shifted

I have shifted both blogs onto my website at www.hoapham.net

See you there!

stuck in Las Vegas

Stuck in Las Vegas having missed a connection back to San Francisco. We stayed here for three nights- Alister wanted to laugh at the city- but ended up getting a headache from the pretty flashing lights after 2 hours. We stayed at a casino hotel called Excalibur (see castle picture). There are also mini Paris, New York and replicas of Italian and French monuments. Found it pretty sad- even the airport has poker machines in it (not tempted).

americanos

Here I am in Houston on new years eve in Sugar Land a community that is ten to fifteen years old that has a playground where only "First Colony residents and their guests" can play. My sister in common-law Michelle has reported they are not able to have a clothes line because it is ugly and the neighbours would be able to see it from their backyard. Welcome to upper middle class facism. We have been to a ice hockey game where when two players had a blue "macho macho man" was blared on the loudspeakers the crowd got up and cheered and the refs did nothing to interfere. On Capitol Hill in Austin there is a memorial statue to the Confederates the side that supported slavery and lost the civil war. And the cheese is bright orange, the coffee tastes like piss and the beer is well...On the other hand Houston is home to the second largest concentration of Vietnamese in the, US (Orange County is the first). There is an Asian American section in Barnes and Noble (like Angus and Robertson). The national parks are gorgeous (see picture of Yosemite, Sequoia coyote and Death Valley sand). And Christmas is a full on affair with mega electric decorations outside everyone's houses.
Happy new year.

Once upon a time in the West

Went to the Asian/Australian Values Workshop in Woolongong on Asian-Australian Literature which you can read about in Peril Issue #4 at www.asianaustralian.org.
Once upon a time in the West a series of short films of which I made the first- Remembrance- is being shown at the Big West festival this week. They are really good short docs (except mine which is a fiction) portraying life in the West, The sort of hour that I would like to sit John Howard and Pauline Hanson in front of and make them watch.
Kathleen Fallon my creative supervisor is leaving Melbourne Uni. I'm currently doing a masters in creative writing and this throws things out a little. I really value my creative life and want to make it more of my life- and it appears one of the ways to do that is get a Phd and move into academia/creative writing. The other is to move into psychotherapeutic story telling which there isn't the space for at RMIT Counselling Service. I could do more community orientated art work, and group projects- Caitlin Nunn is doing a Phd which involves getting us (meaning the Vietnamese-Australian artists I hang out with) to interview our families and talk about the return home and home and produce themed art from it. It may lead to production at Big West festival 2009. I had initially thought that I would concentrate on getting a book out or in process in 2008 and this is already happening to a degree.
Silence has got production dates 21 May to 1 June 2008 at La Mama Theatre. This fulfils another one of my dreams and I'm thinking of converting it into a film script.
There is so much I could do- and not enough time or money to do it all at once. I tried to draw up a life plan for the next few years to sort out what I want to achieve (and the best way of doing it). I did this two months ago and I'm already roving all over the place!

publications and a short film

I managed to get another short story "Heroic Mother" to be published in the Griffith Review coming out in November themed "In the neighborhood" - meaning Asia. And at the moment I'm in production for a short seven minute film called "Ma". Yes there is a mother theme running through all this! 'Silence" has gotten $8000 in funding from Melbourne City Council which will launch it off the ground for production next year. So even though I haven't actually done much in the way of writing over the last two months- thanks to working full time- there are things on the way.

Youth conference and transformation

Talked at the youth conference last week- where I was first after lunch- a bad position to start from. They didn't stop chatting until I started reading them a story- which I guess shows me what they are more interested in listening to!
I have been mentoring another writer Heidi Ch'ng and we have been talking about the ending of novels. Like Ursula Le Guin I believe that drama and narrative is about change and so by the end of the novel I expect some change or transformation to have occurred at some point.

I've also recently spoke at a Victorian Writers Centre gig about writing culture. I found it really refreshing to listen to Alice Pung and her take on writing about her culture of origin. Gorkem Acaroglu a Russian-Turkish artist also talked about defying stereotypes and respecting other cultures. As for me writing about Vietnamese culture and Buddhism is part of my milieu at the moment- because I'm still fascinated with ghosts, spirits and madness.

Alice Pung has asked me to write for the Asian-Australian book she is editing. I have found to my surprise that my rage has gone. I don't know where it went- it may be because I have now found a home in Vietnamese Buddhism and amongst the younger generation Australian-Vietnamese so I'm not so displaced from my culture of origin anymore. Maybe that story of transformation is what I can write about for Alice's book.

back in Melbourne

Haven't posted here for a very long time- but have been busy of late. I sold one story "Mara" to Borderlands an Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction journal. Last weekend there was a rehearsed reading of my play "Silence" at La Mama Theatre. The feedback was very interesting- some people wanted the rituals to be explained more, others felt that the purpose of art was to have a message (which I think is simplistic and rubbish). Other feedback was very sophisticated and I will incorporate that feedback into my play. Next week I will be giving a speech at the Vietnamese Youth Conference- which will probably be the most important speech I give all year. I say this because the most valuable interaction I have with readers I feel is when I get to speak to secondary school students. Theya re the next wave of possible artists and I want them to value their voice (and themselves). I also talked at the Emerging Writers Festival on working within the dominant culture- which all the panellists interpreted as white Australia.