
As the American poet Muriel Rukeyser said, ‘The universe is made of stories, not atoms.’ Our labour as writers, as storytellers, is so crucial now, more than ever, because we need to reimagine possibilities for our world and for ourselves. We also need to reimagine the past, the stories that have been erased. We need to make meaning afresh out of the ‘rag and bone’ conditions we are negotiating together on our fragile planet.
As an academic at UNSW and a leader of many workshops, do you find that teaching informs your own practice as a writer?
Oh yes, absolutely. I learn as much if not more from my students as I teach them. Teaching helps clarify my ideas about writing practice, demands that I educate myself about the work of other writers. It gives me a peek into the imaginative worlds of my students. I become a temporary custodian of their fears and dreams and preoccupations. I feel privileged to have had opportunities to be in this position.
You’ve written on the power of the ‘selfie’ as a liberating form of self-expression – especially for the marginalised. To what degree is your book, The Permanent Resident, a kind of selfie?
To me, there is nothing more powerful than having the opportunity to represent yourself in a way of your own choosing, without relying on others to represent you. This is what a selfie does. It gives us the opportunity and the tools to represent ourselves. I think this is what we can take away from visual culture to think about how we self-represent in literary culture. I’ve written about this in Overland and in The Conversation. My book is not autobiographical, it’s a work of the imagination, but yes I would call it a literary selfie, in the sense that it is written by someone representing themselves and the communities they belong to, in fiction.
What does your regular writing routine look like?
I try and write every day, and I read as much as I can. I find that reading poetry helps me unshackle myself from the banality and opacity of reality and immerse myself in a more diaphanous and fluid thinking space.
Any words of advice for aspiring writers?
Read and write as much as you can. Read poetry. Buy Australian books.
Roanna Gonsalves is the author of The Permanent Resident (UWAP) published in India and South Asia as Sunita De Souza Goes To Sydney (Speaking Tiger). The book won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award Multicultural Prize 2018 and was longlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award 2018. Her four-part radio series On the tip of a billion tongues, commissioned and broadcast by ABC RN’s Earshot program, is a portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers.
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