Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:13 Hello and welcome to the Fremantle press podcast in 2022. My name is Brooke Darnell, and I'm the author of the glass house, which won the 2021 foggerty literary award and will be published by Fremantle press in November. This year, today, we are recording in Wallula up in <inaudible>. This is a place of Boulevard, up many stories, and I'd like to acknowledge our first storytellers along with Nunga elders past present and future. My guest is the author of skimming stones. Maria Pappas. Maria is fiction creative non-fiction and academic essays have appeared in journals like text Griffith, review axon, and the letters page. She holds a PhD from the university of Western Australia, where she researched the ways people share narratives of illness and trauma. And in 2020, her debut novel skimming stones, one, the city of Fremantle Hungerford award Maria Pappas. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 00:01:11 Hi, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 00:01:13 So Maria, can you start off by telling our listeners what skimming stones is about?
Speaker 2 00:01:19 Uh, so give me a stones. Mostly it's better a nurse. Her name is grace. She works in a pediatric oncology ward and she's just come out of a relationship that, um, is complicated and hasn't been the best choice for her in general. She just goes about her days going to her, her job, looking after her patients. Um, but when one of these patients has an emergency, grace is triggered, triggered into her own past as a sister of someone who had gone through cancer. And, um, at this point, grace begins to question her life choices from her relationships to her career. Um, and she embarks on a journey back to her hometown where she begins to unpack her sister's illness, the impact it had on her sister and on, on her and on her whole family for grace specifically this past had involved her being separated from her family for quite some time as her mom and her sister had gone off to hospital. So grace begins to unpack the impact of that on her life.
Speaker 1 00:02:27 Can you tell us about the origins of skimming stones and kind of how it evolved into this, this beautiful novel that you've got?
Speaker 2 00:02:35 Yes, because skimming stones came from so many places in my life and so many curiosities that I had, it originated first within the boundaries of a creative writing PhD. Um, and before I had any inclination to write about sisters experiencing serious illness, I was writing about the kindness of strangers during times of crisis, but about a year into writing, I experienced a crisis of my own. My child was diagnosed with cancer herself. She was four at the time. So we embarked on a, a term sort of treatment two and a half years of going in and out of hospital and chemotherapy and all sorts of things. And she was really very little at the time. I ended up taking leave from my PhD for about a year. And when I returned what I was writing before, just wasn't engaging me in the same way. Oddly, the characters were still very much the same.
Speaker 2 00:03:45 I still had sisters. I still had an older lady that helps these sisters. I still had a boy by the lake holding this young girl's hand. Um, so there were some scenes that were there right from the very, very beginning, but the storyline was very, very different. And when I came back from leave, all I had wanted really was to explore what my family was going through, but I didn't yet have the distance or space to do it reflectively or in nonfiction. And I'm really the kind of person who can't start something and just drop it. So persisting through that, I ended up creating a character who had experienced what we were experiencing, but had done so in the past and was now in her future, being able to talk back to me, almost like almost the character guided me as a observer or reader who needed to know what a future for those experiencing such difficulties could be like.
Speaker 1 00:04:55 Um, wow. When, when people read the novel, they'll see that scene, which is kind of hinted at quite early. And then that comes later in the novel of the boy holding the hand by the lake and they'll know who these older couple is, who provide guidance to the main character when she's younger. And it's amazing to know that those pieces were there the whole time, even before the actual kind of core of the story had been formed in your experience.
Speaker 2 00:05:22 Yeah, absolutely. People always say you, you must kill your darlings. Um, but they were my darlings and they stayed, I almost lost the older couple because I thought they were relevant to the story. And it was my supervisor who said to me, no, they must stay. And so then it kept evolving like that.
Speaker 1 00:05:42 Yeah. And it's hard to, I mean, it's hard to imagine the story now without them in it, but we'll talk more about them in a minute. But the first thing I wanted to ask you about was this lake that you talk about and, and the fact that the family has to travel from the country to the city, for the sister Emma's treatment, the childhood setting is lake Clifton, which is south of Perth and the actual lake of lake Clifton itself. And the thrombal lights that are there is this vital setting in the novels, the pivotal events of the novel really take place. And it's a landscape that grace feels drawn to again and again, why was this the setting that you picked for grace and Emma's childhood, do you think?
