After seeing Girls in Boys' Cars at Riverside Theatre last year, I was excited to see Felicity Castagna’s involvement in this year’s festival. Felicity has successfully seen multiple of her novels displayed on stage, writing for both adults and young adults. She teaches at Western Sydney University, also publishing creative non-fiction and critical responses to literature and art there. She was a finalist the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Awards and has been awarded 2014 The Prime Minister’s Award for Young Adult Literature. She currently works closely with The Finishing School Collective, who are female writers dedicated to creative excellence and exploration.
Prior to the festival, I had the opportunity to chat with her about her successfully adapted novel Girls in Boys' Cars, her interest in the national story, her fascination over the connections of place and space to storytelling, as well as the potential and future of interactive and experimental creative events and projects.
Date- Monday, May 13, 2024
Congratulations, your most recent novel, Girls in Boys' Cars is on track to be available in three different types of media (the novel, the play and now the film), how does it feel seeing your work being adapted, and what has the process been like for you?
Having your work adapted is an amazing privilege, as most authors don't get to see their characters climb out of their heads and walk around on a stage. It definitely takes the author having to recognize that the play and the film are different texts within themselves, which take the book as their basis. As director comes along with teams of writers, actors, cinematographers and so many other things involved in the creating, or adapting of the book that the text itself comes to have many other authors besides yourself. It’s wonderful as well as interesting to see other people interpret my work differently than what I might have originally intended. In some ways, I think their interpretations can be more expansive and interesting at points than what I originally intended because there's so many more voices in the room.
Is the collaborative process hard? Do you sometimes feel like it’s like killing your darlings?
I think writing a novel is more collaborative than people think, you work with a lot of different editors, and even designers to get it out there, but you know, theatre and film are very collaborative, like a film has 200 people working on it.
If you're going to be that protective over it, you can't enter this process, because you must be able to kind of give up your complete ownership; you have to allow for other voices and other interpretations in the room. There are points at which I think, ‘Oh, I wouldn't have done it like that,’ but then I have to sit back and go, ‘Well, it's not just my text anymore, it's a lot of other people's text now.’
You said in previous interviews, you wanted to break the tradition of male dominated road stories, with your own style Thelma and Louise, are there any other cliches or traditions you would like to disrupt through your storytelling?
Gosh, that's such a big question. Part of what I'm always trying to do is tell a big national story from a very local, specific place. To insist that our national stories and our stories of international significance can be told from the smallest of places in which we live and that those ordinary everyday places are of great significance I believe is a kind of disruption in itself.
In seeing the play, I felt as though I was seeing Parramatta in a new light. You write about places that feel so normal to locals because we hear about them all the time or frequent them regularly. How do you navigate writing about places so close to you whilst also reaching new audiences who may not have the knowledge of the setting's culture or significance?
I distinctly remember a journalist interviewing me when one of my earliest books, 'The Incredible Here and Now,’ was also adapted at the Riverside Theatre for the National Theatre of Parramatta. The journalist said,
“How will people relate to this work when it's about Parramatta?”
I was like, I've been reading Melina Marchetta’s novels for years, which are all set in a much smaller place than my play, and I don't think anybody would ever ask her, ‘how on earth can we relate to Looking for Alibrandi, when it’s set in Leichhardt,’ yet, I actually get versions of that question all the time. My answer to that is, the only thing that everybody can relate to is the thing that is most specific, limited and small; we all come from one specific place. Maybe you don't come from Parramatta or from Leichhardt, or Hurstville or wherever.
The exploration of small spaces allows us to tell a much larger story. My work might be set in Parramatta but I'm looking at what it means to be living in a time of rapid development, but which is universal to lots of places in Australia. I'm looking at what it means to be living in a place that is becoming far more multicultural, and that has many layers of migrants who have come over different time periods and interact with one another. I'm looking at big themes from this small space, and I don't think we can try and write a national story that's kind of generic and fits in no clear space, or just like Bondi, because we recognize it more from TV.
Did you grow up in Parramatta, or are there other places you’ve lived in that affect the stories you are trying to tell? Is there something that draws you back to writing here?
I've lived here for 25 years, and I spent time in and out of it as a young person, because I had family. I had a very international upbringing, I lived on the Central Coast for a little while and then I lived in America. I lived around Asia a lot, and Italy as well. I came in and out of Australia a lot as a young person, but I’ve spent from kind of my young adult to adulthood here.
I think that experience of having lived in a lot of different places when I was growing up cements my sense that I'm anchored here, because it's the only place that I've had a long experience in. In a sense that is a very Parramatta experience, like the population of Parramatta is set to double in the next 15 years. When I look at the people on my street, most people haven't lived here for generations, because it is such a rapidly developing city. In a sense, the only thing that we all have in common is that we all live here now and have an investment in it now.
Rosa and Asheeka navigate some heavy topics through their journey of girlhood. Did you have a real-life inspiration for the characters, or was there any media that influenced the teenage experience?
In a way, it's kind of based on a relationship with my friend Asheeka which didn’t develop until we were in our early 20s, I didn’t know her as a teenager. It was a type of inspiration for the book as we both lived in relatively the same place, yet we came from very different class and ethnicity backgrounds. I've always thought it's interesting
that you can live in the same neighbourhood as somebody and be so different. It is such an emblem of a place like Parramatta that there are people here from so many different class, cultural, religious and political backgrounds, who all live side by side, even though we are in a very different universe in some way.
I get a bit tired, particularly in a young adult novel when we put characters from different backgrounds in the same space and they don't understand one another at first, but then they seem to come to this beautiful understanding of one another. I wanted to put what I think is reality on the page, which is that we have lots of people from lots of different kinds of backgrounds, places and positions, rubbing up against one another. We don't always understand each other even after being next to one another and being friends with one another for a long time. I find that okay as well.
