Combining creative and critical thinking in research

On Tuesday evening 29 October, I gave a keynote address to the Max Planck Queensland Centre for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices on the topic of using creative writing techniques as part of conducting and communicating research. 

This centre is 'a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam), the Max Planck Institute of Intelligent Systems (Stuttgart) and the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane...[formed to] investigate questions around the composition and order of extracellular matrices. Extracellular matrices are not animate and provide support for cells. They react to changing environmental conditions and store information that then activates or inhibits the growth of cells.' (Source)

For me, the keynote represented an opportunity to further develop and share my ideas about how creative writing and other fields can be used together to tackle questions and topics that are difficult to approach through scientific or creative tools alone: where aspects of both are needed together. This is a growing area of methodological inquiry worldwide, and one I have explored in other contexts, too, such as in collaborations with medical practitioners in the field of Narrative Medicine, as well as in the use of storytelling techniques as a form of literary-historical study, particularly in the case of the medieval Icelandic sagas.

On Tuesday, the audience consisted of an international group of people working in innovative areas of natural science who, I sensed, were also very open to the idea of using creative writing tools and the different modes of thinking they enable.

(Picture: Max Planck Queensland Centre)

(Picture: Max Planck Queensland Centre)

Sunshine Coast Hinterland Writers Festival

On Saturday 12 October, I'll be at the inaugural Sunshine Coast Hinterland Writers Festival in conversation with Ashley Hay, Siang Lu, and Bill Crozier on the topic of 'travels through time'. 

The festival, which is held in the village of Maleny, includes three days of events, talks and panels, markets and more. The full program is available here.

Tickets here.

Writers at the inaugural Sunshine Coast Hinterland Writers Festival

Greek Herald feature

The Greek Herald, self-described as 'one of the only daily Greek newspapers that serves the Greek diaspora internationally', has published a feature about Running with Pirates.

One of the goals of travel writing is to try to understand and meet cultures in open and engaged ways. But, because travel writing as a form tends to privilege the point of view of the traveller and their personal experiences, it can sometimes be difficult to know how well one has achieved this. Thus, it is very pleasing to receive interest and a positive response to my travel story from those who know the Greek culture much better than I do.

The feature article is available here.

Corfu Town, September 2022

New Reviews

Two new reviews of my book, Running with Pirates, have appeared.

Writing for Good Reading Magazine, Helen Gildfind comments,

Running with Pirates is an elegantly crafted and finely detailed memoir in which Gíslason recounts his trips to Corfu as a vulnerable teen and, decades later, as a father. The book is carefully structured via parallel narratives that express and exploit memoir’s inherent interest in the tension between the storied past and the remembering present.

Meanwhile, Schooldays Magazine observes,

This memoir of an adventure at the age of eighteen really does have it all...This is an enjoyable memoir for all to read, unputdownable. It is also one that anyone whose teens are planning on taking a gap year, or adults planning one, should read. It is also good reading for parents developing harmonious relationships with their teens.

 

Corfu Town Harbour, September 2014

 

Audiobook of Running with Pirates

The audiobook version of my new book, Running with Pirates, will be published by Ulverscroft on 1 October 2024.

I have done the narration of the audiobook myself, the second time I've recorded one of my works, the other when I read my sections of a book I co-authored with Richard Fidler, Saga Land, in 2017.

I tend to read back to myself while I write, as I find this helps in crafting the rhythm and pace of sentences, and in checking for sense and clarity, as well as for grammatical errors. But to record an entire story in a series of sittings is quite a different experience: it seems like a new composition is being created, not entirely performative, nor solely textual. 

In the case of Running with Pirates, which has two narrative strands, I wanted to read each strand in a way that reflected their distinct tones: a fable-like tale from thirty years ago that is being punctuated by a contemporary account that is more like a travelogue, written in the present tense and responsive whatever is happening in the moment. 

The audiobook can be purchased through online retailers, such as Amazon here.

Review of Loot (on The Bookshelf)

I've been interviewed on ABC Radio National's 'The Bookshelf' about Tania James's new novel, Loot.

