Kill your darlingsC U LT U R E I C O M M E N TA R Y I P O L I T I C S I S O C I E T Y

Kill Your DarlingsPO Box 271, Seddon West Victoria, 3011, AustraliaEmail: info@killyourdarlingsjournal.comWeb: www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com

Kill Your Darlings 24, 2016Publishing Directors Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent Editor Brigid MullaneDeputy Editor Hop DacOnline Editor Veronica SullivanOnline Deputy Editor Samantha Forge Interviews Editor Gerard ElsonMarketing Coordinator Briony Kent Editorial Assistants Meaghan Dew, Ashleigh HansonDesign and Illustration Guy Shield

Published by Kill Your Darlings Pty LtdThis collection © Kill Your Darlings 2016ISBN 978-0-9941638-9-9, ISSN 1837-638XAll 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.

Printed and bound by Griffin Press.Kill Your Darlings accepts unsolicited submissions. Please visit the website for all guidelines.

This book is printed on paper certified against the Forest StewardshipCouncil Standards. Griffin Press holds FSC chain-of-custody certificationSGS-COC-009448. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, sociallybeneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Contents5 Editorial

First Person11 Life Lessons with

Peoples TempleLaura Elizabeth Woollett

21 To the Exclusion of All Others Melanie Joosten

Commentary37 The Myth of Rejection

Siobhan Lyons

47 Songs of Experience and InnocenceRowena Lennox

57 Reprinting the Books that Made AmericaNathan Smith

Dispatches67 Magnet City

Jennifer Down

77 Imagined CommunityMarika Sosnowski

New Fiction89 Recess

Melanie Myers

99 The Space BetweenJustina Ashman

107 Talking About the Younger Version of MeDom Amerena

Conversations121 Lynn Coady

The Culture Files131 Kangaroo and the Lie of

Australian ClasslessnessLauren Carroll Harris

141 Truth on TrialLou Heinrich

151 Forever, Forty Years LaterSimmone Howell

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Editorial

Welcome to 2016 and the 24th issue of Kill Your Darlings. After three exciting years at KYD, this will be my final

issue. As editor I have had the privilege of working with over 100 writers and I am endlessly proud of the work we have produced together. It has been an honour to be part of the KYD team, which really is a bunch of the hardest working and most talented people around.

I am happy to be returning the magazine to publishing directors Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent, who will resume editing KYD. Their mentorship has been pivotal in my growth as an editor and their support invaluable in an industry with diminishing opportunities for emerging editors. Thank you for letting me borrow your baby!

I’m pleased to announce that Hop Dac will now become KYD’s associate editor and Ashleigh Hanson has been promoted to deputy editor. Under their guidance, as well as with the tireless contributions of Gerard Elson and Meaghan Dew, I’m sure that the magazine will continue to go from strength to strength.

I am also thrilled to present a new page design by Guy Shield. You may know Guy as our incredibly talented cover

k ill your darlings | i ssue 24

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illustrator – or have seen his illustrations recently featured in the Wall Street Journal – and we are now lucky to have him beautify our interior pages as well.

You will see a new layout, with some reinvigorated categories, but the same great Australian writing. Jennifer Down and Marika Sosnowski send us dispatches from Berlin and Lebanon, while in First Person Laura Elizabeth Woollett follows the trail of Jim Jones in her piece ‘Life Lessons with Peoples Temple’ and Melanie Joosten recounts life in an intercultural relationship in ‘To the Exclusion of All Others’.

In this issue we also continue our investigation into the state of publishing with Nathan Smith looking at the New York Review of Books’ role in reviving lost classics and reinvigorating the careers of forgotten authors in his piece ‘Reprinting the Books that Made America’. Siobhan Lyons examines the myth of the rejected author, and considers the damage that this selective storytelling may cause. In ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’, Rowena Lennox remembers the music of Led Zeppelin and reflects on how music can be warped by the memories that accompany it.

In the Culture Files, Lauren Carroll Harris uses the 1987 film Kangaroo to interrogate the lie of Australian classlessness, and Lou Heinrich looks at a new true crime genre that is dominated by Australian women in her piece ‘Truth on Trial’. Forty years after the book’s release, Simmone Howell revisits Judy Blume’s Forever, and reflects on Blume’s role in informing the teenagers of a generation.

We have New Fiction from Melanie Myers, Dom Amerena and Justina Ashman, winner of the Monash Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing, presented as part of the 2015 Emerging Writers’ Festival. Justina’s story, ‘The

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Space Between’, is a troubling tale of a world descending into chaos.

In Conversations, Gerard Elson speaks with Canadian novelist and journalist Lynn Coady about the importance of opening scenes, life on literary juries and why maintaining a healthy cynicism is important.

Thank you to all the readers, writers, subscribers and booksellers for your support over the last three years. Special thanks to Veronica Sullivan and Emily Laidlaw who somehow managed to support me while also making Killings one of the best dang websites around, and to Hop Dac for being the best deputy an editor could ask for. I’m looking forward to seeing what the amazing team at KYD does next and to enjoying the magazine as a subscriber, with a cup of tea and my feet up!

I am lucky to be continuing my work with Australian writers as the Editorial Director of The Melbourne Agency, a literary and creative talent agency for new and emerging writers, in partnership with Sam Twyford-Moore. Together we hope to support and promote new Australian voices both at home and overseas, as well as develop a few projects of our own.

The current generation of Australian writers, with the assistance of magazines such as KYD, are creating writing of a world-class standard and I’m excited to play a part in celebrating and representing that work.

Brigid Mullane | Editor

first person