Speaker 2 00:06:23 I had a constant recurring dream, a childhood memory of being somewhere with my family and looking over land towards what appeared to my childlike mind as skulls and bones in shallow water. And I would constantly dream about this place and this memory, but not know where it was because obviously I was so young when we must have visited and then I was older and I was teaching at curtain and I had a guest speaker coming in, Anne Maria Weldon, who wrote a lot about yoga up national park, like Clifton and the thrombo lights in her essays and in a book of her poetry. And, uh, when she came in and she spoke, I thought that's the place that I've been dreaming of. And so I went to visit it and I mean, I'm not sure if that's where my dream was coming from. It sounds like quite logically was.
Speaker 2 00:07:29 But when I visited, I really just liked the feel of the place. The air felt really clean and really fresh, and the place felt very quiet and peaceful and it was just a nice place to be. And so then I started including it in writing exercises. And then I started to mix my responses to the lake itself, with ideas I had of mythologies that were, uh, to do with my own heritage. So Greek mythologies and being in Anna-Maria Weldon threshold country. And I felt like this was like a threshold place. It was sort of like an in-between place and it just allowed my imagination to go in all sorts of directions. And so those writing exercises ended up being the first settings of the novel that I was writing and why, uh, like Clifton ended up being quite important to my work. It's not where I'm from. Um, you know, I'm from Bunbury and I've lived in Perth. I've driven past like Clifton I've stopped, but not really looked at like Clifton in the way I did after I had read Anna Maria's poetry. Yeah. It is special to me.
Speaker 1 00:08:53 And I don't know if I've ever been there myself, but after you described it, and then I did a Google pictures of it, and I thought you did describe it beautifully. This idea of these thrombal lights and the oxygen that they give being so vital to the story and the place and why that the girls are so, so drawn there over and over again, speaking of the two sisters. So your main character, your narrator, grace is the oldest sister. She's 13 and her younger sister, Emma is four. Um, like your daughter was when she's diagnosed with cancer. Was that a conscious choice that you wanted to write from the point of view of the relative of the cancer sufferer rather than the patient?
Speaker 2 00:09:37 It was very conscious because I'm quite aware of ethical boundaries. When I am writing, I guess it's to do with voice. I come to this as a mum of a child who had cancer. And at a time when I experienced watching my child through such a thing, I found it difficult to, to speak, to read, to write. I didn't know how to express my voice. And I remembered many people wanting to talk for me and how angry that made me and how I was determined to find the right voice, to tell this story, but to not take the voice of somebody else who could tell it in another way. So I found the voice of an observer, easy enough to slip into. I didn't yet have the voice to speak from my own experience. Like I said, I wasn't reflective enough. I hadn't had enough distance, but the voice of a child who watches something they don't fully understand was quite easy to be in.
Speaker 2 00:10:55 Because even as a mom of a child who was during chemotherapy, I felt a lack of agency or strength. All the doctors knew what was happening, but I didn't. And it reminded me a lot of when you're little and your parents know a little bit more than you. And you ask a question that you're not yet ready for the answer. And mum and dad might say, would tell you a bit more about that when we go home. And then they kind of evade the topic a little bit. So the voice of a child was a voice. I think that even parents who see their children go through cancer, it's familiar to them. So for me, that voice was easy to find. And then once I found it, it was a voice that was easy to grow. I cared for grace. I wanted to see her grow up. I wanted to see how she turned out. And so I was able just to let her go and speak to me rather than me speaking through a character. I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 00:12:07 Definitely. Yeah. And I think, um, grace, she has the experience cause she's 13, when this happens, that's quite a pivotal age for a lot of things. So you have her as the sister, she grows up to become a pediatric oncology nurse. So then she does absorb that knowledge that the parents and the siblings of the cancer sufferers don't have yet. And then she's also considering what kind of mother she'll be. So she's, she's kind of coming at the idea of having a loved one in your life with cancer, from these different angles. But when she's a child, she's got these different ways of trying to cope with her sister's illness. As you say, she's, she doesn't have the full story, both because she's not a doctor, she's not an adult. Her parents are having these issues. So she's, she's not getting the full story. One of the ways that she tries to deal with it is kinds of magical thinking.
