International Women's Day

I had a choice between celebrating IWD in style, or running, screaming. While the latter was tempting, I took one look at the guests I have still for you to celebrate WHM and I decide that style was the easier route. Three very different women, each on a different continent. I won't introduce them - I'll let them tell their own stories. I admire them all and am very proud to have them as guests.

Women's History Month: Anita Heiss

Remembering my grandmother this International Women’s Day

There is a photo of my grandmother – Amy Williams – standing in our old kitchen at the family home in Matraville in 1974. The photo is black and white, but I remember the cupboards being mint green. My grandmother doesn’t look happy. And she looks weathered. But when I think of her it is always this photo that comes to mind. I was about six when it was taken, only a few years before she died in 1976. It’s the last time I remember seeing her in the flesh. It also means, unlike the other kids at school I didn’t really have a grandmother in my life. I never had school holidays filled with stories and trips to visit her in Tumut. I don’t remember getting lots of cuddles from her. I never got to know her enough to remember her love. And worse still, I never got to meet my grandfather James, at all. As a child I felt ripped-off not having grandparents like the other kids at my school. But none of the kids in my class had the same family history as I did.

You see, my grandmother was taken from her family in Nyngan when she was only five. At the time she was Amy Talence. After spending time in Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, she was moved to a Catholic institution for girls, the Home Of The Good Shepherd (Ashfield) in Sydney. At the age of sixteen she was still under the control of welfare and went into service for a wealthy English lady my Mum says lived at Parsley Bay in Sydney’s east although I have letters addressed to her via a woman in Kambala Road, Bellevue Hill until she was eighteen years old. She also spent some time as a domestic servant at Maryula on the Lachlan River from 20-22 years of age. Amy was finally released from her life of servitude around in 1927 when she married my grandfather.

It is this knowledge of my grandmother and the one photo that always comes to mind that I draw my strength from, and where my sense of commitment and obligation to do what I do in life stems. I recall the life she had, the little of it that I know, but a life similarly experienced by thousands of others who suffered under policies of child removal and became known as the Stolen Generation. I understand that my role in life is to do more than just enjoy the rights that she and the rest of my family went without for so long without.

I must write-the-wrongs, make Australians think about their personal and collective histories, challenge them to embrace their own roles in the ongoing injustice of Australia’s First Peoples, and encourage them to make change for the better also.

I do this with the memory of my grandmother guiding me always.


BIO:
Dr Anita Heiss has published non-fiction, historical fiction, chicklit, poetry, social commentary and travel articles. She is a regular guest at writers' festivals and travels internationally performing her work and lecturing on Indigenous Studies. She is an Indigenous Literacy Day Ambassador and a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales. Anita divides her time between writing, public speaking, MCing, and as a workshop facilitator. She lives in Sydney.
Anita’s historical novel Who Am I? the diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937 is a tribute to all those removed under policies of protection, like her grandmother, Amy.

Eneit Press

This is more bad news - this time not behind a lock - about how the Borders fiasco has hit one small press in particular.

I know Sharyn and I will work together on other things post Eneit Press. We have some extraordinary shared memories. From various anthologies, from Flycon, from launches, from crises in both our lives. Eneit Press and a love of cooking turned us into cyber-sisters.

I'll never forget Sharyn's glee when she realised I was happy to let her publish "Life Through Cellophane."

"You're sure? You don't want to wait for a big publisher?"

I was very sure. There is a bit of a dearth of big publishers who are interested in very gentle fantasy novels featuring middle aged spinsters who have recently been made redundant from boring jobs. (Anyhow, if another publisher wants it now it's been Ditmar-shortlisted, the rights will be mine again soon, which is very sad.) Then there was that very strange exchange of emails over Baggage. This was my turn to disbelieve. I was given carte blanche to create my dream anthology. Which I did.

I didn't know that dream anthology would collapse the business. Although it wasn't Baggage, precisely. Borders looked at the e-ARC before they said "Print more." They really loved it. And it sold rather nicely at AussieCon. Sharyn's post has the details.

I'm not happy that Borders' collapse and poor management have turned a triumph round in such a way. I'm hoping that people will say "We need to see this book" and will buy the last copies straight from Eneit Press. This won't save the press, but it will mean less debt. It will also mean that thirteen really gorgeous pieces of writing get seen and enjoyed. Every single one of them is a gem. As is Sharyn Lilley*.



*She is so going to hate it that I described her like this! She prefers stronger words. Termagant. Obstreperous female. That sort of thing.

Women's History Month: Lynn Viehl

Passing Along the Gift
by Lynn Viehl

I’ll tell you about the place where it all started.
( You know you want to click here. Go on. I dare you! Gillian )

Women's History Month: Maureen Kinkaid Speller

I'm not going to introduce Maureen because she does a splendid job of introducing herself. She and I have much talking to do, when I get to the UK.

I was very honoured when Gillian asked me to take part in the celebration of Women’s History Month and accepted her invitation enthusiastically. Only later did it occur to me that I had no idea what to write about.

I am in my early fifties and I lead what I consider to be a perfectly unremarkable life. I work as a freelance proof-reader and copy-editor, I have a husband, three cats and no children. I like to cook, I like to garden, I like to read, and I worry about the same things as everyone else: war, taxes and whether the cats have left another dead mouse in the laundry pile. You wouldn’t look twice at me if you passed me in the street. In fact, many people don’t look, and I am accustomed to them walking straight into me when I don’t step out of their way fast enough. These days I am not inclined to be the one who always steps out of the way. The collisions are increasing.

Maybe I’m just feeling a little bolshie but I am becoming increasingly interested in the way middle-aged women are invisible and how difficult it is to be noticed. ( Read the rest...you know you want to... )