Caroline Reid Writes

There are boxes in my hallway where there shouldn't be boxes. I sleep with my bedroom door open and the cardboard boxes are the first thing I see when I wake up. Sometimes, before I am fully awake, I mistake them for my dog or a statue. But no, they are definitely boxes and inside them are books. My books. All with the same title, SIARAD; published by ES-Press, an imprint of Spineless Wonders . This part of the process of book writing and publishing feels strange. It's the part where ownership of what's inside the books, the poems and stories, no longer feel like they belong to me. Perhaps they never did. It's a little strange and also a little nice. It helps with the slight worry over what people will think of the book. I'm pretty sure this worry is normal and I'm trying to pay it no mind. A debut collection of prose and poetry is not exactly The Da Vinci Code so there aren't hundreds of boxes in my hallway. There are three boxes, actually. It's ...

book cover design and illustration by Bettina Kaiser I've been consumed by a new project these past few months. It's long been a goal of mine to gather together some of the shorter works I've written over the past decade or so and put them in a collection; and finally, it's happened. The name of the collection is SIARAD, a Welsh word meaning to talk, to speak. It was the first word I chose. Then I went off on a tangent of worry about how non-Welsh speakers might pronounce the word and if it might put them off reading the thing. So I set myself a deadline and trod a long journey to find a different word. Turned out to be a circular loop that took me back to the start: SIARAD. None of the English words I found were as satisfying in sound or look; nor did they have the weight of Welsh culture behind them and that was important to me (my Mum is Welsh and the book is dedicated to her). The 's' is pronounced 'sh', the same as Sinead or Seana. I really l...

Pre-loved plays A few weeks ago I finished the first draft of what will be my first novel. It's the story of a young girl who immigrates to Australia from Wales with her family under the Ten Pound Pom immigration scheme offered by Australia's government from post WW2 to the 1970s. It's loosely based on my own experience, but I found myself wishing I could remember the landscape of Wales more specifically than my faded memory would allow.  And then something happened. Poetry My mum rang me to ask if I would accompany her on a trip back home to Wales.    Ma is a dynamic Welsh lady who comes in at just under 5 feet, who loves music and singing, who lives with hearing loss (which is apparently the result of her factory-working years, back before they knew the value of ear muffs) and has recently  been diagnosed with the early signs of dementia.  This trip will most likely be her final trip home to visit family and friends, to say goodby to ...

Storycast #4. Photo by Ben McGee I have the pleasure of reading again at the live Storycast readings organised by Sam Jozeps and South Australian Writers Centre. I'll be joined by: MC - Sam Jozeps Aimee Knight Robert Horne Nicole Orr Katherine Arguile It's on tonight. From 6.30-7.30 at the SAWC 187 Rundle Street (2nd floor) It's a free event. Further details at: Storycast #7 I'll be reading my short story 'Who Likes Custard?' published in Spineless Wonders Stoned Crow anthology. See you there! C x

Having trouble sleeping? Here's something for you: Storycast, a series of live-streamed late-night readings of poetry and short stories.  Planned and MC'd by the wonderfula Sam Jozeps, the Storycasts are recorded live from various spaces throughout Adelaide and South Australia.  Each live Storycast features new and old work by late and living writers.  Tonight's broadcast is Storycast #4 and I'm on the bill with other writers/readers Katherine Arguile, Sky Harrison, and choir Choral Grief. You can Listen In in real time at 10.30pm (Australian Central Standard Time). That means 11pm for you eastern states folk and 9pm for friends in the West. If you live somwhere else in the world, you'll have to do your own calculations. Google Timezones. But don't worry if you miss the live broadcast (because it's an school night and you need those zzzzz now that you're older than 30), you can listen back at any time that suits you thanks to the w...

--> Neil Gaiman reads 'A Christmas Carol' Hear ye, hear ye! I’m presenting a workshop at the South Australian Writers Centre on February 7th from 2-5pm, drawing on all that I’ve learnt about performance in the past 25 years (Lordy, has it been that long?!) From my acting days at the Hayman Theatre, Perth in the nineties all the way through to my being recent producer and mc of Spineless Wonders Presents at Adelaide’s Wheatsheaf Hotel, I’ve picked up some tricks that I’m going to share. I guarantee they will induce in you a state of euphoric calm, smooth the creases of your stage fright, have you raring to go and wowing your audience at your very first performance gig! Yeah? No. But I do know how nerve-wracking it is for many writers to have to read their own work aloud to an audience. We’re not all Neil Gaiman, right? (Though I suspect even he started somewhere in the land of nerves). A writer is used to using her mind but what the hell does she...