Speaker 1 00:12:58 So she often thinks that if she can learn to cook an egg perfectly, then Emma will be all right, which obviously from an external viewpoint, it's like those two things have nothing to do with each other. And she's also quite concerned with time as, as if it would be possible to kind of go back and pinpoint the moment when things started to go wrong. When the cells started to mutate as if you could actually prevent that from happening. Was that a really important thing for you to try and capture in the novel, the way that grace mentally tries to deal with what's going on?
Speaker 2 00:13:30 Yes. Like I said, I wrote this novel in my PhD and my research was trying to map the ways in which those people who experience illness or trauma express their stories versus the ways in which society often tells stories. And in my creative work originally, I was really trying to tell the story with an arc in which, um, the illness was a disruption to Grace's and Emma's lives and that they would overcome this illness, that they would come to some new, meaningful, new purpose. And I kept on getting stuck. I didn't know how to finish it. It didn't feel natural. And so I started to research what psychologists were saying, what people with lived experience were saying, um, what narrative theorists were saying about how somebody in trauma or illness does actually tell a story. And, uh, for the most part, it doesn't follow such an easy arc.
Speaker 2 00:14:41 Instead, the person in the center of, or even around the center might go back in time to remap what happened or what alternative options could have happened if only this, this and this happened, then this wouldn't have, or they might go into the future to map a more palatable future for the people involved. They imagined something that gives hope. It's very difficult to stay in the present moment and, um, very difficult to have a timeline that doesn't have all those other events that haven't actually occurred. There is a word for this. It's called the disinherited and it's all the events in the narratives that could have happened or had the potential to happen. But didn't in these circumstances. And a lot of my research found that people who are experiencing illness or trauma do tell their stories with a level of something disintermediated. And when I read that, I thought that's how I've been thinking.
Speaker 2 00:15:58 I have gone back in time. What happened? Was it the microwave? Was it the internet? You know, what could happen so long as I could have an element of hope that there was always something that was able to allow me to see my child through such a long treatment. And so, since I was telling my own story in that way, and since I saw the research saying, this is how the story is told, it became super important to give grace those elements of magical thinking. And the books that I read that I attached myself very much to all had that. And Joan Didion's book, my year of magical thinking was certainly one of them when I read it, I was like, oh, I realized that I was telling my story in that fragmented, uh, sometimes repetitive, alternative realities way.
Speaker 1 00:16:56 Yeah. I find it so interesting that you said that part of creating the novel that it came to be was that you needed the character of grace to be outside of the experience telling you everything's going to be okay. This is how it can end up in, you know, 15 years in the future or something. And then you realize that that's, that's part of the decelerated. People need to see the future to look into the past, to track a path, but there is no path. There's a really good line in the novel where grace says something, something about make meaning out of a horrible event, but sometimes horrible events happen for no reason. And that's kind of seems to be a fundamental realization.
Speaker 2 00:17:38 And that line came out of research that I had done, where one researcher was asking multiple people who had experienced traumatic things, how they managed in the end. And that line, it's not word for word, but several people who spoke about it, sometimes it's really hard to find meaning, you know, it came into the story. It's very much the matching of the PhD and the story writing and my own experience and all the things that were my writing exercises and all my research coming together to be this book.
Speaker 1 00:18:14 And one, one final thing I wanted to talk about on that point of the things that make up the book. And you mentioned a little bit earlier was also, um, Grace's disconnection from her childhood. Great. You have a great background and being at lake Clifton made you think about language and Greek and things like that. That's one of the things that grace returns to a lot. You know what words mean? Um, the Greek, she used to understand this idea. She's no longer fluent in it during the experience of her sister's illness, she's dropping traditional narratives and she's more into art and painting, which she learns with the older couple that we talked about before. How did that come to make up the novel?