Loot is an historical novel set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in India, France and England. I was invited to speak about the novel, because it includes a portrait of a friendship between a young, rather unsure man of 17 and an older, weary master craftsman, a type of relationship that forms something of a connection between the novel and the characters of my most recent book, Running with Pirates. The two books also share themes theft and piracy, debt, and returning.

The interview/review is available in full here.

Busy Running

The last few days have been busy ones for Running with Pirates, if, that is, one can speak of a book being 'busy'. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that I've been doing a lot.

On Tuesday, I flew to Sydney to be on ABC Conversations, and followed that interview with a wonderful evening event at Roaring Stories Bookshop in partnership with Red Mill Distillery, Rozelle, a stunning venue for a book talk.

Over the following days, I visited quite a number of bookshops in Sydney, to talk to booksellers and sign copies of the book. The photos below were taken at Dymock's city store in George Street.

When I got back to Brisbane, I gave a talk to a very engaged audience at Wynnum Library, who had lots of questions about writing memoir, comments about retaining one's sense of adventure, and thoughts about travel and parenting more generally.

Today and yesterday, two short travel pieces that I've written that are connected to the story have been published in the weekend papers, one in the Weekend Australian Magazine, the other in the Escape lift-out of the News Corp Sunday papers. 

Along the way, two new reviews of the book have also appeared. Writing for ABC News's 'The Best New Books Released in August', Nicola Heath comments,

While Corfu provides a picturesque setting — with its rustic villages, olive groves and "bays that cupped water clearer than the sky" — this is a memoir about fathers and sons. As a father, Gíslason is thoughtful and attentive — if a little over-protective, he admits — and explores this territory with curiosity, sincerity and sensitivity.

Meanwhile, in Australian Book Review, Shannon Burns has offered a somewhat less favourable response that questions whether enough happens in the book, but which also notes that it 'evokes a strong sense of place and is wonderfully attuned to the sensitivities of early adulthood.'

Source: ABC News

ABC Conversations interview

I've been interviewed about Running with Pirates by Richard Fidler for ABC Conversations, which is the Australian national broadcaster's highest ranking podcast.

Richard's interview focussed on the pirate strand of the story, or the events that happened in 1990, when I visited Corfu for the first time.

The interview is available in full here.

Angelokastro, Corfu

Roaring Stories event

On Tuesday 27 August, I will be at Roaring Stories, Sydney, speaking with my friend Richard Fidler about my new book, Running with Pirates.

 I hope you can join us. Tickets for the event are available here.

The Satuday Paper review

Writer and critic Stephen Romei, writing for The Saturday Paper, has given a lovely review of Running with Pirates. 

His comments include,

Gíslason writes beautifully and perceptively about the emotional duality a parent feels as a child moves into adulthood. You want to protect them and you want to set them free. Though the settings are different, he is on the same emotional page as the Australian writer Maggie MacKellar in her recent memoir, Graft, set on a sheep farm in Tasmania. [...] 

Vladimir Nabokov described his characters as “galley slaves”. Gíslason certainly holds enough of a whip hand over his characters to make parts of this book a page-turner. 

He withholds information to keep the reader guessing about the real intentions of the Pirate in 1990. And the obvious question in the second timeframe – is the Pirate still there? – is left dangling for a good while. 

When the answers arrive – in each timeframe – they leave a hollow in the author’s life that he can’t quite explain. But his present self knows it’s connected to his feelings about fatherhood, and he is grateful he was able to take his sons to Corfu. “Fatherhood,” he concludes, “ultimately faces forwards rather than back.”

The full review is available here. 

*

Also this weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald/Age newspapers included Running with Pirates in their recommendations for Father's Day reading. The full list of recommendations is here.

Karousades, September 2014

Animated

My publisher UQP has prepared this charming trailer for Running with Pirates to be run on social media platforms.

I really love it. I think it captures the joyful nature of the book, its themes, and the merry, folkloric layers of the cover, and perhaps even something of the (hopefully not too overt) sentimentality of a story about making returns to one's youth in the company of one's children.

Karousades, Corfu, September 2014

 

InReview review

Running with Pirates has been reviewed by Heidi Maier for InReview magazine.

