Sea Hearts or The Brides of Rollrock Island shares the award an prize money with Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest.
Margo has the acceptance speech she gave on her blog and I would encourage you to read it:
Sea Hearts and The Night Guest win the Barbara Jefferis Award
I'm really pleased to announce that Sea Hearts is joint winner, with Fiona McFarlane's The Night Guest, of the Barbara Jefferis Award for "the best novel written by an Australian Author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society".
The award was given at a lovely event last night hosted by the Australian Society of Authors in the foyer of St Barnabas Church, Broadway, at which Tara Moss spoke—and isn't she a brilliant speaker! Better Read Than Dead bookshop sold many, many books, and champagne flowed and the music played and the room was full of friends and colleagues and really, I couldn't have been happier, for my selkies and my self.
Here's my acceptance speech:
Thank you Margaret, Georgia and Dorothy for all your work and consideration as judges of this year's Barbara Jefferis Award. Amy, Tracy, Jacinta, [Read On]
I reviewed Sea Hearts back in 2012 and really enjoyed it. I think really good writing challenges you and makes you think, makes you reconsider positions. When an author can do this while entertaining you through fiction, the experience can be transformative. I like the way Margo’s writing gets under my skin. So, a well deserved prize and further accolades for what is one of my favourite books.
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Flower and Weed the short story by world fantasy award winning Margo Lanagan is available on Amazon free for a short time. It’s set in the world and time of Lanagan’s Sea Hearts (or The Brides of Rollrock Island for you Northern folk). I am part way through it and like almost everything Lanagan writes its got beautifully flowing poetic prose.
Well everything seems to have gone smoothly with the scheduled post and we now have the first in our regular season of the all new mostly weekly Galactic Chat.
Welcome back to the relaunched Galactic Chat. In this episode Sean chats with Australian Award winning Fantasy and science fiction author Margo Lanagan. They talk about her nomination for the inaugural Stella Award and what that nomination meant for her and perhaps the speculative fiction genre in Australia.
They also delve into Margo's fascination with folktale and its consistent popularity for authors and readers alike. Sean admits that Margo has the ability to break him and make him cry with the emotional gravity of her work and finally they talk gritty fantasy and why women don't share that podium with George RR Martin or Joe Abercrombie.
You can go to the Podbean site and subscribe. You can search for us on the iTunes directory and give us some stars or you can play in the player below or you can download here.
Coming later this year from Coeur de Lion, the critically acclaimed collection, X6 will be released in digital format. It features 6 tales from some of Australia's best Specfic authors: Margo Lanagan, Paul Haines, Terry Dowling, Cat Sparks, Trent Jamieson and Louise Katz.
To check out the buzz around this collection when it launched in 2010 go here.
Some choice comments from the link above:
“Wives,” by Paul Haines, is a tour de force: a dystopian science fictional horror story which will alternately shock you, disturb you, and break your heart. - Richard Larson, Strange Horizons, August 2010
“Heart of Stone,” Cat Sparks, X6 – a tightly constructed, plot-driven X-Files style mystery, this one starts out as a quirky character piece but builds up to proper thriller proportions. Like the Haines piece, this novella has a really strong Australian voice to it, through setting and also character and dialogue - Last short story on Earth, October 2009
‘If X6 only contained Margo Lanagan’s rich and evocative fantasy “Sea-Hearts”, you’d be getting more than your money’s worth! But this volume of short novels by veteran editor Keith Stevenson weighs in with over 170,000 words by multiple award winning authors such as Terry Dowling and Cat Sparks … and fiery, up-and-coming “young Turks” such as Trent Jamieson and Paul Haines. Ranging from the sublime to disturbing in-your-face noir, X6 is a brilliant cartogram of what’s happening in Australian genre fiction.’ Jack Dann – multi-award winning author, and editor of Dreaming Again.
On the reputation of Wives and Sea Hearts alone I would buy this. Wives in particular, is spoken of with such high regard among readers and writers in the Australian scene that the collection would be worth it for that story alone. Then you have the novella Sea Hearts that formed the seed of Margo’s award winning book of the same name (Brides of Rollrock Island for readers in the Northern Hemisphere). But ice that cake with Sparks and Jamieson and you have a rather rich desert.
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The Shirley Jackson shortlist has been announced and I am pleased to congratulate Margo and Kaaron (and their publisher Alisa) for making it to the list.
The nominees for the 2012 Shirley Jackson Awards are:
NOVEL
The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (ROC)
The Devil in Silver, Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
Edge, Koji Suzuki (Vertical, Inc.)
