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This is a free sample of Kill Your Darlings issue "Issue 22" Download full version from: Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id845139689?mt=8&at=1l3v4mh Magazine Description: Proudly independent, Kill Your Darlings is Australia’s most lively and entertaining cultural publication, founded by Hannah Kent (author of bestselling novel Burial Rites) and Rebecca Starford in 2010, and today it comprises a quarterly edition, a website and blog, regular events series, a writers workshop and an online shop. Publishing essays, commentary, interviews, fiction and reviews, as well as regular opinion-pieces and columns, KYD is committed to feisty new writing unafraid of pulli... You can build your own iPad and Android app at http://presspadapp.com
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N E W F I C T I O N | C O M M E N T A R Y | E S S A Y S | R E V I E W S
Kill your darlings
KYD ISSUE 22.indd 1 9/06/15 8:14 AM
Kill Your Darlings
PO Box 271, Seddon West Victoria, 3011, Australia
Email: info@killyourdarlingsjournal.com
Web: www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com
Kill Your Darlings 22, 2015
Publishing Directors Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent
Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Starford
Editor Brigid Mullane
Deputy Editor Hop Dac
Online Editor Veronica Sullivan
Online Deputy Editor Samantha Forge
Interviews Editor Gerard Elson
Marketing Coordinator Briony Kent
Editorial Assistants Meaghan Dew, Ashleigh Hanson
Published by Kill Your Darlings Pty Ltd
This collection © Kill Your Darlings 2015
ISBN 978-0-9941638-7-5, ISSN 1837-638X
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission
of Kill Your Darlings. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors are not necessarily
those of the editors.
Cover illustration: Guy Shield
Design and layout: © Kill Your Darlings
Kill Your Darlings accepts unsolicited submissions.
Please visit the website for all guidelines.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through
the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
KYD ISSUE 22.indd 2 9/06/15 8:14 AM
5 Editorial
COMMENTARY
9 Death Trends | Hashtag Activism and the Rise of Online Grief
Gillian Terzis investigates how social media affects grief and the ways
we mourn.
25 In Search of Lost Sleep | Through the Fog of Fatigue
Eleanor Hogan searches for a cure to the insomnia that has dogged her for years.
45 The Anzac Myth | Holocaust Denial and the Birth of the Australian Nation
On the centenary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli, Tim Robertson looks at an often ignored element of the Anzac legend.
Jessie Cole recalls an unexpected encounter.
71 The Privilege of Starvation | On Art and Creative Writing Courses
Omar Sakr looks at the myth of the starving artist.
83 A Conscious Choice | Remaining Childfree in an Uncertain World
Diane White speaks to people who choose to remain childless for environmental reasons.
95 The Importance of Being Hairy | Waxing, Shaving and Other Unnecessary Thrills
learns to accept his hirsuteness.
CONTENTS
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FICTION
105 Those Who Know We Are Here | Jessica Au
123 The Race | Sonja Dechian
INTERVIEW 137 Gerard Elson in Conversation with Nick Cave
REVIEWS 167 No Such Thing As Monsters | Shirley Jackson and the Unspeakable Everyday
Carody Culver revisits Shirley Jackson’s seminal short story, ‘The Lottery’.
181 Words, Flesh and Tech | Contemporary Literature and Our Future Selves
Rachel Hennessy looks at intimacy and anxiety in the recent novels of Dave Eggers, Michel Faber and Margaret Atwood.
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EDITORIAL
Welcome to Issue 22 of Kill Your Darlings. As we go to print, the arts community is reeling from recent
cuts to Australia Council funding. As proud recipients of Australia Council funding, Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent have penned an open letter, which helps illuminate the issue. I encourage you to read the letter on our website and sign the petition.
In this issue we celebrate everything that Kill Your Darlings does best – made possible by the support of our funders and our readers – promoting great, Australian writing.
