For a brief moment, the venue for my writers salon session was the charming outer terrace of the UTS Gallery, a space for reflection and exchange where my audience may encounter a diversity of art and ideas. We had plans for black turtle necks and white wine — no red permitted around the cream upholstery.
Alas, it was not to be. The thirty available tickets sold out and the venue moved to the more spacious, less reflective and certainly less salubrious Loft bar on the original campus, home of UTS’ famous brutalist Building One.
The Loft has been around since I was an undergraduate studying Communications in the 1980s, back when UTS was called the NSW Institute of Technology, colloquially newswit. I vaguely recall buying a make-your-own sandwich one afternoon before class where you were charged by weight of the bread and toppings. No doubt students found a way to scam it — schnitty in the back pocket anyone?
The last time I was at The Loft we launched the UTS Writers’ Anthology, a project run by writing students showcasing students’ writing and supervised that particular year by the late Gabrielle Carey. It was a biggish deal, our modest marketing budget stretched to a single pull up banner of the anthology cover with its beautiful streaky blue and red swirling paint and curious title, And Watch the Whale Explode. The book was also launched at the Sydney Writers’ Festival that year. It was 2017 and I had just finished my creative writing masters degree.
Six years and one novel later, I was back in the upstairs lounge where organisers had set up half a dozen rows of chairs and two rickety barstools on a makeshift stage. We swapped the stools for chairs, arranged a pile Cold Against the Glass paperback copies, connected up the Square point of sale widget and waited for guests to arrive.
By 6pm we had just about filled the seats and the session kicked off with a fabulous warm-up act from writing student Otis Creed who read from his work in progress, Someday We’ll Linger In The Sun. Otis’ dialogue-dominated story captivated the room.
My session was a moderated author Q&A, with me reading excerpts from my novel and answering questions about why I chose to write about human specimens, the bizarre research process and my take on the gatekeeping of old-school publishing that led, eventually, to my decision to take the independent route.
It had been a while since I’d had a main speaking gig (there were several trips downstairs for a nervous pee) and I had a bottle of still water and a glass of sparkling on standby for the anticipated scratchy throat. A minute or two into my ‘about me’ spiel, I spotted my adult son in the third row. He lives in Melbourne and I hadn’t seen him for a few months so my family had secretly conspired to fly him and his new partner up from Melbourne. I hadn’t met her yet so it was an exercise in extreme refocus to get myself back on track and park the mum emotions for later.
I think it all went okay. A few of my lovely friends turned up, so did a handful of my fellow masters students, a group of my daughter’s friends, even a lecturer from the creative writing department. People asked interested and helpful questions, I sold more than half the books I’d brought along in a wheelie bag, and signed plenty. We had a wine or two post-event at the Old Clare across Broadway and made it to the ramen bar a minute before closing.
Below, clockwise: lovely friends Diana and Tracey; with Otis Creed; after the event; during the event; reading from Cold Against the Glass.