You explored that throughout the structure of Girls in Boys' Cars, it doesn’t follow a strict chronological order, with flashbacks, and starting the book from the ending. What other parts of writing do you love to experiment with, and are there other forms you want to explore?
To be honest I already write in a lot of different forms, and probably need to pare it back a bit more. I really enjoy and do a lot of work in making cross disciplinary art that involves like text and dance or text in visual arts or text and multimedia. I’ve made a work called ‘Encounter,’ which is a dance work that has travelled to festivals all over Australia. I wrote a bunch of monologues that were read out to reflect the dances.
I've done lots of other things, I have an essay at UTS Library that I wrote in response to the architecture of the building. It was printed and designed by a multimedia artist, and it appears in small and large bits all over the walls and desks over several floors of the library. I've done lots of different, much more experimental things than just the novel then the novel, which is heaps and heaps of fun. I probably actually need to get back to concentrating more on novels.
You're involved in ‘Eat Your Words,’ for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Is eating and storytelling another experimental avenue you’re exploring or something you’re interested in?
I sit on lots of different panels, but I find them really boring, both as somebody sitting on them, and as an audience member. So, I've worked really hard, with a collective of women I work with and who are working on that event called ‘The Finishing School.’ We’ve worked hard to make literary events, which are interactive, and which are much more involving of the audience. I would argue also much more community building than simply having a bunch of people who are designated as the audience sitting and staring at a bunch of people who are designated as the experts on a panel.
We've worked with weavers to do events on weaving and storytelling where everybody weaves at the same time. We've taken over parking lots and told stories about the people that we've seen there and brought the audience into giant parking lots. That kind of stuff is far more interesting to me than a panel.
I wonder where we're going with festivals and panels, because really, at the end of the day, you can listen to them on audio. There's not much more of an experience if you're in the room than if you're listening to them online. There's so much access to these panels in many different forms, so, I think we should be providing audiences with an experience, as opposed to just something where they sit there and listen.
Is there a particular food-related experience or key foods connected to storytelling that you will be sharing at the event?
The food will be paired to the story, and I will be one of the hosts so, I'm not necessarily one of the storytellers but, the food is going to be a wonderful cornucopia of things. For example, we've got Anney Bounpraseuth who's a visual artist and storyteller who’s going to be telling a story about her audition for MasterChef. She is going to be literally cooking and handing out food while she tells a story, and there will be her audition tapes for MasterChef in the background.
We've got other ones, like Jumaana Abdu who is reading a story about religion and food towards the end. We've had cookies printed, saying, ‘God does not eat,’ because it's a line in the story and the audience will eat those as she reads.
There will be a lot of time for milling, drinking, eating more food and just meeting people who are there in a more informal way, which is always a big part of our events. We make sure that there's lots of time for people to just hang and meet someone new.
On the subject of eating, do you have a favourite restaurant in Parramatta?
How do you pick that one? There are so many restaurants. I'm going to say the daggiest thing on Earth, which is that I've always loved RSL and Leagues clubs. I have little children, and they tolerate them. So that's a space I really like to eat.
You both write and teach creative writing, is there a certain discovery in your creative journey or a piece of advice you share with your students?
It is interesting, when you do training, because you have to read stuff about writing, which I don't actually think I would read as a writer if I wasn't teaching. I have to read stuff about how other people articulate, the practice of writing dialogue or writing plays, or, writing diversity or whatever. It is such a privilege, and so great that I get paid to discuss that with other people, and I learn a lot from them.
The one thing that I try to emphasise in my classes is that writing isn't about description, it's about trying to find the most specific words and, and specific images possible. Sometimes we get lost in trying to describe lots of things rather than being more limited and specific.
You talk a lot about the national story, Australia is a very multicultural country, how do you want to see the climate for the national story kind of grow or shift in the next few years?
Wow. There are so many answers you can give. I want to see a much more diverse cornucopia of stories. I also want to see stories that are playfully different to tell the national story. I've always found it weird that 70% of Australians live within suburbia, but most of our kind of what we might call quote unquote national stories. Are always in the bush, or at the beach or in the city, but that isn't really the national story for most of us. So, I'd like to see a larger diversity of the national story. I use that in the broadest sense, I would like to see more places depicted. I would like to see storytellers in more experimental and expansive ways as well. I'd like to see new structures and styles telling that story.
You’ve obviously been involved in many literary events, including being Chair for The NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, a Director on the Literature Board for Create NSW, yet you want to shift away from traditional event styles, what excites you most about the Sydney Writers Festival?
I’m going to see a traditional panel, ‘Found in Translation,’ but I’m interested in that because I am really interested in translated texts now, I'm in a book that only reads translated texts. I think it's interesting that Australian stories are being translated more into other languages, and that other languages are being translated more into English so that we can read them in Australia.
It opens a wider exchange of stories about different kinds of people, but I also think it also opens a wider exchange of ways of writing that I find really exciting. There are ways of structuring and telling a story that, like we might not necessarily see as people who are kind of steeped in the Western traditions of literature.
Do you have any advice for first-time attendees of a literary event such as the Sydney Writers' Festival?
Hang out, outside of the panels. Go to the free events that are happening, in the bigger spaces, and just hang around, listen to people, talk to people and feel the space. Listen to what people are talking about outside of those panels.
If you had to host your own event, is there any other type of interactive thing you would like to do?
I like the idea of place-based writing, so I'd like to do more things where the audience has to walk around, like maybe even walk a whole neighbourhood or a street or something where people tell stories about different places when you're actually there at the place the text is about. I think walking tours would be interesting and site-specific text.