Maier writes,

In unravelling the life-long effects of events that occurred in his youth, the two narrative threads are deftly, richly written and expertly interwoven and interlinked by the older Gislason’s reflections on his younger self. ... While the trip is coloured by nostalgia for the past, Gislason never falters in recollecting and examining what was, never lapsing into overt or mawkish sentimentality. This is both to his credit and a fundamental part of what makes the telling of his story so enormously emotional. This is a writer who understands the power of language and the fallible, ever-evolving nature of the father-son bonds he is describing.

The full review is available here.

Old Perithia, Corfu

Newtown Review of Books review

Dr Ann Skea, a freelance reviewer and scholar of the work of Ted Hughes, has reviewed Running with Pirates for Newtown Review of Books.

Her comments include,

Kári Gíslason writes beautifully and thoughtfully, and Running with Pirates is a rich and vivid tale of a period in his life when his experiences on Corfu not only shaped his view of the world but made him think carefully about the way he and his wife would bring up their sons.

The full review is available here.

Corfu Town, September 2022

Launch Day Running with Pirates

In the morning, I have my local swimming pool entirely to myself, a very settling luxury ahead of a busy day, and also reflective of the creative process, which so often moves from a solitary hours of thought, repetition, and movement to a more public sharing. Each of these requires the other: without the anticipation of publication, the solitary activity is confined and uneasy in its lack of purpose, without time alone the art is diffused by its surroundings, blended to the point of losing its voice.

I've never really been one for celebrating my birthdays, but the publication of a book does feel like a birthday of sorts, and the launch event is the party that is its due. When I get in from my swim, I take what stands in as a birthday selfie - me at 51, I guess; me on the day of my fifth book, yes - before settling down to work on my next project, a novel that I'm writing. By the time one project is released into the world, I am preoccupied with the next. As a result, the launch is both the beginning of one book's life and, for the writer, permission to move on to the next. 

But the pendulum between past and present projects keeps swinging for a time yet. I have been spending the last few afternoons recording the narration for the audio book of Running with Pirates, a very different kind of revisiting of a work, because now you are performing it rather than editing it; that is, the goal is to render the writing as best you can, rather than see its further development, as one usually does.

In conversation with Nick Earls (pic: Jean Smith)

Rather as is the case at a launch event, too, which takes place at The Loft, West End, organised by my publisher UQP with Avid Reader Bookshop. There is a great turn out of friends, family, colleagues, writers and readers; Nick Earls leads the conversation with an insightful series of questions that includes a discussion of the influence of place and landscape, the sources of the great faith one sometimes feels in the world, as well as questions of composition, form and point of view; we have audience questions, too, including about the nature of personal debts and how memory exists in creative writing; before a final part of the night, when I offer a song that I've written in response to the book.

With UQP publishing director, Madonna Duffy (pic: Jean Smith)

Reading from Running with Pirates (pic: Colin Thistlethwaite)

A closing song (pic: Felicity Dunning)

Readings Review

Readings is one of Australia's leading independent bookshops, with eight shops in Melbourne. Mark Rubbo AOM, who bought the business in 1976, and who has also served as president of the Australian Bookseller's Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writer's Festival, has reviewed Running with Pirates for the bookshop's magazine.

He writes, 

...Gíslason’s reflections turn to his own experience of fatherhood and to his relationship with his sons, creating a desire to share Corfu with them. This is a joyous, tender reflection on the freedom of youth, on fatherhood, and the beauty of Corfu.

The full review is available here.

Dawn, Astrakeri Beach, Corfu, September 2014

 

ABC Evenings Interview

Last night, I was interviewed about Running with Pirates on ABC Radio, by Rebecca Levingston. 

Rebecca's response to the book was really heart-warming. She felt that the book gave the reader an adventure while at the same time prompting questions and reflections about parenting, masculinity, and how we might go about sharing stories with our children. 

Her comments about the book included,

A story that reads like a fairy tale, with danger, romance, and a Greek pirate. I devoured this memoir. I opened it up in the early afternoon, and I could not put it down. ... It makes you think about your own travels and the people you've met. ... Running with Pirates will take you for a trip around the world; it will grab you by the heart and throat. It is Kári's story, but in so many ways his sons' story, as well. This memoir is a stunning adventure. Run and grab this book and read it to your sons, as well. Your daughters, too.