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (Crown Publishers)
Immobility, Brian Evenson (Tor)
NOVELLA
28 Teeth of Rage, Ennis Drake (Omnium Gatherum Media)
I have read 4 of the above titles and concur with the judges selections. I haven’t read the Jo Spurrier (it’s in my non reviewing TBR pile) but I have heard some very good things. I would have been severely (yes severely) perturbed if Rowena hadn’t made the list because there’s a whole lot of gender commentary wrapped up in some of the best gritty dark fantasy on the market.
A category dominated by the dedicated (some say slightly unhinged) folk that dedicate their lives and mortgages to bringing us collections of short fiction, a section that speaks of love of the genre. They unearth and support neophyte writers, connive with mistresses and masters of craft to bring us work that might not fit less imaginative markets.
I own all the works on the list, but in what sounds like a familiar tune, I haven’t had time to read them all. The Twelve Planets are nice, bite sized collections easily devoured the others in the list, particularly the last, are treasure troves that really do need time to sit own and ponder over.
So I have read Cracklescape, Through Splintered Walls, Light Touch Paper…, and have dipped in and out of the others.
And the difficulty here as in some other sections is that they are almost all different beasts. I don’t know that you can really compare them other than to try and go with an intuitive gut feeling about which one made the greater impression. A method that invariably leaves books I have barely read at a disadvantage.
Best Collected Work ————————————————————————
Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
Epilogue, edited by Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)
Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
Light Touch Paper Stand Clear, edited by Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie (Peggy Bright Books)
Midnight and Moonshine by Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter, edited by Russell B. Farr (Ticonderoga Publications)
The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011, edited by Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)
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And it turns out I have read everything in this category and still would have if Jason Nahrung’s Salvage had been a sentence or two shorter and fallen into it. And it’s further proof that having read everything doesn’t help with your voting. I suspect that there are many worthy reads within the eligibility list, the trouble being access to them, some hidden away in collections and time to read them.
The nominees are:
Best Novella or Novelette ———————————————————————— * “Flight 404”, Simon Petrie, in Flight 404/The Hunt for Red Leicester (Peggy Bright Books) * “Significant Dust”, Margo Lanagan, in Cracklescape (Twelfth Planet Press) * “Sky”, Kaaron Warren, in Through Splintered Walls (Twelfth Planet Press)
Comments:
I reviewed Flight 404 here. A good hard science read, where that science is the backdrop, it influences story but is not THE story. My final thoughts on it were:
I really enjoyed this story, felt that that the character was an honest and positive representation of a transgender person and I was captive to the mystery and story right until the end.
Significant Dust is my favorite from Cracklescape, which I reviewed here. Not my favourite Lanagan short, that honour goes to singing my sister down but as I said in the review of Cracklescape:
Significant Dust was the story that had me reaching for the tissues. It’s not quite so gutting as my favourite Lanagan, Singing My Sister Down, because there’s a hopeful ending or at least Margo has left enough room for me to imagine one.
Sky was part of a fairly even collection, each of the stories presented something of value to me and I don’t have a feeling of Sky standing out above and beyond the others. Here’s the review for Through Splintered Walls that contains the novella.
Of those that didn’t make it on to the ballot that I have read and that I think really stood out were "Elyora", by Jodi Cleghorn, in the Review of Australian Fiction. I am not sure the novella hit a wide enough audience. I think it sits well in the Australian Gothic Horror genre as outlined in Dr Hannett’s article for This is Horror. If you’re fans of Nahrung or McDermott I encourage you to check out Elyora, which will be republished this year by a UK publish under a different title and with a longer prologue.
The second is The King’s Man by Rowena Cory Daniells (though I’m not sure it was published in Australia or if that even matters by the rules) its a novella set in the KRK universe. It’s gritty, largely self contained at still manges to carry the emotional punch of Daniells’ much larger novels.
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Sea Hearts or as its titled in the northern hemisphere – The Brides of Rollrock Island, has been longlisted for the Inaugural Stella Prize. The prize will be awarded on the 16th of April and the winning author will receive $50,000 for their efforts.
The Stella Prize will be an annual prize celebrating Australian women’s contribution to literature. It is named after Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin and is partly modelled on the very successful UK Orange Prize. Both non-fiction and fiction books by Australian women will be eligible to enter.
The prize will reward one female writer, the winner of The Stella Prize, with a significant monetary prize of $50,000. The Stella Prize also seeks to raise the profile and sales of books by women generally, and specifically through The Stella Prize longlist and shortlist. In doing so, The Stella Prize will encourage future generations of women writers by increasing the recognition of Australian women’s writing and providing role models. [Source: Australia Business Arts Foundation]
You can donate to the prize it’s tax deductable. Just click the source link above.
