Get to know… Kim Scott

Our Early Bird tickets are now on sale and the first round of speakers has been revealed. In this series we chat to these authors, artists and activists to get to know them a little better before they join us in October. This week we speak to Kim Scott, whose Benang (1999) was the first novel by an Indigenous writer to win Australia’s premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, among many others.

When and why did you start writing?

In a sense, I’ve always written, because I think some of the pleasure of writing, at least in the way I was introduced to it, is the making of marks upon a page. These abstract expressions of sound and meaning. I used to draw a great deal when I was a kid, and that sort of slid into writing. Then, when I was teaching English to teenagers, I thought it’d be best to learn expertise by doing… Thus, fiction writing.

What’s the most extraordinary place your writing has taken you?

Most extraordinary? Most surprising is the large amount of public speaking. But perhaps most extraordinary is into the ‘entanglement’ of reuniting an ‘endangered language’ Creation Story with its landscape and home community.

What issues and ideas are you hoping to explore during UWRF18?

What it means to be human; creativity; the relationships between communities divided by history, by language, by cultures.

Who do you hope will be in the audience?

Readers, thoughtful and playful individuals.

What’s your advice for aspiring writers? 

Persist. Put in the time. Perhaps lock the door and chain yourself to the desk – for periods of time, at least.

For readers unfamiliar with your work, what do you suggest they start with?

True Country is the shortest. That Deadman Dance won most acclaim.

Early Bird tickets are on sale now. Save 20% on the 4-Day Pass with your Early Bird ticket, and receive a copy of the UWRF17 Bilingual Anthology of Emerging Indonesian Writing, available until the full program is announced from mid-August. What are you waiting for? Pick up your Early Bird now.

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