Speaker 2 00:18:58 It's such an interesting question. I'm really glad you asked it. So I was born in Australia, but my first language was Greek all the way until I went to school. And when I started school, I lost a lot of my language very quickly in amongst all of that. The people around me were always good storytellers. So my grandma, my grandfather, my dad, my, my mum, all of them would tell me stories, but they would tell me stories in an oral form. So I learnt all about the villages that they each came from and the wars that they had enjoyed, or the ways that they meant, or the journeys that they had to Australia, different types of journeys for each of them. None of them had access to schooling in the way that I had everybody was literate, but they just didn't have the same access to schooling and access to books.
Speaker 2 00:19:54 And so in my world, everyone in my family made books really available and school was super important, but I understood that telling a story didn't always have to be written. And when my daughter was ill, I actually found it so hard to read. I couldn't read, I couldn't concentrate. All the words would be flying around and I'd have zero memory. I still searched for stories. What made you become a nurse? What made you become a doctor? And I found quite a lot of comfort in their stories. Again, they were spoken stories. So, um, grace, her preoccupation with language is really my preoccupation with language. It's probably a preoccupation that will continue into my future work because I feel like I've lost quite a bit of my knowledge of my heritage, my language, my culture, just in the very fact of growing up in Australia. And it's something that I want to reclaim a little bit, but also you're the second part of your question, why she's so attached to narratives that are told in a non-written form.
Speaker 2 00:21:09 It is because throughout the experience of watching my child through such a difficult illness, I lost my ability to sit and read, and I understood that narrative doesn't always have to be written. It is in the dancers that we might go to see it is in the visual art that we might view. The original thought for my thesis was the kindness of strangers. And sometimes a stranger can tell a story just in the look that passes between two people. And so her preoccupation with non-written narrative comes from a real understanding that narrative is much bigger than what is on a page.
Speaker 1 00:22:03 Um, there's a lot of that kindness of strangers thing going on with the other parents who were there first, when a new family with a cancer patient comes in and the way that they talk to them, look at them, introduce them to things, talk to them about normal things, talk to them about their child. I think some of the kindness of strangers issue that you were interested in previously has probably found itself there as well.
Speaker 2 00:22:27 Yeah, it definitely has there. I do have, um, uh, nonfiction essays that I have had published that touch on my actual experience of being seen and heard by a stranger and understood by a stranger in that way. But I haven't included my real life experience so much in skimming stones, but definitely I have been in a situation where people do look at me without me saying, and understand what I have gone through. And so it was very important for me to include that in those scenes, in skimming stones.
Speaker 1 00:23:09 Um, so Maria, you and I are both winners of awards for unpublished manuscripts. So skimming stones won the prestigious city of Fremantle Hungerford award in 2020. And I was the recipient of the 2021, the literary award for 18 to 35 year old Western Australian writers. And so winning these awards have allowed both of us to have our first novel was published, which is a real dream for a lot of people, was the dream for us prior to winning those awards entries for their 2022 city of Fremantle Hungerford awards have just opened up. This is the award you won two years ago. So do you have any advice for writers who might be considering sending their manuscript in?
Speaker 2 00:23:50 I would say to have a go to not have self doubt, if you have a manuscript that is ready, just pop it in. When you look at your manuscript, you always think that there's something more that you can do, and sometimes it's a lot more finished than you believe. So, you know, Polish it to the best of your ability, show it to the people around you. Writer's groups. If you've got one I'd love for all writers to have a writers group, people that can give you honest, good gentle advice, but don't try to overtake your writing process. And if you have drafted it, organize yourself, be aware of the deadline and just go ahead and do it. But if you're at the beginning stages, maybe just pop this award in your mind for two years time. I think I did maybe 15 drafts of what I had submitted before it came in. I know it's a lot and I probably overdraft, but you know, like if you're onto your first draft, you're probably not ready. Um, but yeah, have a go drafted and it put it in. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:25:09 So how did you know that you were going to be a writer and when do you feel like you had the confidence to actually call yourself a writer?