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This is a follow up of sorts from yesterday’s post, it’s part reference for myself and for any other interested readers. You’ll notice the eBook image to the right—>, where you should be able to download either a .mobi or .epub file of my 25 most recent posts to read in comfort on your preferred device.
That’s all well and good, but its a bit of a shotgun approach. I asked the developer of eBook Glue if it was possible to provide a way of selecting specific types of posts and it is.
As it currently stands Ebook Glue takes your RSS feed and simply compiles an ebook(.mobi or .epub) file from the 25 most recent posts. My RSS feed is below:
http://bookonaut.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
I simply take this url and plug it into the field at Ebook Glue (note you don’t have to sign up but I have as it saves my feeds).
Creating eBooks from specific labels
Now let’s say I want to give you (and me) the option of downloading just my book reviews. I would need to modify the feed to search for the Book Review label
Note: the %20 seems to indicate a space in the label, for single word labels it’s not necessary.
It will still only generate a file of up to 25 posts but it’s an improvement.
Capturing Multiple Search Labels
Lets say that I want to refine it even further though and search for multiple labels. Say I want to be able to download all the Book Reviews that I have written for Margo Lanagan.
You’ll see above that all you need to do is separate the search terms with a /
Usefulness?
The developer has only been offering the service for 2 weeks, and plans to build upon it as it evolves and I presume he gets feedback from users. I’d like to be able to create eBooks of all my reviews (somewhere in the vicinity of 70 post per year) and perhaps make ebooks of particular post series i.e. might have been handy for some of my work to be in ebook form for last year’s Ditmars.
So what do other bloggers think?
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Margo made me cry again with one of her stories in this collection. So yes, I liked it. Like it so much that I saved reading the last story for some six months after buying.
I also love the Twelve Planets range and the cover art of Amanda Rainey. The wasabi green cover of Cracklescape is no different, it helps make an impressive alternative rainbow on my bookcase.
But you’re here for the stories.
There’s four, in line with the brief of the Twelfth Planet Series. They offer a range of what Lanagan is capable off while also being decidedly more grounded in an Australian setting.
The Duchess Dresser is an offbeat ghost story, a great mood piece that I found unsettling but not distressing.
The Isles of the Sun is a tale of magical disappearance told from the point of view of the child experiencing it and the mother left behind.
Bajazzle I’ll let you discover for yourself. Witchcraft, an unlikeable but recognizable misogynist protagonist and a whole lot of feeling uncomfortable if you’re a bloke.
Significant Dust, a story of escape woven into a tale of a historical reported UFO sighting.
Significant Dust was the story that had me reaching for the tissues. It’s not quite so gutting as my favourite Lanagan, Singing My Sister Down, because there’s a hopeful ending or at least Margo has left enough room for me to imagine one.
I’d recommend this collection to your Lit friends that think that the fantasy genre is populist and lacking in depth and quality of prose. Margo’s one of those writers that you can’t pin down, or pigeonhole. A writer who can turn her hand to almost anything and make it her own.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012. Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.
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I reviewed Sea Hearts (Brides of Rollrock Island in the northern hemisphere) here.
Young adult book award
Night Beach (Kirsty Eagar, Penguin)
The Ink Bridge (Neil Grant, A&U)
Three Summers (Judith Clarke, A&U)
Sea Hearts (Margo Lanagan, A&U)
All I Ever Wanted (Vikki Wakefield, Text)
It’s good to see Margo getting shortlisted for a prize and I think the book is worth it.
Sea Hearts is nominated in the young adult section. I tend to think Margo’s work has a very wide appeal and if you think that because it’s YA it lacks depth or substance, then you are missing out.
Read the review.
Buy it or borrow it from the library.
Help support great Australian Speculative Fiction.
Oh and Bravo Queenland for maintaining the prestige of the State Awards without the help of that vandal Campbell Newman.
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Kerry Greenwood (author of the Phryne Fisher Mysteries) will be Launching the Twelve Planets Series this Sunday 26 August at the Yarra Building, Federation square, Melbourne.
You’ll also get a chance to meet some of the Twelve Planets Series authors( lovely people all)
Margo Lanagan, yes that Margo Lanagan not the other one*, has written a collection for Twelfth Planet Press called Cracklescape. If you are lucky enough to be coming to Continuum 8 I hear that TPP are holding a Cupcake and Cocktail book launch on the Friday night at Continuum.