In this issue’s lead feature ‘Death Trends: Hashtag Activism and the Rise of Online Grief ’, Gillian Terzis looks at the changing ways in which we experience and publicise grief. On the back of the outpouring of public mourning for the murders of Jill Meagher, Masa Vukotic and Stephanie Scott, Gillian looks at what it means to grieve online, and examines if public grief is ever a real impetus for change.
Elsewhere in Commentary, Tim Robertson looks at the Armenian genocide and our blind spot in the Anzac legend. Omar Sakr examines the myth of the starving artist, and how the perception of the writer as a tragic figure creates barriers to the actual creation of art. Eleanor Hogan battles with sleeplessness in her inquisitive look
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6 | Kill Your Darlings, Issue 22
at insomnia, while Diane White interviews people who have chosen to be childless for environmental reasons. We have a moving piece of memoir from Jessie Cole and a humorous look at hairiness from Ara Sarafian.
In Fiction, the issue features a new story from Jessica Au entitled ‘Those Who Know We Are Here’, and we also have an extract from Sonja Dechian’s upcoming short story collection, An Astronaut’s Life.
In Interview, we were lucky to secure an extended interview with Nick Cave. In this illuminating discussion, our interviewer and Nick Cave cover everything from song creation to Miley Cyrus to dolphin penises. It’s funny and frank and an absolute pleasure to read.
In Reviews, Carody Culver revisits Shirley Jackson’s lauded short story ‘The Lottery’, and looks at the horror within, while Rachel Hennessy looks at the depiction of human intimacy in Dave Eggers’s, Margaret Atwood’s and Michel Faber’s latest books.
Happy reading!
Brigid Mullane | Editor
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COMMENTARYKYD ISSUE 22.indd 7 9/06/15 8:14 AM
‘Social media is by nature performative, it’s a marketplace in which we
publicly jostle for ranking and approval.’
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| 9
DEATH TRENDS
Gillian Terzis
In the days leading up to April 29, my social media feeds
were dominated by scores of doleful messages imploring
Indonesian President Joko Widodo to extend clemency to
the condemned Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan
and Myuran Sukumaran. Some held candlelight vigils
and uploaded them to Instagram. Others chose to use a
memespiration-like graphic with the text ‘Because I’m
not the person I was 10 years ago and neither are they’
accompanied with the hashtag #IStandForMercy, and posted
it on Facebook. An emotionally-charged video – set to a
plaintive piano melody – also did the rounds, in which local
celebrities pleaded with the prime minister to ‘bring these
boys home’ and ‘show some balls’ – platitudes that were in
tune with the country’s broader emotional barometer but out
‘Social media is by nature performative, it’s a marketplace in which we
publicly jostle for ranking and approval.’
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10 | Kill Your Darlings, Issue 22
of step with the realpolitik of foreign relations. Indeed, a few
actors solemnly declared that ‘the time for diplomacy is over’.
More haunting, at least for me, was the image Sukumaran
had painted of a bleeding human heart, which was signed by
all nine prisoners awaiting execution.
Our constant connection to the news and to the
opinions of others means that grief can easily become a
viral phenomenon. I was in Jakarta on the day Chan and
Sukumaran were transferred to Nusa Kambangan, an island
off the southern coast of Java that is home to four active
prisons, most of which were built by the Dutch before
Indonesia’s independence. It’s where former president Suharto
imprisoned political dissidents and communist sympathisers,
many of whom were left to languish for years, and where
high-profile offenders – terrorists, drug traffickers and the
like – await their death by firing squad. When, a few days
later, I’d heard through journalists in Jakarta that two coffins
had arrived at the Australian embassy, it was hard to imagine
a trajectory other than the one that would cause us distress.
I dreaded the execution, but I also dreaded the ensuing
response and the hectoring op-eds to come. ‘We do not need
to spare feelings for fear of being seen as arrogant westerners
or hold back because Australia is so far from perfect – witness
our treatment of asylum seekers, witness the outrage of phone
tapping the former Indonesian president’s wife,’ Gay Alcorn
wrote in a highly emotive op-ed in The Guardian, before
calling for a Bali boycott. I shared Alcorn’s horror over the
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