Image by Shaun Tan Seizure is described as 'a launchpad for Australian writing.' They encourage writers to play around with form and style. They have print editions and online stories; they publish novellas and post juicy podcasts. Definitely worth checking out. I sent them one of my micro stories (they call them Flashers) and now it's up on their website (cool!). One of the editors described my story as hypnogogic, which sent me scurrying to the dictionary. In a nut-shell, hypnogogia refers to that transitional state of consciousness from wakefulness to sleep. Digging further I read that creative types have been know to use this half-sleep state to draw inspiration:   "Dali said that he had learned the “slumber with a key” trick from the Capuchin monks and that other artists he knew also used it. Albert Einstein “napped” this way as well, as have other inventors and thinkers who believed this nap inspired their ideas and creativity. These men were unknowing...

Independent publisher Spineless Wonders is part of this year's Melbourne Writer's Festival and doing something extraordinary with microfiction. Dedicated to diversity, Bronwyn Mehan is at the helm of Spineless Wonders. She is in tune to the many possibilities of 'reading' and getting literature visible in this new era of publishing and it shows in this latest offering. In print, audio and on the big screen in Federation Square,  Flashing the Square    is packed with micro-stories and prose poems.   Lucky me, my short piece 'One Blue Eye' is included and is the third time I've been published by Spineless Wonders. I keep sending my stuff to them because I love what they do and when I'm successful in being accepted (which is not always) I'm in the company of some wonderful Australian writers such as Ryan O'Neill, Shady Cosgrove, Angela Myer, Vivienne Plumb, Jude Bridge, Dael Allison, AS Patric, John Carey and many others. To celebrate the publicat...

Holly Myers to read Jennifer Mills I'm a little sad this month because I have decided to call it a day on the story readings I produce at Adelaide's Wheatsheaf Hotel. Begun in 2011 at The Jolly Miller Tavern, I've produced 10 of these events and have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one. The entire process, from reading a stack of stories to getting in front of the mic to introduce the writers and actors who read has been a blast, a terrific learning curve, great for building confidence and has led to other opportunities that wouldn't have come my way had I not produced these spoken word events. But while it's been brilliant, the amount of time I now spend producing these events has become a little demanding. I do it for the love of it, which was always my intention; never wanted to apply for grants or chase money to keep them going, it was more about creating a community, and providing exposure for contemporary Australian writers and Adelaide actors. And TH...

Yang Lian reading at the SA Writers Centre Adelaide in March is hectic and joyful. As part of the Adelaide Festival I spent 6 hours watching Roman Tragedies, which was sore on the back but brilliant for the spirit. I also got to hang out with some excellent Australian and International writers/poets when I chaired a forum as part of Adelaide Writers Week. We covered Presentation and Performance - how to captivate a room with your reading. The line up was impressive: Ali Cobby Eckermann, Omar Musa, Jeet Thayill and Yang Lian. I saw Omar perform last year so I was  familiar with his work but the other three, not so much. In my research I began to see what an incredible body of work they have and also the vastly different lives they have led. I was looking forward to meeting them. The problem with biographies is that they are such cold things, they act to hide rather than reveal the  flesh and blood people they are telling about; the living, breathing, graceful, warm, thoug...

Storytelling for Grown-ups at The Wheatsheaf Hotel The final night of storytelling for 2013 takes place on 26th November at The Wheatsheaf Hotel in Adelaide. There won't be another until May 2014, so get along for some excellent listening.  I began curating these readings in 2011 and my mission was to promote Australian literary fiction and  Adelaide actors. So there is an emphasis on quality - the actors are professionals and the writers are published. The stories are short, playful, strange and written by Australian authors who you may or may not have heard of.  On the 26th you'll hear stories by Tom Cho, AS Patric, Threasa Meads, Mark O'Flynn, Melanie Pryor and Julie Chevalier. Most of these writers have been writing for many many years. And it's high time we started taking a bit more notice of them. Same goes for the actors. These are all professional Adelaide actors with years of training and performance experience. I'm one of those Australian arti...