But if you are not coming and are a bit light on cash you could throw your hat in the ring for a giveaway.
The Blurb
A presence haunts an old dresser in an inner-city share house. Shining sun-people lure children from their carefree beachside lives. Sheela-na-gigs colonise a middle-aged man’s outer and inner worlds. And a girl with a heavy conscience seeks relief in exile on the Treeless Plain. These stories from four-time World Fantasy Award winner Margo Lanagan are all set in Australia, a myth-soaked landscape both stubbornly inscrutable and crisscrossed by interlopers’ dreamings. Explore four littoral and liminal worlds, a-crackle with fears and possibilities.
*The evil Margo Lanagan from another dimension…no hang on is our Margo the evil one? Anyway you shouldn’t be reading this silliness.
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First up is Cat Sparks’ cover for her upcoming book The Bride Price from Ticonderoga. If I am reading the press release correctly, Cat has done the cover herself and its kick–arse.
and missed early in the week was Cracklescape from Margo Lanagan and Twelfth Planet Press.
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Such is my feeling towards the Adelaide Festival. I was able to take one day off work and take a 6 hour round trip in travel time, to get to hear one of my favourite authors and Queen of the Festival, Margo Lanagan talk.
I could have stayed the entire week (indeed I am contemplating doing that next year). I very briefly entertained the thought of camping in the park. Such is the power that being around writers and book loving folk.
Kudos to the organisers who set up the sound stages at the Pioneer Women's Park, there were two stages, not 100 metres apart going all day and no feedback or interference whatsoever.
My only other recent experience of author talks was at Brisbane Supanova where authors were tucked away in an alcove under the main hall, it had the acoustics of a concrete car park.
Some photo’s taken of the festival by the multi talented Cat Sparks. Thankfully without me in them.
Coffee and the best day ever
So my morning began having coffee with the soon to be famous Cat Sparks1 who kindly bought me coffee and who just so happened to be sharing a table in the park with Margo Lanagan, and Kelly Link. So for about the first 10 minutes I was having an internal dialogue with myself that went something akin to:
Sean: “Hey it’s Cat Sparks, Margo Lanagan and Kelly Link”
Sean2: “Shut up I am trying to listen to the conversation and sound intelligent”
Sean: ”But It's OMG! CAT SPARKS, MARGO LANAGAN and KELLY LINK”
and then I got over myself and enjoyed the conversation. Thank you Margo and Cat.
Cat had to leave to catch a flight home, but before she did she introduced me quickly to Kate Eltham of the Queensland Writers Centre (who doesn’t look as blue as her Twitter avatar) and a tired English chap who had been kept awake by a snoring Ian Mond. Rob was his name. Such a gentleman, very concerned about the fact that I might be perspiring and about to faint - I was wearing a jumper (it was mild day but by English standards, probably close to the temperature of the surface of the sun).
Halfway through the conversation I realised I was talking to Rob Shearman of Dalek fame. I had missed out hearing he and Ian Mond talk at the sold out Dr Who talk. So I was stoked to have a quick chat.
Mid morning we learned of the passing of Paul Haines, a wonderful man, a superlative writer, a human being, that from all accounts was taken too soon.2
With Margo’s talk set for the afternoon I listened in to the various “literary” authors speaking before chuffing off to the city for some lunch.
Ushered
Upon my return I was ushered by a usher for standing in the isle – apparently blocking peoples exit. But as Michael Cathcart finished talking to Alan Hollinghurst I ploughed through the crowd to steal a chair in the centre.
And who should be behind me but Jason Nahrung and Kirstyn McDermott. So after a blinder of a talk by Margo Lanagan and Michael Crummey (you should get his latest book : Galore) I enjoyed bookish talk with some other authors who I admire. We passed through the book tent whereupon our wallets and purses got lighter and our book laden arms got heavier.
And now, I know it’s a writers festival and it’s not that far fetched to expect to bump into writers, but upon exiting the tent we bumped into the Dr’s Brain or more commonly known as Dr Angela Slatter and Dr Lisa Hannett.
A very entertaining mauling of the Twilight series was begun with some improvised hand puppeteering by Kelly Link’s husband. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and I had to rush off and secure some flights to England before I could hear the end of it.
I bumped into the lovely Kelly Link, later on King WIlliam Street and she very kindly signed the Steampunk anthology she had edited3 . Authors are the coolest people.
It was an absolute blast of a day. A big thank you to the authors I met who shared their time and thoughts with me. I have some treasured memories. I feel honoured and privileged to have shared your company.
