THE RUNNERS
Isobelle Carmody
I never much liked the idea of collaboration because I thought it would be all about having to compromise, but when Kirsty Murray sent me a link to the website of the illustrator she proposed to match me with, I couldn’t resist having a peek. That was all it took to be blown away. Prabha is brilliantly versatile and amazingly talented. Dabbling in drawing in my own books has made me a lot more interested in artwork, and reverent when I stumble on someone who does it really well. So the thought of having Prabha draw my story was completely enchanting. I couldn’t wait to see what she would come up with and I loved her illustrations enough to cut thousands of words down to a few, so that there would be plenty of room for her to spread her wings, artistically speaking. I feel absolutely honoured to be able to work with her, and we are already plotting to collaborate again.
Prabha Mallya
Creating ‘The Runners’ was a gradual process of working with a detailed futuristic world and characters with backstories, extracting from it all just enough to tell What Happened, with clues to the How and the Why and the What If? for a dreaming reader to think about.
I imagine our collaborative process in its own special universe of time slowed to the speed of emails passed between a number of places in Europe and Australia, where Isobelle travelled; and the US, where I am.
A short description from Isobelle brought Hel and Geneva nearly fully formed into the world, and had us thinking and talking over what they look like, and where they live. The animals crept in, attracted to Hel in a mysterious way, having their own small roles throughout his journey. I drew scratchy cartoon-people over Isobelle’s scripts, she wrote and pasted over the drawings I made — each helping the other see what words could tell and how pictures could show. Isobelle started out with an abundance of words, bringing it to a trimmed final form; while I started with the barest of stick figures, building it up to detailed artwork. The very idea of a graphic story is words and pictures working together, and in ‘The Runners’ they’re inseparable!
MEMORY LACE
Payal Dhar
Penni Russon and I were quite keen to base our stories around a unique artefact. So we took turns to come up with lists of five physical objects and five abstract modifiers, and then voted for our favourites to combine them into a really cool-sounding magical thing. ‘Stone dream’, ‘wrong photo’ and ‘secret sky’ were all contenders, with Penni’s daughters weighing in as well, till we decided on ‘memory lace’. The other idea we were enthused about was to have two young women talk about their futures. It was hard to choose one idea, so we decided to be really wild and keep both (though I cheated a bit later on). Even though we started out with the same concepts, it was quite astounding how different our stories turned out. This was the first time I’ve worked with a writing partner. It was so much fun that I can’t wait to do it again.
WHAT A STONE CAN’T FEEL
Penni Russon
Writing is a social activity. Nowhere is this more obvious than on the internet, where vast communities collaborate on giant living texts called Twitter and Facebook. One day digital archaeologists will sift through the jokes, trolls, micro-memoirs and haikus and make a picture of us – who we are in this time, in this digital shared playspace.
In the early stages of thinking about this anthology I played with the idea of ‘future’ artefacts. Payal suggested we come up with an artefact that could appear in both our stories. We played word games, bouncing nouns and adjectives off each other and then putting them together. Rocking stone, wrong egg, floating sea, memory plot, imaginary sky, memory lace, fragile shadow, secret sky, fire edge and wrong photo. We chose the one that resonated most strongly for both of us: memory lace. Both Payal and I had already thought about stories where two girls talked about their futures, so this became part of our projects as well. (The emails that Payal and I exchanged have become their own artefact, tracing the genesis of these stories.) I love that the stories are so different and yet share the same DNA, bubbling out of a shared playspace, negotiated across continents.
BACK STAGE PASS
Nicki Greenberg
Between 2006 and 2009 I worked on an enormous graphic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet himself is a fascinating, enigmatic and endlessly compelling character, and as readers we inevitably identify with his existential woes, his moral dilemmas and ultimately his tragedy. But as I worked deeper into the play, I felt more and more strongly that the greater tragedy was that of his sometime girlfriend, Ophelia. Ophelia doesn’t get many lines in this play. Instead we see this young woman berated and bullied by the powerful men around her, constantly told that her way of being is wrong, foolish, false, loose, dangerous. She absorbs these lessons so thoroughly that she loses all trust in herself, and even the ability to reason and act accordingly. Unlike Hamlet, Ophelia does not get the luxury of considering whether ‘To be or not to be’. Instead she drowns in a stream, apparently having lost her mind.
‘Back Stage Pass’ is a sly way of giving a voice to the character of Ophelia. Not the voice of a victim, but the stand-up defiance of a young woman who rejects the role she’s been given and is ready to make up her own.
About the Contributors
Indian Contributors
Samhita Arni is the author of The Mahabharata – A Child’s View, the New York Times bestseller Sita’s Ramayana and The Missing Queen. Samhita is presently an impoverished writer, a full-time occupation that consists of waking up late every morning, having a bath once in two days and consuming large amounts of espresso. She highly recommends it.
Priya Kuriyan is a children’s book illustrator, comic book artist and animator. Born in Cochin, she grew up in numerous towns in India. She has directed educational films for the Sesame Street Show (India) and the Children’s Film Society of India. She has illustrated numerous children’s books for many Indian publishers, the most recent one being Rooster Raga. She currently lives in New Delhi, where she mostly spends her time making (occasionally mean) caricatures of its residents in her sketchbooks, chasing pigeons and singing tunelessly.
Priyakuriyan.blogspot.com
Amruta Patil is a writer and painter. She is the author of Kari and Adi Parva; and likes to tell stories using a sparky mix of pictures and words. Her work is often about mythology, living and dying, loving and eating, living in synchronicity with nature, and walking lightly on the planet.
