On Collaboration
for Facing the World: Building a Non-Solitary Writing Practice
15 September, 2022
Hello, writers, readers, editors—!
I’m excited to join you for Maria’s class, to speak together about collaboration. I thought I’d write a short note to introduce some (non-required) readings before class. I thought these pieces might open up conversations about collaboration, be it between a writer and interviewer, between organisations, between Asian diaspora and First Nations artists, writer and editor, or even simply within the literary community. Take what you’d like, and leave the rest.
Interview Series
Six or so years ago, Liminal began as a small interview series. We now commission art and writing; we run literary prizes for First Nations writers and Writers of Colour; we publish books, somewhat sporadically; and, prior to the pandemic, we also ran poetry and performance nights.
We’ve published over 200 interviews. I think the interview series is an interesting place to begin when thinking through collaboration, because it makes clear the project’s desire to illuminate and revel in multiplicity.
When we asked Soo-Min to interview Zhi, together they asked if instead they could shift the 'interview' concept into a 'conversation' between equals, colleagues and friends. We agreed, and they sent through an intimate, and very beautiful conversation. Soo-Min says, 'In this community of just you and me, you have helped me heal in many ways.' You can read their conversation here.
Ongoing Collaborations with the Centre for Stories
When I first started Liminal, Robert Wood, the artistic director for the Centre for Stories in Perth emailed me a list of people he thought I might interview. I asked if I could interview him, too. We found we shared a similar work ethic and ethos; the idea of collaboration grew quite organically between the Centre and Liminal.
In 2019, together we produced a series of interviews together; I photographed the interview subjects, and Robert interviewed them. He wrote an introduction for the series, here, where he articulates what it might mean to work together, to recognise our identities as 'only one thread among many':
Together, we are made up of more stories and more possibilities and more ways of living than we ever knew before. And so, like this place and this month of Liminal, we each contain multitudes. These multitudes do not rest in unity, but keep searching for paradoxes that tie us together, like twins, from West Coast to East Coast, from port cities both, from places of hope. We know our selves as old and arriving, static and becoming, as prophetic poets and novices of language, all at once. This is about what we might become if we share in our enlightened true selves as Asian-Australians and beyond. This is the lived polytheism of our daily reality.
One of my favourite interviews from this series is Robert in conversation with his mother, Caroline Wood, the director and founder of the Centre for Stories. Thinking through the future of the Centre, she notes,
I think the future is bright. Since the Centre started we have experienced incredible growth in terms of numbers through our doors, income, projects, and recognition, including with Liminal. The feedback we get is that those who have participated in our projects feel valued and empowered. But, just as critically, they feel it is the first space where they can come into their own. We simply offered a platform for people to become themselves. I think we have achieved what we set out to do. So, going forward, we need to be mindful that we have set a certain standard that we should not compromise.
'Community' Art series for Hyphenated Biennial
In 2020, I worked with Nikki Lam at Hyphenated Projects to produce a series of art and writing for their Hyphenated Biennial. Maddee Clark and I co-edited the series; we sought to align the series with the Biennial’s focus on dialogues, solidarity and meaningful collaborations between First Nations and Asian Diasporic Artists.
It’s impossible for me to pick a singular piece for you to read; if you have a moment, I recommend you read them all. Ok, I know you probably won’t do this. Who has the time? Or, for that matter, who has the attention? At the moment, not me. But I think this focus—on what meaningful collaboration can be— is something perhaps every artist should consider when they set out to create. As Alison Whittakker’s poem asks—
How much of how we see to each other is shaped by some meathooks on their ball-bearing conveyors, urging some dead European sheep on? How much of how we relate to each other is this chance meeting in a flesh factory, dispossessed of land and family and money by the threat of not being here anymore?
Liminal Fiction Prize
In 2018, I researched Australian Literary Prizes, and was dissatisfied with the scarce representation of writers of colour and First Nations writers. In 2019, Liminal launched our first fiction prize. With a theme of ‘the future’, Liminal sought fiction of a new world: not the stuff of flying cars or robots, but a future that pulls against or weaves together Australia’s many fabricated histories. We published the Prize’s longlist as a fiction anthology, titled Collisions.
I have uploaded the introduction to Collisions as a pdf here. Collisions involved working with an editorial team, a designer, and with our publisher, Pantera Press. Both the prize and book involved advocating for a vision of literary community which is often overlooked and underrepresented, which I think could be perhaps relevant to the class, in that it broke from the usual collaboration with white supremacy that so often occurs within the arts industries. Instead, with these two connected projects, we sought to propose a different vision of literary community.
My own writing work
Maria has asked me to share some of my own writing work. I’ve been thinking lately through the idea that as readers and writers, we are often in conversation with other writers, both past and present. This might come out best in the 'What I’m Reading’ column I wrote for Meanjin in 2020. I was thinking through how reading has shaped me as a person, and how we never write alone. In writing work, I think there is so much to be said about collaborating with your reader, whatever that might mean for you.
I don’t expect you to read everything, I promise
If this has overwhelmed you, maybe just have a slow scroll through Liminal, and find something that soothes you. If you like games, Cecile Richard’s Under A Star Called Sun might do the trick, or if you’d like a laugh, maybe go get cancelled in real time with Vidya Rajan. Something that always soothes me is Kim Lam’s comic Life Happening, a meditation on selfhood and choice.
And—if you can’t stand the idea of looking at a screen for a second more, click through, close your eyes, and listen to Panda Wong recite STFU, Silence Tender Flowing Undulating.
See you soon,
Leah Jing McIntosh
Editor, Liminal