Memoir Club, 1 December 2015: Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller

And Memoir Club End of Year Party! 

Tuesday, 1 December 2015, 5.30PM for 6.00-9.00PM

Entry $10/15. 
RSVP: memoirclubsydney@gmail.com

Dinner available: $15 for a delicious vegetarian plate. Text Rosada to book: 0450 907 422

Our last Memoir Club session for 2015, with founder Beth Yahp and one of our strongest supporters, Patti Miller, in conversation about Beth’s new memoir, Eat First, Talk Later.

 

This will also be a party to celebrate all things memoir and the community built and nourished by the Memoir Club for Readers and Writers as we go into recess for the summer.

Beth’s ‘beautifully crafted memoir of her ancestors, her parents, and herself is shaped around journeys criss-crossing the Malay Peninsula where her Siamese-speaking Eurasian mother and her Hakka Chinese father met and married in 1961’ (Hilary McPhee, Australian Book Review, November 2015).  

This memoir is a hybrid that takes us to surprising places and challenging ideas – a book about a road trip that is also a quest for family, nation, food and identity. While telling her parents’ story Beth presents a history of Malaysia, of race, politics, colonialism and independence, corruption and resistance – and more food! 

Eat First, Talk Later is evocative, funny, thoughtful, insightful, bursting with stories and anecdotes. Beth has a sure sense of structure, the writing is beautifully textured, and there’s a lot of lovely musing about memoir:

'Remember, you’re still following a feeling: a something you intuited at the beginning of your journey into your own life, and the life of your memory, and the memory of your family and country – or, more accurately, your countries. The feeling is there, now more than the faint scratching you started with, but still barely discernable, still travelling under your skin’s surface. '

 This evening is also an end of year celebration for the Memoir Club, to mark three years of our gathering to share in conversations around the reading and writing of memoir and other forms of life writing - and celebrate the wonderfully engaged, interested and generous community that has come together over the last three years!

Hope to see you there!

Beth Yahp is an award winning novelist who has also written for the stage and radio. Her first novel, The Crocodile Fury (1992), has been translated into several languages. She edited Family Pictures (1994), a book of essays about the many incarnations of family. Her libretto for composer Liza Lim’s opera Moon Spirit Feasting, won the APRA award for Best Classical Composition in 2003.  In 2010-2011 she presented the travel program Elsewhere on ABC Radio National. She completed a Doctor of Creative Arts at UTS in travel and memoir, and is a highly regarded teacher of writing who has taught in Paris, Malaysia and Sydney. Beth currently teaches in the MA in Creative Writing program at the University of Sydney. 

Patti Miller is a writer and teacher who has published two books on life writing, Writing Your Life (1994) and The Memoir Book (2007). Her other books include a novel and most recently, two books of narrative nonfiction, The Mind of a Thief (2012) and Ransacking Paris (2015). She is an experienced and much admired teacher of Life Writing, who runs writing retreats in Paris and Ubud as well as presenting courses in Sydney. She has also run special life writing workshops for indigenous groups, women’s refuges, environmental groups, migrants and refugees.  

Where: 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031; $15/$10

Dinner: To book a plate of Rosada’s delicious vegetarian food, please TEXT her on 0450 907 422. 

Help Please: If you’re able to help with setting up, please come early – we also need help with clearing up, so please email Bindu Narula: bindunarula@hotmail.com if you can help. Thank you! 

Phone: 02-9398 5203 (for directions and venue info) Street parking available. Clovelly bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/

Memoir Club Upcoming Events: Reading at the RLI Arts Festival 29 November and Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller, Tuesday 1 December 2015 - our last session for the year!

Memoir Club Reading at the

Randwick Literary Institute Arts Festival 2015

Sunday, 29 November 2015, 2.00-4.00PM

60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031; free event

Members of the Sydney Memoir Club, family, friends, lovers of the Arts! Join us at the Annual RLI Arts Festival for an afternoon of literary delight! A number of talented local writers will be reading excerpts of their work as part of this celebration of creativity and community. In addition to the readings, there will be art and craft stalls, and café style food and beverages. Come along and enjoy the festivities! Please RSVP to Jessica: jesskirkness@hotmail.com

Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller,

Memoir Club End of Year Party!

