Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    Ebook53 pages39 minutes

    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers

    By Alice Pung

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    I keep coming back to John Marsden. What makes him so fascinating to me is that he approaches writing for young adults with a whole philosophy of what it means to be a teenager – a philosophy that’s embedded in the two schools he runs, but also in his early experiences with mental illness and hospitalisation. His perspective raises interesting questions about YA fiction – how much darkness is allowed, before you are considered a “bad influence”?

    An original and moving look by award-winning writer Alice Pung at one of her biggest influences – the much-loved and hugely successful writer John Marsden.

    In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.

    Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

    Alice Pung is an award-winning writer, editor, teacher and lawyer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter and the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlack Inc. Books
    Release dateOct 2, 2017
    ISBN9781925435726
    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    Author

    Alice Pung

    Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, and the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, One Hundred Days was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Voss literary prizes and longlisted for an ABIA Award in the category of Literary Fiction. Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.

    Read more from Alice Pung

    Related to On John Marsden

    Related ebooks

    Composition & Creative Writing For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Trent Dalton On Love

      Oct 24, 2021

      It was a Wednesday when I found the meaning of my life. Bloody hard thing to find. Searched everywhere. Four decades of seeking. Tried to find it in star systems and love songs and bank balances and kissed lips. Then I found it on the corner of Adela

      4 min read

    • Article

      Crime Book Of The MONTH

      Jul 21, 2021

      by Lesley Pearse (Penguin, RRP $37) “Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours,” goes the slightly annoying theme song to the long-running Aussie soap. It’s a message the neighbours in this book seem to have missed. Young couple Nina and Conrad Bes

      1 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Can Be Murder

      Dec 1, 2022

      Christmas Can Be Murder
      3 min read

    • Article

      LA GHOSTS & FLOWERS

      Sep 19, 2019

      LA GHOSTS & FLOWERS
      10 min read

    • Article

      SEX And The SIMS

      Dec 18, 2020

      SEX And The SIMS
      5 min read

    • Article

      Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Rising Star

      Jul 29, 2020

      The minute that I realized that I was writing for Ugandans, I didn’t have to be careful of what to say or how to write. Everything was on the table. The post Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Rising Star appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Moon

      Jun 14, 2022

      The pack of boys had released their first album in Seoul two years ago, and now they were selling out corporate arenas and Olympic stadiums all over the world. I was familiar with the story of their explosive ascent, how the premiere of their latest

      15 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Childhood

      Sep 1, 2021

      A Symposium on Childhood
      25 min read

    • Article

      The Childhood Of A Leader

      Aug 13, 2021

      The Childhood Of A Leader
      11 min read

    • Article

      Faking It To Make It With A Girl Is Fine (but Not For Life)

      Oct 18, 2022

      You never forget your first erection. (You didn’t think I was going there, did you? Nor did I.) It happened on a crisp spring morning back in the ’80s. On a working-class holiday park in the south-east of England—think Batam with fewer rustic huts an

      4 min read

    • Article

      Our Mum Is A SEXPERT

      Jan 18, 2022

      Our Mum Is A SEXPERT
      3 min read

    • Article

      Q&A with Bonnie

      Apr 21, 2023

      ◗ Elizabeth Zott is a character we would all love to know or even become. Where did such a personality spring from? Fury! I started Lessons in Chemistry about seven years ago. I’d just come out of a meeting, irritated by some garden variety sexism, a

      6 min read

    • Article

      Zine Girls

      Dec 10, 2020

      Zine Girls
      4 min read

    • Article

      Motherhood Is Life-Shattering: The Millions Interviews Kirsten Lunstrum

      Oct 18, 2018

      Ten years ago, Kirsten Lunstrum was leading a life many young writers would kill for. Having published two well-regarded story collections before she turned 30, Lunstrum landed a tenure-track teaching job in the creative writing program at State Univ

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for On John Marsden

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      On John Marsden - Alice Pung

      Published in partnership with

      Published by Black Inc.

      in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

      Black Inc., an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

      Level 1, 221 Drummond Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

      enquiries@blackincbooks.com • www.blackincbooks.com

      State Library Victoria

      328 Swanston Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

      www.slv.vic.gov.au

      The University of Melbourne

      Parkville VIC 3010, Australia

      www.unimelb.edu.au

      Copyright © Alice Pung 2017

      Alice Pung asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

      Pung, Alice, author.

      On John Marsden / Alice Pung.

      9781863959568 (hardback)

      9781925435726 (ebook)

      Marsden, John, 1950 – Influence.

      Authors, Australian – 20th century – Biography.

      Young adult fiction – Authorship.

      Fiction – Authorship.

      Cover and text design by Peter Long

      Photograph of Alice Pung: Federica Roselli

      Photograph of John Marsden: Stuart McEvoy/Newspix

      Printed in China by 1010 International.

      ‘We kill all the caterpillars,

      then complain there are no butterflies.’

      The Dead of the Night

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Sources

      Dear John,

      The first time it occurred to me that you were a real person was the morning my friend Angela came to school and said, ‘You’ll never believe what happened. We bumped into John Marsden.’

      ‘Nooo way!’

      To us, you weren’t real, and if you were, you weren’t someone who’d be loitering in the western suburbs of Melbourne. But Angela meant it literally: her mum had bashed her car into yours somewhere down the Tullamarine Freeway, and you were so kind about it you even gave them some of your books.

      We all knew of you, but not about you. We studied So Much to Tell You during the first term of Year 9 at Christ the King College. Our parents had sent us to the Catholic school in Braybrook to save us from temptation. Fortressed by a wall of carpet factories and sequestered next to a nunnery, we studied in an oasis of industry and restraint in one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Victoria. In primary school, when one boy fractured another boy’s wrist, my best friend spent all lunchtime trying to convince the victim not to dob on her brother. Another of my ten-year-old friends saw the counsellor every week because her stepfather kept ‘mucking around’ with her. One recess, the boys from the technical college just over the fence from our school found a bird with a broken wing, brought it to the Preps and then snapped its neck in front of them. We called kids ‘bin scabs’ if at lunchtime they yanked food out of bins to eat, because we thought that was a normal quirk of childhood, a habit no different to picking actual scabs – disgusting, but not a sign of any larger tragedy, like not having enough food at home.

      This

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1