The full interview is available here (begins at 2:07:10). 

Kalami Beach, Corfu

Spectrum Profile

A lovely feature article by Susan Johnson about Running with Pirates has been published in this weekend's Spectrum, the entertainment and arts liftout of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WA Today, and Brisbane Times newspapers.

Susan interviewed me about the background to the book, but also about how the story connects to other parts of my life, especially my early experiences of migration and travel, and of fatherhood.

She writes,

His misadventures as an 18-year-old stranded on the Ionian island of Corfu is intertwined with the story of taking his two teenage sons back 25 years later and becomes a deeply moving meditation on what it means to release our children into adulthood. ... [Gíslason's] boys grow up hearing stories about the Pirate and when the family returns to Corfu in 2022, it becomes a form of reckoning, and Running With Pirates the triumphant result.

The full article is available here.

Corfu Town, September 2022

Early Recommendation

Ahead of its publication at the end of this month, Running with Pirates has received an early recommendation from Caroline Overington in The Weekend Australian's 'guide to great new books'. Overington writes,

Kari Gislason was just 18 when he first landed in Corfu. Who else remembers what it was like to be 18, adrift in the confusion of early adulthood, with all of life dauntingly ahead of you? Gislason takes a chance by deciding to stay after meeting a character he calls The Pirate. He eventually flees, but leaves a debt that, like all debts, will have to be acknowledged and paid one day. Today Gislason is a writer and Queensland University of Technology academic whose own children are entering the early years of adulthood, and he pines for the little boys they once were while admiring the men they are soon to become.

Agios Georgios, Corfu

Upcoming events

With the publication of Running with Pirates nearing, I'll soon be giving some talks and workshops that coincide with its release:

27 July: Workshop, Fairfield Library, Fairfield

3 August: Author talk, Ashgrove Library, Ashgrove

8 August: Book launch, The Loft/Avid Reader, West End

25 August: Workshop, Avid Reader, West End

27 August: Author talk, Roaring Stories, Red Mill, Sydney

31 August: Author talk, Wynnum Library, Wynnum

12 October: Panel discussion, Sunshine Coast Hinterland Writers Festival

I hope to see you there!

QUT Lit Salon

Tonight, I'm giving a short reading from my forthcoming book Running with Pirates at the QUT Lit Salon, a student-run series that combines readings from emerging and established writers, and sometimes involves the Creative Writing staff, too.

The theme of this evening's salon is roots, and the suggested dress is 'grandpa fit', which I don't think I will manage, at least not beyond the grandpa qualities in my usual work attire.

It'll be the first time I've read from Running with Pirates; it feels nice to be doing so in front of my students.

More details can be found on their Instagram account here.

'Just Enough'

Yesterday, Irish writer Claire Keegan was interviewed by ABC Radio's Sarah Kanowski at the Brisbane Powerhouse. 

The conversation began with a discussion of Keegan's rural childhood, including that she had little access to books while she was growing up. Keegan said she felt that their absence wasn't a hindrance to becoming a writer. Rather, it created a 'longing' that helped to shape her own storytelling.

When the conversation turned to the writing process itself, Keegan seemed to resist reflecting too much on how she finds and develops her stories, or their themes, echoing comments she made in a Guardian interview last year. Her emphasis, rather, is at the sentence level: creating good prose, and selecting events with great care. 

Her commets reminded me of something Annie Proulx said in an interview with me some years ago: good writing is about good sentences. Themes, it seems, will take care of themselves, and for the most part meaning can be left to the reader. As in the Guardian interview, Keegan also talked about wanting to give the reader 'just enough', comparing this approach to writing to a good meal or a good conversation, when just enough is served or spoken about.

In the case of Small Things Like These, the result, I think, is a work that has fable-like, even saga-like qualities, revealing its meaning and political imperative in a structure that becomes more visible through selection: leaving things out, so that there isn't too much; creating a certain longing within the omissions.