Tuesday, 1 December 2015, 5.30PM for 6.00-9.00PM

Entry $10/15. RSVP: memoirclubsydney@gmail.com

Dinner available - text Rosada for a delicious vegetarian plate: 0450 907 422

Do join us at the Randwick Literary Institute for our last Memoir Club session for 2015, with founder Beth Yahp and one of our strongest supporters, Patti Miller, in conversation about Beth’s new memoir, Eat First, Talk Later.

 

This will also be a party to celebrate all things memoir and the community built and nourished by the Memoir Club for Readers and Writers as we go into recess for the summer.

 
Beth’s ‘beautifully crafted memoir of her ancestors, her parents, and herself is shaped around journeys criss-crossing the Malay Peninsula where her Siamese-speaking Eurasian mother and her Hakka Chinese father met and married in 1961’ (Hilary McPhee, Australian Book Review, November 2015).  

This memoir is a hybrid that takes us to surprising places and challenging ideas – a book about a road trip that is also a quest for family, nation, food and identity. While telling her parents’ story Beth presents a history of Malaysia, of race, politics, colonialism and independence, corruption and resistance – and more food! 

Eat First, Talk Later is evocative, funny, thoughtful, insightful, bursting with stories and anecdotes. Beth has a sure sense of structure, the writing is beautifully textured, and there’s a lot of lovely musing about memoir:

Remember, you’re still following a feeling: a something you intuited at the beginning of your journey into your own life, and the life of your memory, and the memory of your family and country – or, more accurately, your countries. The feeling is there, now more than the faint scratching you started with, but still barely discernable, still travelling under your skin’s surface. 

Beth Yahp is an award winning novelist who has also written for the stage and radio. Her first novel, The Crocodile Fury (1992), has been translated into several languages. She edited Family Pictures (1994), a book of essays about the many incarnations of family. Her libretto for composer Liza Lim’s opera Moon Spirit Feasting, won the APRA award for Best Classical Composition in 2003.  In 2010-2011 she presented the travel program Elsewhere on ABC Radio National. She completed a Doctor of Creative Arts at UTS in travel and memoir, and is a highly regarded teacher of writing who has taught in Paris, Malaysia and Sydney. Beth currently teaches in the MA in Creative Writing program at the University of Sydney. 

Patti Miller is a writer and teacher who has published two books on life writing, Writing Your Life (1994) and The Memoir Book (2007). Her other books include a novel and most recently, two books of narrative nonfiction, The Mind of a Thief (2012) and Ransacking Paris (2015). She is an experienced and much admired teacher of Life Writing, who runs writing retreats in Paris and Ubud as well as presenting courses in Sydney. She has also run special life writing workshops for indigenous groups, women’s refuges, environmental groups, migrants and refugees.  

Where: 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031; $15/$10

Dinner: To book a plate of Rosada’s delicious vegetarian food, please TEXT her on 0450 907 422. 

Help Please: If you’re able to help with setting up, please come early – we also need help with clearing up, so please email Bindu Narula: bindunarula@hotmail.com if you can help. Thank you! 

Phone: 02-9398 5203 (for directions and venue info) Street parking available. Clovelly bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/

Forthcoming Events for My New Memoir, Eat First, Talk Later 2015

So, my long-time-coming memoir, Eat First, Talk Later, has finally become a book I can actually hold in my hand. It's a strange feeling: nerve-wracking yet exciting... The book's been launched and feted in Sydney by lovely friends, students and colleagues, and signed in bookshops, and now I'm anxiously awaiting responses... while also feeling glad to be separated from this huge world that occupied my brain for so many years.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be speaking about that world, about the processes and challenges of getting it down on paper, and of writing memoir in general.


Hope to see you at some of the events below - here in Sydney, but also in Manila at the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Conference; in Honolulu at the University of Hawai'i Manoa in January 2016 and at Adelaide Writers Week in February 2016. I'll keep you posted!