Regards
Sean
Post Festival Rehab
1. Well she’s famous to us in the specific community but going by her awards alone she deserves to be known more widely – check out her bio here↩
I have been captivated by Margo Lanagan’s skill as a writer since I read her short story Singing My Sister Down. I don’t recall any other short story evoking such emotion before or since.
I discovered Tender Morsels last year and that was another powerful display of skill, this time in novel form.
Sea Hearts1 continues this showcasing of her skill, with language and narrative. Reading Lanagan is like watching the world through aged glass. The world and its characters are identifiable but there is a ripple, a distortion that separates us.
It’s in this distortion that Margo plays, drawing on folklore and legends, weaving them with the mundane, creating modern day folktales, presenting us with scenarios but passing no judgement.
She’s often pigeon-holed as a YA writer ( no doubt in part due to her very early works) but she’s had more than a toe dipped in the speculative fiction community for some time now. I tend to view her work as mature fiction, with depth and power. I would certainly recommend her to any intelligent reader 14 years and up.
An example of the depth of the novel is the multitude of angles that you can approach Sea Hearts from. It’s a clever weaving of the legend of the Selkie into a moving narrative; it’s a comment on relationships between men and women, mothers and sons, the value of women, love, bullying, justice and revenge.
In simple plot terms, it’s the story of the Witch Misskaella who summons seal women from the sea to partner the men of the island and the ramifications of this action. The story is told from the perspective of various people, from different generations, who are connected to the consequences or the Island in some fashion.
One of the highlights is Lanagan’s talent in shaping the English language to her own ends. She’s joyously crude in some instances;
She snorted and matter flew out of one of her nostrils and into the blanket. She knitted on savagely. The bone’s rustling in the weed sent my boy-sacks up inside me like startled mice into their hole.
Daniel Mallet on meeting the witch Misskaella
and powerfully understated in others
Ean, Froman, Hugh. Where do I begin with the questions I cannot ask her?….’But whose?’ I say. ‘Whose are you? What man of this isle got you on our Miss?’
Trudle Callisher on discovering Misskaella had been a mother.
Whereas the folktale often presents black and white characters – the handsome prince, the evil witch; Lanagan gives us a villain( if one can call her that), who is both a victim of a community and her own actions. Misskaella’s actions cause others grief, pain and loss, but there is a sense that her actions if not justified, are human and understandable.
I was storm tossed by this novel, sympathising with Misskaella in one chapter, finding myself disgusted with her the next. Whether a story is a comedy or a tragedy often depends on where you stop the telling. We finish on a happy note with Sea Hearts but the reader has had to sail through a storm of sorrows to get there.
Sea Hearts will captivate and manipulate you. It will raise questions for you. When you emerge from Lanagan’s spell you won’t quite be the same.
This book was a review copy provided by Allen & Unwin
Sea Hearts is available in both Ebook and Paperbackfrom Australian online retailer Booktopia.
1. The US/UK title is The Brides of Rollrock Island↩ This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012. Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.
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I am currently reading my review copy of Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts (and really enjoying it). It seems that Margo is getting quite a bit of coverage both nationally and overseas. Two recent features include:
The ABC’s Books and Arts Daily features Margo talking about Sea Hearts. You can play her interview via this link or listen to the whole show which features some discussion on eBooks by downloading it here.
and
The UK’s Guardian newspaper reviews Sea Hearts/Brides of Rollrock Island here courtesy of Marcus Sedgwick.
You can purchase the paperback and the eBook from Australian service Booktopia.
I note that again Lanagan is placed in the Children/Teens section; a classification that always puzzles me to some degree.
Lanagan’s work tends to be a little confronting at times (Tender Morsels for example or Singing my Sister Down). I would argue that there’s a certain maturity that a reader must have to fully appreciate her work. Children’s book no. Mature teen and above yes.
I’d hate for adult readers of speculative fiction to pass Lanagan by simply because she might be found in the YA section – her work to me is relevant and enjoyable for those of us who have survived adolescence.
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Margo Lanagan and Tansy Rayner Roberts launched their books – Sea Hearts and Reign of Beasts respectively, on the 2nd of February.
Looks like quiet a few well known Aussie Authors in attendance – I see Rowena Cory Daniells, Tansy and Margo of course, Richard Harland, Dirk Flinthart. One would almost think something fishy is going on with all those authors in one place. A clandestine meeting perhaps.
Anyone interested in the event can take a look at the photo’s snapped by bydragonkatprincess
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Sea Hearts 
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