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EMERGING WRITERS' FESTIVAL BRINGS 'AMAZING BABES' TO SYDNEY
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Nov 3 2014
Books
by Linda Morris
At the height of superstardom, Mariah Carey performed the type of
chocolate box love songs which spoke to a teenager's yearning for
romance.
Tamar Chnorhokian committed to heart the words of Mariah Carey's
tracks, writing down the lyrics in an exercise book which carried
scraps of poetry and verse that appealed to the romantic in her.
Alone in her bedroom, the volume of her cassette player set to blaring,
she would sing into a hairbrush as Carey effortlessly zipped back
and forth along four octaves.
Along with Chnorhokian's Aunty Rita, a writer of Armenian descent,
and an obscure poet, Carey has been a role model for that young girl
who has been able to direct all that teen angst into her first young
adult novel, The Diet Starts on Monday, published last week.
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"I must have been 12 or 13 when she brought out Emotions, and the
lyrics just connected with me," Chnorhokian says.
"She writes all these songs about unrequited love and it's something
I related to as a teenager when I went through a lot of that. I was
really drawn to her lyrics - I was writing a lot of my own poetry at
the time - and she helped me make sense of what was happening to me."
Chnorhokian will pay tribute to Carey in Amazing Babes, an event
at the Emerging Writers' Festival, which travels by train through
regional Victoria to Wagga Wagga and Canberra and arrives in Sydney
on November 6.
Amazing Babes is inspired by Eliza Sarlos' picture book of the
same name and invites writers to tell an audience of writers about
the women who have made them who they are, festival director Sam
Twyford-Mooresays.
It proved the most popular event of this year's Melbourne festival. In
Sydney, it will feature on stage Astrid Lorange, Laura Jean McKay,
Pip Smith, Rosanna Beatrice Stevens and Madelaine Lucas.
It was American writer Gertrude Stein who triggered Lorange's interest
in exploring writing theory. Stein was the subject of her doctoral
thesis and her new non-fiction book, How Reading is Written: A Brief
Index to Gertrude Stein published by Wesleyan University Press.
More recently, she has been reading the essays of female philosophers
Hannah Arendt and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Neither Arendt nor Spivak are household names but Arendt is famous
in her field for her ideas about collective evil and the rise of
fascism in Europe. Spivak is best known for questioning accounts of
post-colonial history.
Lorange says she writes with a self-awareness that "access to education
and publishing" is skewed to disadvantage women, and men and women
write and read in different ways because of those social circumstances.
The Emerging Writers' Festival is put together by writers to nurture
young talent and first-time authors. For the first time, it has spun
out into an online digital festival. This year's Melbourne attendance
of 14,000 broke last year's box office record.
Sydney's marquee event will be a day of discussions on pop culture,
criticism, mentorship and digital literature at the NSW Writers'
Centre on November 8.
Chnorhokian's young adult fiction novel has been published by
Sweatshop, the western Sydney writers' group, with financial assistance
from the Bankstown City Council and the University of Western Sydney.
Her debut tale tells the story of Zara Hagopian, a size 22, who has a
secret crush on the hottest boy in school, who has a skinny girlfriend
named Holly. It's set in multicultural Fairfield.
Chnorhokian hopes to use her personal struggle with schizophrenia
for her next work of young adult fiction.
Her father's sister, Rita, a writer in Los Angeles, encouraged a
sense of self belief after she was diagnosed in year 12. She never
got to sit the Higher School Certificate.
"She had an army praying for me. God is a big part of my life, and
it is with Mariah Carey."
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/emerging-writers-festival-brings-amazing-babes-to-sydney-20141102-11aybe.html
From: A. Papazian
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Nov 3 2014
Books
by Linda Morris
At the height of superstardom, Mariah Carey performed the type of
chocolate box love songs which spoke to a teenager's yearning for
romance.
Tamar Chnorhokian committed to heart the words of Mariah Carey's
tracks, writing down the lyrics in an exercise book which carried
scraps of poetry and verse that appealed to the romantic in her.
Alone in her bedroom, the volume of her cassette player set to blaring,
she would sing into a hairbrush as Carey effortlessly zipped back
and forth along four octaves.
Along with Chnorhokian's Aunty Rita, a writer of Armenian descent,
and an obscure poet, Carey has been a role model for that young girl
who has been able to direct all that teen angst into her first young
adult novel, The Diet Starts on Monday, published last week.
Advertisement
"I must have been 12 or 13 when she brought out Emotions, and the
lyrics just connected with me," Chnorhokian says.
"She writes all these songs about unrequited love and it's something
I related to as a teenager when I went through a lot of that. I was
really drawn to her lyrics - I was writing a lot of my own poetry at
the time - and she helped me make sense of what was happening to me."
Chnorhokian will pay tribute to Carey in Amazing Babes, an event
at the Emerging Writers' Festival, which travels by train through
regional Victoria to Wagga Wagga and Canberra and arrives in Sydney
on November 6.
Amazing Babes is inspired by Eliza Sarlos' picture book of the
same name and invites writers to tell an audience of writers about
the women who have made them who they are, festival director Sam
Twyford-Mooresays.
It proved the most popular event of this year's Melbourne festival. In
Sydney, it will feature on stage Astrid Lorange, Laura Jean McKay,
Pip Smith, Rosanna Beatrice Stevens and Madelaine Lucas.
It was American writer Gertrude Stein who triggered Lorange's interest
in exploring writing theory. Stein was the subject of her doctoral
thesis and her new non-fiction book, How Reading is Written: A Brief
Index to Gertrude Stein published by Wesleyan University Press.
More recently, she has been reading the essays of female philosophers
Hannah Arendt and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Neither Arendt nor Spivak are household names but Arendt is famous
in her field for her ideas about collective evil and the rise of
fascism in Europe. Spivak is best known for questioning accounts of
post-colonial history.
Lorange says she writes with a self-awareness that "access to education
and publishing" is skewed to disadvantage women, and men and women
write and read in different ways because of those social circumstances.
The Emerging Writers' Festival is put together by writers to nurture
young talent and first-time authors. For the first time, it has spun
out into an online digital festival. This year's Melbourne attendance
of 14,000 broke last year's box office record.
Sydney's marquee event will be a day of discussions on pop culture,
criticism, mentorship and digital literature at the NSW Writers'
Centre on November 8.
Chnorhokian's young adult fiction novel has been published by
Sweatshop, the western Sydney writers' group, with financial assistance
from the Bankstown City Council and the University of Western Sydney.
Her debut tale tells the story of Zara Hagopian, a size 22, who has a
secret crush on the hottest boy in school, who has a skinny girlfriend
named Holly. It's set in multicultural Fairfield.
Chnorhokian hopes to use her personal struggle with schizophrenia
for her next work of young adult fiction.
Her father's sister, Rita, a writer in Los Angeles, encouraged a
sense of self belief after she was diagnosed in year 12. She never
got to sit the Higher School Certificate.
"She had an army praying for me. God is a big part of my life, and
it is with Mariah Carey."
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/emerging-writers-festival-brings-amazing-babes-to-sydney-20141102-11aybe.html
From: A. Papazian