Narrator Magazine Central Tablelands Spring 2011

By Narrator Magazine

Narrator Magazine Central Tablelands Spring 2011 edition features contributions from the following:

Alexandra Nagy, Cheryl Ianoco, Christine Sweeney, DJ Peters, JE Doherty, Jill Baggett, Paul Phillips,
Rebecca Wilson, Ross Stephenson, Ruth Withers, Vickie Walker

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Sep 4, 2011

Narrator Magazine

Narrator began in the Blue Mountains in 2010 as an opportunity for local writers - amateurs and professionals alike - to exhibit their works.As of December 2011 it is now a nation-wide magazine, being rolled out on a state-by-state basis.It's free to submit to, affordable to advertise in, and encourages friendly competition with a secret judge and a People's Choice prize.For more information, please visit the Narrator Magazine website.

Book preview

Narrator Magazine

Central Tablelands

Spring 2011

Smashwords Edition

narrator MAGAZINE is published by MoshPit Publishing

Shop 1, 197 Great Western Highway, Hazelbrook NSW 2779

MoshPit Publishing is an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

P: 1300 644 680 ABN 48 126 885 309

http://www.moshpitpublishing.com.au/

http://www.narratormagazine.com.au/

The copyright for each item in this publication rests with the author of that piece. Please contact us at Narrator Magazine if you wish to contact any contributor featured herein.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This ebook may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other books by this publisher. Thank you for your support.

Cover: ‘Trapped’ by Aida Pottinger

I am interested in exploring images which arrest the eye, and creating drawings and paintings that are arrived at spontaneously. I work from life and landscape and also use inspirational photographs and drawings of people and landscapes, and manufactured, made and built objects as a jumping off point. I like to push the source material to capture an atmosphere or mood visually echoing memories and emotions. My work emerges out of a memory I may be working on and is a subconscious recognition of how the earth gives birth, nurtures, sustains and eventually reclaims the life on it.

Please visit me at:

http://theambiguityofhorizon.blogspot.com/

A few words from the publisher ...

Welcome to the First Edition of Narrator Magazine Central Tablelands

It’s certainly exciting being able to spread our wings beyond the Blue Mountains and we hope that this is the start of a bigger, wider audience for both Narrator and for your writing.

If you’re only just finding out about Narrator now, then you may like to join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/narratormagazine and read more about how it all works on our website at http://www.narratormagazine.com.au/

The main aim of Narrator is to help provide an outlet for creative writing, and to help people develop their creative writing skills by competing with each other.

Cash prizes are awarded for the best three entries ($200, $100 and $50) as judged by our ‘secret judge’, who is revealed in the following issue, along with the winners and their entries. We also have a $50 People’s Choice award.

In time, we hope to bring you a ‘best of the best’ issue, where we bring the best entries from both Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands issues for the prior year.

So start writing—get those fingers on the keyboard and think about sharing all those poems, essays and short stories that have been swirling around in your head over the years!

And if you belong to a writing group, or take classes in creative writing, or know someone who does, please make sure you let them know about Narrator—the more contributors, the better the quality of the reading, and the better it will be for everyone.

So that’s it from me for this inaugural Central Tablelands issue. Time for you to start turning the pages and see what your fellow residents have contributed!

Jenny Mosher

September 2011

Caricature:

Jenny Mosher’s caricature (above) by Blue Mountains artist Todd Sharp. For more info, visit http://www.toddasharp.com/

Table of Contents

Poetry

Bidding War - Alexandra Nagy

Questions - Alexandra Nagy

The Journey - Ruth Withers

The Little Tear - Ruth Withers

The Waiting Photograph - Jill Baggett

Why? - Cheryl Ianoco

Short Stories

Always the Children - JE Doherty

Drifter’s Ridge - Ross Stephenson

Nasma - Christine Sweeney

Public Performance - Jill Baggett

Re-Kindled Love - DJ Peters

The Dancing Suit - JE Doherty

The Eyes Have It - Paul Phillips

The Portrait - Vickie Walker

Treasures - Rebecca Wilson

Nasma - Christine Sweeney

I was very, very excited. I had promised my friend Nasma that I would ‘drop in for a visit’ now that she had returned home to Lebanon and now I was here. As we flew in to land at the airport, I saw for the first time the Mount Lebanon Range that rises high and suddenly from the coast. The number and density that made up Beirut were startling to me as I viewed the city, nestling in the coastal plain, from the sky. Making my way with the rest of the passengers, from the plane to the tarmac and onto the bus that took us to the bullet-ridden shack of an airport, I had to stop myself from staring at the soldiers with very big guns who were standing or strolling about the place.

So why was I here? Back in Australia in 1994, I had completed a Volunteer Home Tutor certificate course run by the NSW Adult Migrant English Service (AMES). AMES had set up the program because it had identified that the free English tutoring available to Australian migrants precluded people (predominantly women) who were housebound, were mothering young children or unable to travel to get to the classes.

I joined 25 other potential tutors and we were given as much guidance and encouragement and as many teaching tips as possible. My first student was Nasma. With no experience or idea of what to expect (I reckoned that as a trained and experienced actor I could always ‘act’ my way through any sticky moments. I felt my few years as a mime artist would really come in handy). I threw myself into the unknown world of trying to teach English conversation skills.

My first lesson, I remember was pretty nerve racking for Nasma and myself. Based on the typical student profile I was expecting a 20 year old married woman, not long in Australia and pregnant with her first child. I had brought along simple anatomy and physiology illustrations on pregnancy and birth written in both English and Arabic that I found in the AMES library—I had thought myself to be sensitively and thoughtfully prepared. I don’t know what Nasma was expecting but I do recall she kept apologising for not being able to speak English.

Nasma had led me into the small salon at the front of the house in the working class industrial suburb of Botany where she lived with her husband.