Amrutapatil.blogspot.com
Kuzhali Manickavel’s collection Insects Are Just like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings and echapbook Eating Sugar, Telling Lies are available from Blaft Publications. Her new collection is Things We Found During the Autopsy.
Manjula Padmanabhan is an author, artist/cartoonist and winner of the 1997 Onassis Prize for Theatre. Her thirteenth (solo) book is on its way and she has illustrated over twenty children’s titles. She lives in the US and India for complicated reasons involving multiple families, a legalised male partner and a fondness for solitude. She is a non-nurturer and professional sloth who never wants to cycle anywhere.
Vandana Singh is a card-carrying alien from India, currently living in the US, where, as a professor of physics at a small university, she teaches about everything from quarks to climate change. Her stories have been published in numerous venues, including Year’s Best anthologies. She is the author of the ALA Notable children’s book Younguncle Comes to Town.
Payal Dhar’s flights of fancy help her seek out new life and new civilisation in her novels for youngsters. She has written six books and numerous short stories for both big and little people. She’s also a freelance editor and writer, and writes on computers and technology, books and reading, games and anything else that catches her interest.
Writeside.net
Annie Zaidi likes to write anything she can get away with. Plays, poems, stories, essays, reportage, comics. She is the author of Love Stories # 1 to 14, Gulab, and co-author of The Good Indian Girl.
She loves movies, especially the ones full of song, dance and melodrama.
Knownturf.blogspot.com
Prabha Mallya illustrates, writes and makes comics. She can often be found drawing little cats, fish and trees in her sketchbook, and frequently has black, inky fingernails. She has illustrated for The Wildings and Beastly Tales from Here and There. She crafts her own graphic short stories for various magazines.
Crabbits.wordpress.com
Anita Roy is a writer, editor and columnist with over twenty-five years publishing experience in the UK and India. She lives in Delhi with her son and cycles to work at Young Zubaan. She regularly reviews and writes for newspapers and magazines, and her first children’s novel, Dead School is forthcoming.
Anitaroy.net
Australian Contributors
Penni Russon is the author of several novels for teenagers, including the luminous Undine trilogy (described by one reviewer as a ‘reading experience’) and Only Ever Always, winner of the 2011 Aurealis Award, NSW Premier’s Award, and WA Premier’s Award for best Young Adult novel. Her books have been published in Australia and the US to critical acclaim. Penni has a Master’s in Creative Writing and as part of it she wrote a research paper on melancholy in children’s literature. She is fascinated with the way fantasy and fairy tales can challenge cultural and generational gaps, transcending traditional notions of audience.
Eglantinescake.blogspot.com.au
Kate Constable grew up in Papua New Guinea, where she spent her whole childhood reading. She has written ten novels for children and young adults, including most recently the award-winning Crow Country, and New Guinea Moon. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband, two daughters, a dog, a rabbit and a bearded dragon.
Kateconstable.blogspot.com.au
Lily Mae Martin is a fine artist, writer, illustrator, drawing teacher and blogger. Her work has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally. She explores the relationship between art and motherhood, sexuality, anatomy, identity and the domestic. Lily Mae has been shortlisted for the Rick Amor drawing prize and the Benalla Nude award 2014.
Mandy Ord is a Melbourne-based cartoonist who has published numerous comic books and contributed stories to a broad range of literary journals and anthologies. Her book of short stories Sensitive Creatures was the recipient of a White Ravens Award at the 2012 Bologna Children’s Book Fair. She derives great inspiration from everyday life and the antics of her two small dogs.
Isobelle Carmody wrote her first book, Obernewtyn, when she was fourteen. It was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to and since then she has written more than thirty books and many short stories, which have been translated and/or won awards including the prestigious CBC Children’s Book of the Year Award. Her most recent book is The Cloud Road, which she also illustrated. She is currently completing the last book in her Obernewtyn Chronicles series and writing a screenplay from another of her books, Greylands.
Isobellecarmody.net
Kirsty Murray eats too much chocolate but finds it helps her write. It seems to work as she’s written eleven novels, many short stories, articles, non-fiction books and millions of emails. Kirsty has been an Asialink Literature Resident at the University of Madras and writer-in-residence at the University of Himachal Pradesh. In 2012 she participated in the Bookwallah Roving Writers Festival and presented at literary events across India.
Kirstymurray.com
Alyssa Brugman has written twelve novels for young adults. She recently completed a PhD in Narratology. She lives in the Hunter Valley in Australia and has a day job working with horses.
Justine Larbalestier is an Australian–American writer. Her most recent novel, Razorhurst, is a historical set in 1932. Her previous solo novel is the award-winning Liar. She also edited the collection, Zombies Vs Unicorns with Holly Black. Justine lives in Sydney, Australia, where she gardens, boxes, and watches far too much cricket, and sometimes in New York City where she wanders about public parks hoping they’ll let her do some gardening and misses cricket a lot. Justinelarbalestier.com
Margo Lanagan has been publishing stories for readers of all ages for more than twenty years. Her most recent novel is Sea Hearts (published in the US and the UK as The Brides of Rollrock Island), a remodelling of the selkie myth. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia, just down the road from Justine Larbalestier.
Nicki Greenberg is a writer and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia. Her first books, The Digits series, were published when she was fifteen years old. In 2008, Nicki’s innovative graphic adaptation of The Great Gatsby was selected as a White Raven at the Bologna Book Fair. She then went on to tackle Hamlet in a lavish 425-page ‘staging on the page’. Hamlet was joint winner of the 2011 Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year award. Nicki has two young daughters who will be out-drawing her any day now.
Nickigreenberg.com
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