Sarah Kanowski and Claire Keegan at the Brisbane Powerhouse

Great Journeys: How To Knit A Human

This afternoon, I attended the launch of How To Knit A Human by Anna Jacobson, a memoir about mental illness and recovery, as well as of a remarkable voyage in discovering lost parts of oneself. 

Some years ago, Anna suffered a period of psychosis that left her with large gaps in her memory. How To Knit A Human charts her attempts to reclaim some of those memories, or at least understand their loss, and to 'knit' together a sense of personhood through artistic projects such as writing, drawing, and photography. 

The book is itself part of the knitting of the self that she performs and reflects upon.

Anna's book formed the creative component of a doctorate in Creative Writing that she undertook with my supervision, and there was added pleasure for me today in seeing one of my students publishing her work to a wide audience. The book was launched at Avid Reader Bookshop in West End, with fellow writer Kris Kneen giving an insightful and warm speech to accompany its way into the world. It was also recently reviewed very favourably by The Guardian newspaper here.

Anna Jacobson (left) and Kris Kneen at Avid Reader Bookshop

Book Launch of Running with Pirates

My new book Running with Pirates will be launched at Avid Reader Bookshop in West End on Thursday 8 August.

I will be in conversation with fellow author Nick Earls, whose works include Zigzag Street, Bachelor Kisses, and 48 Shades of Brown. 

The event is free, but bookings are essential.

I hope to see you there!

A balcony view of Astrakeri Beach, Corfu, and the Albanian hills

(Postscript, 2 May 2024: This event has been moved to The Loft in order to accommodate more people. The link to the booking site is the same.)  

Cover reveal: Running with Pirates

The cover of my next book Running with Pirates has been released. It bears an evocative design by Lisa White, who has also created book covers for titles by authors such as Craig Silvey, Pip Williams, and Kate Moreton.

For me, the cover of Running with Pirates responds sympathetically and joyfully to the book's themes of adventure and reflection, its setting of Greece, and to a certain playfulness that comes with one of the storylines: in the fable-like qualities of the ocean as a pattern, a texture of the past and of remembering, and of ships, too. As well as the very particular nature of storytelling for one's children. 

It's also graced with a very generous cover endorsement by fellow author Susan Johnson, who writes of the book: Hearthbreaking, joyful, tender. The full catastrophe: Greece and life, in all its pain and glory.

The book itself will be released on 30 July this year.

First Pages of Running With Pirates

This week I received the 'first pages' of my new book, Running with Pirates, a memoir about fatherhood set on the Greek island of Corfu that will be published in August.

The term 'first pages' refers to the first iteration of typeset pages that are printed out as proofs of a book and then marked up with any final changes that need to be made. The first pages can also be used for the advanced reading copies that are sent out to reviewers, booksellers, and other industry partners who need to read the book, albeit in its 'uncorrected' form, well ahead of the actual publication date. This is because reviews tend to come out at around the same time as the book's publication date.

For an author, I think there's a special quality about these pages, because they represent another first: the moment when the book takes a physical appearance that isn't of one's own making. In other words, the text takes a step beyond the laptop, the study, and the many earlier drafts, and begins to look like an actual book, which partly means something that doesn't belong entirely to me anymore. 

This is a kind of first farewell to the work, as well as an initial meeting with how it could be shaping up for others.

Arillas beach, Corfu

Prague to Budapest (a list poem)

 

PRAGUE STATION, 7:44am. 

Blue light. 

American neighbours.

One of their party is in first class:

“Ooh, first class,” says their friend,

after they've gone.

“I know, right,” says another.

Village houses pale against fields.

Black branches like inverted arteries of the lungs,

beside river-narrow lakes.

Fluorescent lights outside barns.

American neighbour:

“Do you have a crap laptop

to download everything on?

I’ve got every movie I’ve ever watched

on that thing.”

Ticket inspection.

Grey light.

Flat country, ploughed.

Wishing we were going slower

so I might read the village names

given on short platforms.

Factory towns, apartment blocks.

Remembering the Museum of Communism,

and the apartment projects, for workers:

build, work, dig, labour as virtue,

but writers underground.

First stop, Kolin, 8:19am.

Pink buffet cart.

Email from our host in Budapest,

who is called Attila,

from Hungary!

Pink buffet cart returns.