Author Talks: An Evening with Beth Yahp at Randwick City Library, Tuesday 20 October 2015, 6.30-7.30PM: 

I’m really pleased to be speaking about my “fictional memoir" Eat First, Talk Later and the pleasures and challenges of writing a memoir at the Margaret Martin Library, Level 1, Royal Randwick Shopping Centre Belmore Road, Randwick. Free event. For more info and bookings, see: http://www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/library/library-events/library-calendar/events/home/the-author-talks-an-evening-with-beth-yahp

In Conversation: Drusilla Modjeska and Beth Yahp, Berkelouw Books, Paddington, 12 November 2015, 6.30-8.30PM: 

Beginning with the disastrous events of the night before her fortieth birthday, in Second Half First Drusilla Modjeska looks back on the experiences of the past thirty years that have shaped her writing, her reading and the way she has lived. In Eat First, Talk Later Beth Yahp persuades her ageing parents on a road trip around their former home, Malaysia. Only the family mantra, ‘Eat first, talk later' keeps them (and perhaps the country) from falling apart. Around them, corruption, censorship of the media, detentions without trial and deaths in custody continue. Join both authors as they converse and explore these two beautifully written, absorbing and deeply honest memoirs. See more at: http://berkelouw.com.au/events/in-conversation-drusilla-modjeska-and-beth-yahp

Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller at The Memoir Club, 1 December 2015, 5.30PM for 6.00-9.00PM: 

Do join us at the Randwick Literary Institute for our last Memoir Club session for 2015, with founder Beth Yahp and one of our strongest supporters, Patti Miller, in conversation about Beth’s new memoir, Eat First, Talk Later. This will also be a party to celebrate all things memoir and the community built and nourished by the Memoir Club for Readers and Writers as we go into recess for the summer. Where: 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031; $15/$10; with a delicious supper by Rosada available to be ordered as usual. See you there!

What Reviewers Have Said So Far:

 

The Adelaide Advertiser gave Eat First, Talk Later four out of five stars (18 October 2015):

And Caroline Baum in Booktopia's September Buzz: "If you think all food memoirs include recipes sugared with nostalgia, think again. This is a far more substantial, bittersweet meal (but without recipes). Yahp travels back to Malaysia with her parents on a second honeymoon, prompting her to think about her family's roots while considering her own mobility and failed relationships, her ambiguous understanding of identity and where she belongs.She grazes on subjects as diverse as the many types of tofu available in Asia, Australia's policy towards refugees and asylum seekers, and the colonial vision of native culture in the musical South Pacific. The result is a complex feast of many dishes, pungent, unfamiliar yet satisfying to both the palate and the mind."

Memoir Club Readings 29 September 2015

Tuesday, 29 September, 6.00 - 9.00 PM

The Randwick Literary Institute,   

60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031

RSVP: MemoirClubSydney@gmail.com 

 
A Special Night of Readings 

by Members and Guests

Photo: unbekannt270 - flickr creative commons

Louisa Callanan
Sue Emery
Sophie Guest
Diana King 
Kira Legaan 
Catherine McGrath 
Bastian Fox Phelan 
Mark Roberts
Rikki Stubbs 
Donald Yates

This month the Memoir Club presents our annual showcase readings of works-in-progress by members and guests. 

At the Memoir Club, we celebrate the imaginative act of writing as well as the pleasure of reading. ‘…it is in the simple act of reading that the living and the dead, the real and the imagined, meet,’  Junot Diaz writes. ‘It is in the simple act of reading where we exercise those two most sacred of human vocations: compassion and creativity.’  

On this night, we experience the great pleasure of being read to by several writers. Listening to the voice, the rhythm, the cadences, is at the heart of the writing and reading life. Voice helps to carry words further and deeper than the eye, Seamus Heaney says.

From seasoned performers to readers who have never read in public before, our readers offer us their unique views. Please come and support this night of sharing and celebration!

Some readers celebrate memories of childhood. Rikki Stubbs remembers her eccentric Queensland aunts, Trix and Myrt. ‘… known by everyone as “the girls”, [they] watched the cricket for hours in identical leather recliners, feet up, smoking and eating chocolate.  I would go there for treats and to have a chat. From the door I couldn’t see their faces, just the swirl of smoke from their long cigarette holders below the brim of the tennis shades they wore to stop the light reflecting off their glasses.’