Upcoming Story Readings: Tuesday 13 August 2013 I don't know about you, but I haven't enjoyed this southern hemisphere winter in Adelaide. I've holed myself up writing new material, re-writing old material and reading the wonderful short stories of Marquez, Keret, Lorrie Moore, Angela Carter's Book of Fairytales and, of course, contemporary short story writers such as Jen Mills, Ryan O'Neill, Tom Cho, Mary Manning, Jon Steiner and the exquisite Spineless Wonders collections. Also keeping me occupied was the pleasurable task of curating another night of story readings, that will be performed by some of Adelaide's standout actors on Tuesday evening, 13th August. And this month our musical talent is a standout acappella group, House Red, a trio of honeyed  voices. There is a lovely community that has sprung up around these readings. No matter what age, people still enjoy being read to. We'd love you to be a part of it - in the back room at The Wheaty. ...

Spineless Wonders Presents ... on Feb 12th 2013 There are some things I don't look forward to - visits to the dentist; late night phone calls; walking blindfolded, backwards on a rickety bridge which is suspended over a deep canyon where one wrong step means I plummet into the chasm, my body turning up bloody and smashed and dead on the rocks below; being in a room with more than six people ... except when those people are either reading or listening to stories.  There is something happening in Adelaide, and it happens every 3 months, and it involves reading and listening and I look forward to it very much.  Contemporary Australian stories are read by a team of professional actors to a listening audience. It's an event that has quietly gathered a following since it first began in 2011 and has been described by Overland's fiction editor, Jen Mills , as 'reliably enchanting ... closer to New York's Selected Shorts than anything else in Australia'. It...

Curator's Report on November Short Story Readings: The final event for 2012 was another relaxed and happy occasion. The goodwill and good cheer at these readings continues to impress, and cement my suspicion that Adelaide is a town that truly treasures its artists. The night kicked off with the sweet sounds of a choir, Choral Grief , who have the perfect balance of wit, melancholy and interest in obscure songs. It's just so lovely hearing a choir of young voices, especially singing under fairy lights! Then it was on with the stories. Young actor Lizzy Hay gave a beautiful reading of Dael Allison's 'dreaming poets dreaming', which is a favourite of mine, not just because of the wonderful surreal quality of the prose-poem but because I know all the Darwin landmarks mentioned in it. Then Urban Myth Theatre actor Patrick Zoerner melted hearts (including mine) with his wonderfully paced delivery of Jo Langdon's story 'Pause'. It's a ...

The final Spineless reading event for 2012 Sad but true, the final Spineless Wonders Presents night of short story readings is fast approaching. It promises to be a night of firsts: Firstly, after a winter hiatus we're back with more readers and stories than ever before; firstly, all the stories read on November 6th are from the Spineless Wonders publication 'Small Wonder'; firstly, the 'Small Wonder' publication will be available for purchase on the night; and our final first - we have a choir 'Choral Grief' as the musical talent for the evening. Super!    This is what one punter had to say about our May event: "Standing room only at the Wheaty! Loved it! What a great night it was, too." Adelaide, how can you stay in on such a night? :D See you there, The Curator x

A back injury sees me lying in bed this weekend with Patrick White's 'The Vivisector'. 2012 is the centenary of White's birth and even though he died in 1990, he has a new novel coming out later this month published by Random House. 'The Hanging Garden' was unfinished but is, according to Geordie Williamson , in The Weekend Australian's Review 'not incomplete'. David Marr claims the manuscript is one in a series of three novellas; therefore it's internal narrative stands on its own 'and unfolds in prose that is polished to the deep lustre we expect from White.' I love Patrick White's work, though I confess to not having read the heavyweights Voss, The Tree of Man , The Solid Mandala . What I have read is his short stories; Flaws in the Glass - a self portrait; his plays (I've yet to see a production - word on the street has it that the recent Adelaide Festival show was amateurish and I refuse to go and see a depressingly medi...

For your ears only I'm soooo excited about this! Short stories penned by Australian writers, read in a pub by Adelaide actors. We did a couple of these readings last year, to test the water, see if there was a demand for the old oral story telling. Turns out, there is! People love being read to. It seems to happen less and less as we get older so this is a real treat. And extra special, I think, when trained actors do the reading. These men and women know how to read well. As I got interested in writing short stories, naturally I began to read more, and in doing so I discovered a wealth of talent in short fiction writers in Australia. Who knew? Now I love reading stories by Jennifer Mills, Nam Le, Paddy O'Reilly, AS Patric, Tricia Dearborn, Julie Chevalier, Josephine Rowe, Susan McCreery, Tom Cho, Ryan O'Neill, Kim Westwood, Irma Gold ... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Just a week to go until our first night of readings in 2012. It's at The Whe...