Pardubice, 8:41am.

 

Text from my sister Bryndis,

her New Year's dinner photos,

Reykjavik under snow, floods in Hungary,

as in Brisbane.

The web of weather reports.

Inside and outside light.

How warmth can mean such different things.

Reading Jessica Au’s

Cold Enough For Snow,

a book of nearness and distance.

How they combine when we meet family

after time apart,

memory the link between carriages,

along a line, not joined completely,

yet close to inseparable.

M’s head on the table,

a pillow of scarf and ham baguettes

that would be better off elsewhere.

O asleep, too.

F reading cricket news:

David Warner’s cap removed

from a trolley,

luggage lost.

Stately mansions with hollow windows.

Valley roads, brown hills, low clouds.

A plain town with a few, Prague-pretty streets,

the rest of the houses either alpine or Soviet, an odd mix.

I wonder, too, while reading,

why Au doesn’t name Australia specifically,

but rests it anonymously as

a memory setting, not a “here”.

The Museum of Communism insisted:

We will name the past precisely,

its language of remembering is direct, not implied.

Not veiled.

The museum cafe was closed “due to technical reasons”, the same bureaucratic language finds its way even there, where it is despised.

Broken coffee machine?

Southwards, the Austrian influence becoming more pronounced

in forehead-like eaves, thoughtful.

Villages that climb to churches.

Cotswold-like hills.

Fast flowing streams that suggest higher mountains. Steepness.

A factory called Adast.

I look it up on the free train wifi: fuel pumps manufacturer. Well, why not.

Brno, 10:18am.

The boys have started writing their own list poems that point out how lame mine is.

A walk to the restaurant carriage: double espresso and Viennese wafers.

Breclav, 10:52am.  

 

Red-capped station guard.

Vineyards.

Crossing the border into Slovakia, 11:05am.

Glimpses of the sun beneath clouds.

Kuty, 11:12am. 

Attempted snooze.

Bratislava, 11:58am.

Full train, much calling out.

A screaming toddler who has had enough. 

A sound that cuts through into the eyeballs, says O.

Parents imploring. 

The atmosphere on trains changes after every station.

More vineyards, misty hills. 

The smell of warm food on cold clothes.

News, Wayne Rooney sacked. 

Discussion, do strikers make good coaches? Dalgleish. Others? Ferguson played as a forward. Oh and Cruyff, of course. Pep.

Noon is not making a difference to the grey sky, but a band of orange remains low on the horizon, a faint promise.

Italian neighbours chatting across the aisle.

Words: chiesa, Maria, quattro, bello, mangiare, musica, sharing NY fireworks videos without headphones.

Blue train stations.

Tidy Graffiti, seemingly in permitted parts of the walls.

Remembering a young guy I once met who travelled the world to tag trains. Disliked street art, which is sanctioned. Tagging is unwelcome, the real thing, he said.

Nove Zamky, 12:55pm. 

 

M playing silent piano on my knee. Air piano?

Sturovo, 1:25pm.

First sight of the Danube, overflowing and silty. 

Hungary on the other side.

Carriage lights go off, officially enough light to count as day.

Szob, 1:36pm.

Tiled roofs. Guesthouses. 

Riverside prosperity. 

Balconies and patios for the first time.

Nagymaros-Visegrad, 1:53pm.

A few yellow houses standing out from the white and ochre of more suburban streets. 

Holiday cabins.

Someone making a reel about Budapest before even arriving playing the first bars of George Ezra's “Budapest” over and over while editing.

Recalling what Mark Twain once said: it’s easier to write about a place before you get there.

Vac, 2:06pm. 

Next stop, Budapest.

First bars still going. “My hidden treasure chest…”. Not so hidden at the moment. 

Very well announced.

Go through Felsogod

Next, Alsogod. Hmm!

“Hidden treasure chest” man has gone to the toilet, which is also, also good.

Quiet.

Budapest outskirts, 2:20pm.

Bags pulled down around us.

Squeak of puffer coats being put on.

Pink-yellow light.

BUDAPEST STATION, 2:33pm 

 

(PS the journey was clean, comfortable, modestly priced, efficient, and on time.)