-
Nicole K: On Finding a Voice – The Tapestry Project
Nicole K is a Singaporean writer and the founder of The Tapestry Project, a mental-health advocacy organisation. She was one of a handful of students from an arts college in Singapore who came to Perth for the AAWP conference. There were five or six concurrent sessions, and I chose the Singaporean writers one because I wanted to know what sort of writing was coming out of the former British colony; one where the Chinese settlers are the main ethnic group and English remains the official language. I really related to the stories written by her peers —a mix of cosmopolitan locals and expat writers— about mistaken identities in the post-colonial…
-
Nadia Rhook – Poet, Teacher and Historian
Nadia Rhook is a poet, historian, and university lecturer, and has a book coming out soon about the language-scape of colonial Victoria (Duke University Press). I first met Nadia last year at an AASRN lunch not long after she moved to Perth. I didn’t really speak to her at that lunch but a few months later, saw her walking hurriedly out of the state library. I wasn’t sure if she recognised me and was worried about waving down the wrong person. (I’ve once befriended someone thinking she was someone else and only realising two years later when I saw the first person again, that I’d befriended two different people). That…
-
Hoa Pham – Author, Playwright, Pioneer
Hoa Pham is an author, playwright and psychologist. Her novella, Wave (2015), was translated into Vietnamese by Phương Nam, a Vietnamese publishing house. The Other Shore (2014) won the Vive La Novella Prize. The Lady of the Realm (2017) is her latest novel and is a historical fiction set in Vietnam from the 1950s to the present day. Hoa is also the founder of Peril, an online Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine. I met Hoa when a mutual friend, also a writer, arranged for us to meet over lunch at a café so hip there were no hipsters. I had many great experiences in Melbourne and my afternoon with Hoa was in the top three; great…
-
Elizabeth Geoghegan – An American Writer in Rome
Elizabeth Geoghegan was born in New York, grew up in the Midwest, and now lives in Rome. She is the author of the bestselling memoir The Marco Chronicles, Natural Disasters, and the forthcoming collection eightball. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Best Travel Writing, El Pais, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. I met Elizabeth because I lingered around Curtin after the AAWP conference so that I could hang out a bit with Sarah. The conference was so big (6 concurrent sessions over three days) I didn’t even know that there were writers from Rome until I met Elizabeth. I caught the bus that Elizabeth was on and if she and her…
