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    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers
    Ebook53 pages41 minutes

    On John Marsden: Writers on Writers

    By Alice Pung

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    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 is the current Artist in Residence at Janet Clarke Hall, the University of Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University's School of Media and Communication. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father's Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her debut novel Laurinda won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Her second novel, One Hundred Days, was shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Award, and has been optioned for a film. She is the author of children's books including Millie Mak the Maker and Be Careful, Xiao Xin! (ill. Sher Rill Ng), When Granny Came to Stay (ill. Sally Soweol Han) and the Meet Marly books (ill. Lucia Masciullo). Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.

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      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

      [email protected] • 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

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