Sue Emery reflects on the elasticity of time in childhood memory, those ‘…moments when time drew out like a long bow searching for a target.’

Don Yates draws from his mother’s diaries to tell us he was born during a bushfire in country Victoria,  ‘…on a scorching hot day, in a hot wind, with the smell of smoke in the air.’  

Image from Backstage Blog Stage

The Readers:

Louisa Callanan is a postgraduate writing student at the University of Sydney.

Sue Emery is a former high school English teacher. Her memoir concerns the fun and strangeness of growing up in a close knit family in what was once working class Summer Hill in the 1950's.

Bastian Fox Phelan is a queer and gender diverse writer, zine maker and musician from Sydney. Bastian is the creator of the highly popular zine 'Ladybeard', which is held in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia. The success of 'Ladybeard', a personal story about growing a beard as a woman, inspired Bastian to continue telling the story of their unconventional gender journey. Bastian is currently working on a memoir about their experiences on both sides of the binary and in the spaces between.

Sophie Guest has a background in teaching languages and literature, lecturing on architecture and place, and in practising psychotherapy. Nearly 20 years ago, she wrote a long essay called "What is it to be Authentic?" which might be the first half of a book, if she could just get on with it.  She writes the odd poem, short pieces of memoir relating to place, and  her early life, and writes and performs standup comedy at spiritual retreats.

Diana King is coming back to writing after a working career as an architect. She moved away from writing in the mid seventies to earn a living. Now retired she is easing back to her primary love, hoping the little grey cells are still up to the challenge. In 2015 Diana was awarded second prize in the OutStanding Stories competition.

Kira Legaan has a background in professional theatre and dance, and is currently undertaking a D/Arts at Sydney University. She has also published in The University of Sydney Anthology 2014, Hodder and Stoughton’s Breaking The Silence, and Dance Australia magazine.

Catherine McGrath is a textile artist and an independent researcher in applied research projects in health policy, particularly the social impact of illness. In a past life she was a lawyer. We lived the DINK, the double-income-no-kids life, but beneath the surface another life we thought we had put behind us lay in wait, like lava, warming up, heading for the cracks in the seams, getting ready to blow it all up.

Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic. He currently runs Rochford Street Review (http://rochfordstreetreview.com/) and edits poetry for Social Alternatives journal. He also edits the occasional literary journal P76. Six Months will shortly be published as a chapbook and he has a collection of poetry, Concrete Flamingos, due for release in 2016.
 
Rikki Stubbs was packing up treasures from her mother's old Queensland homestead on the Darling Downs after her mother's death, when she bagan a memoir about her mother, 'home' and growing up in Queensland in the 1960s and 1970s; about her first career choice to be a nun, after winning the school Divinity prize, and her wonderfully eccentric great aunts Beatrix and Myrtle. 

Don Yates grew up on a farm in the Central Highlands of Victoria. He is writing the story of his mother's life in a small community and has at his disposal forty years of her diaries and a desire to do justice to her creative life.

When: last Tuesday of every month (27 October: Rosie Scott; 24 November: Beth Yahp)

Time: 6.00 - 9.00 PM (come for a cuppa and help us set up at 5.30 PM - please remember to bring your own cup!)

Where: The Randwick Literary Institute, 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031. Tel: 02-9398 5203 (for directions and venue info). Street parking available. Clovelly bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/

What: A communal space to meet other writers and readers and converse about all things to do with reading and writing memoir. We are interested in all kinds of life stories and in different ways of telling them. The genre of life writing and the possibilities of expanding and reworking the genre is exciting to us. Therefore we have a somewhat open and inclusive approach to what makes a memoir, and we hope you do too! Here is a space to connect with others and share ideas, questions and just hang out. Each meeting will start off with a talk, conversation or discussion about a particular topic or book, sometimes with a guest speaker or facilitator, then we move to an informal gathering and catch up.