Speaker 2 00:25:20 I still don't have the confidence to call myself a writer and I have less confidence to call myself an author. And I know that that's stuff that I have to work on. Um, but I knew I would be a writer from the moment I, from the moment stories were around me. I had a diary from the time I could write. I tried writing stories when I was in primary school, my friend and I did a picture book. It was called the adventures of professor Gherkin. And we did this book up. I'm pretty sure I wrote the story and she illustrated because she was an excellent artist and I was a good storyteller, but together we were just formidable and our teacher had it laminated and our library and put it in the school library with a proper card at the back and like borrowing, you know, stamps that you borrow.
Speaker 2 00:26:15 And every week that we went to library, they'd be more burrow stamps on it. And, um, the librarian would say, or the feedback that the year ones were giving it and how much they loved the story. And that confidence has always stayed with me. I'm a teacher. So I hope that I give that confidence to people who write as well. I wanted to be a writer from that moment. I knew I would be a writer from that moment, even though other people around me said, writing's not really a career for a girl from Bumbry, you know, like you have to pick something a little bit safe, uh, and you won't make much money from riding and blah, blah, blah. Do you know what I enjoy riding? And it's held me in good state so far. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:27:04 So many writers have this story of the English teacher or the library and who really gave them that kind of courage at some point in their career. Um, but having, having published in inverted commerce, your professor Gherkin story, um, when you were a primary schooler and now going through a more commercial publication experience with skimming stones, what was publication like and what did you learn kind of as part of that, that you maybe wish you'd known when you were starting out?
Speaker 2 00:27:32 So, one thing that's very important for me is to let go and I had the validation from my supervisor and I had the validation from the examiners who marked my manuscript, but when I got the validation from Georgia, that this was ready and it was time to let it go. That made all the difference because I don't know without it, whether I would have had the confidence to do so, I would've just kept reworking it and reworking it in all sorts of ways that may not have been helpful. So one thing that I'm mindful that I am learning and still learning is when to let it go. And probably right now, it's when to begin, because I do have a story in mind. I have written it as a, as a journal at the moment, but I haven't yet popped it on the computer and it's probably time to begin.
Speaker 2 00:28:27 So what's stopping me from starting this next story. I don't know. There are things that I, that I work on the publication process has taught me that there is more to being a writer than actually writing a book, talking about the book, having the confidence to speak about the themes in it, being present in a writing community, being present on social media, engaging with others and just having some kind of constant connection to readers and writers. It goes counter to my personality. I just want to sit quiet in my space and write and explore and ask questions and be curious and talk to people about their stories or their ways of seeing and research such a very isolated and quiet thing to do. And the only time I've ever stepped out of it was to be with my writer's group to talk with my family or the people close to me about what I am writing or in the context of a university, my supervisor, or the people that were helping me. But now I see it much broader than that and the value of connecting and being part of a community. And that I really wish I had done and being more comfortable with right at the beginning of writing. Do you know what I mean? Like thinking of myself as a writer, when I wrote not thinking of myself as a writer, only after I got published,
Speaker 1 00:30:04 It's so good that you did actually make the leap and it's so beautifully written. So meditative and having the manuscript be turned into a book and you talking about it and stuff and making it publish. I think there will be so many readers who will see aspects of their experience reflected in your novel and how, how you have taken it out of the linear narrative and, and made it that kind of ruminating going back, magical thinking language. Could we have changed this stuff? I just think it would be so valuable to people who can finally see their experience captured in fiction. So in the AAU review, Emily, Paul has called it a slow contemplated read. And she said that your writing is gentle and has an emotional subtlety and books and publishing pointed out your ability to beautifully actual landscape in writing that is haunting and poetic in places. Um, so thank you so much for talking to me today, Maria.
Speaker 2 00:31:02 Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:31:03 That was Maria Pappas talking to us about her novel skimming stones. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the Fremantle press podcast on your favorite app. I'm Brooke Darnell Fogarty, literary award winner, and the author of the glass house. And I look forward to joining you next time as we talk to yet another fantastic storyteller from the west