Donation: $10 at the door for hall hire, refreshments and to pay our speakers.

Food: $15 for a plate of delicious vegetarian finger food (different each meeting). Ring or text to book a plate: 0450 907 422.

Future Speakers: Rosie Scott (October); Beth Yahp (November)

Look forward to seeing you there! Please do pass information on to anyone who might be interested in this community gathering.

mem·oir /ˈmemˌwär/
Noun. A historical account or biography written from personal knowledge. An autobiography or a written account of one's memory of certain events or people.

PROGRAM CHANGE!! 25 August at the Memoir Club: Writing Masterclass with Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa

Tuesday 25 August 2015; 6.00—9.00PM
Randwick Literary Institute
60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031
RSVP by 23 August: MemoirClubSydney@gmail.com
Donation: $30/$25* (to cover teaching component)
Rosada’s delicious supper menu:  Chickpea curry. Spinach and potato curry with tomato, coconut and coriander. Brown rice and basmati rice. ($15, please book by texting: 0450 907 422)

News flash: Rosie Scott’s session in August has been postponed till 27 October for personal reasons. We wish Rosie and family all the best and look forward to hosting her in October.

Please join us for our new event in August:

A Memoir Club Writing Masterclass 
with Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa

This masterclass was hugely successful when we ran it in 2014, helping participants to grapple with writing craft particular to memoir. Once again, you are invited to fire your writerly imagination and gather crafty writing advice with fabulous writing teachers Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa. The focus is on generating new writing - helping you get started on a project you have in mind - or delving into your own writing and memoir project. Not to be missed!

Starting with writing exercises to fire your imagination and generate new writing, which you’ll discuss later. Then Alison and Barbara will introduce you to a page from the award-winning memoir H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, revealing the way she achieves, with unflinching honesty and intensity of emotion, a sense of momentum in brilliant descriptive writing. After a break and a meal, we’ll divide into small groups to discuss your writing exercises and insights.

For the writing exercises please bring:

• writing materials and
• your sense of adventure and your imagination 

Barbara Brooks  is a writer & teacher of writing. She has taught at the University of Technology, Sydney & other universities, and runs her own Masterclasses in memoir & fiction. She has published Leaving Queensland, & Eleanor Dark: a writer’s life. Her latest work, Verandahs, is memoir/fiction. To read published extracts, go to http://uts.academia.edu/BarbaraBrooks and for Barbara's blog, see: http://bbwritinglife.blogspot.com.au/
 

Alison Lyssa is a playwright, editor and writing mentor. She has published plays, poetry, short fiction & essays. She has mentored documentary film-makers at AFTRS, run community theatre projects, & taught Writing at UTS, UWS & Macquarie University. Her new play, Hurricane Eye, was written as her doctorate in creative writing. Pinball, first performed at Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre in 1981, was revived for the 2015 Mardi Gras, to acclaim.

When: last Tuesday of every month.

Time: 6.00 - 9.00 PM (come for a cuppa and help us set up at 5.30 PM - please remember to bring your own cup!)

Where: The Randwick Literary Institute, 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031. Tel: 02-9398 5203 (for directions and venue info). Street parking available. Clovelly bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/

What: A communal space to meet other writers and readers and converse about all things to do with reading and writing memoir. We are interested in all kinds of life stories and in different ways of telling them. The genre of life writing and the possibilities of expanding and reworking the genre is exciting to us. Therefore we have a somewhat open and inclusive approach to what makes a memoir, and we hope you do too! Here is a space to connect with others and share ideas, questions and just hang out. Each meeting will start off with a talk, conversation or discussion about a particular topic or book, sometimes with a guest speaker or facilitator, then we move to an informal gathering and catch up.

Donation: $15/$10 at the door for hall hire, refreshments and speakers.

Food: $15 for a plate of delicious vegetarian finger food (different each meeting). Ring or text to book a plate: 0450 907 422.

Future Speakers: Members Night of Readings (September), Beth Yahp (November)

mem·oir /ˈmemˌwär/
Noun. A historical account or biography written from personal knowledge. An autobiography or a written account of one's memory of certain events or people.