Interview: 2022 Barbara Jefferis Award shortlistee Julie Janson

31.08.22

How did you start writing?

My early years as a teacher in remote Aboriginal NT communities inspired my first plays and a novel, The Crocodile Hotel. The Indigenous stories I wanted to explore evolved from both my life experience and later, through historical research. 

I began writing Benevolence in about 2015. I had already had a career as a successful playwright. I wrote and self-published the first novels due to countless rejections. Luckily Rachel bin Saleh at Magabala read early versions of Benevolence and after giving me many edits she was ready to publish it by 2020. 

What inspired you to write Benevolence?

I was working as a senior Aboriginal researcher for Peter Read at the University of Sydney on a project: www.historyofaboriginalsydney.edu.au

I researched my Darug family background along the Hawkesbury River and was inspired to imagine the life of my great great great grandmother, Maria Byrnes. There was little historical information but I had interviewed countless Elders and I could create her story. I had the research material from my history work.

What was your writing process like for this book - what were the most challenging and enlightening aspects of writing it?

The writing process is very hard work. Nearly every day I wrote for several hours, often while still working as a teacher. My husband is very supportive so that helps. 

My background as a playwright is a great advantage when I need to construct dialogue. I love dialogue, and juicy scenes where the conflict bounces off the page are my passion. 

The most challenging aspects of writing is finding the determination to keep going. You have to exhibit enormous self-belief. I have been rejected by most mainstream publishers in Australia. In fact, only Western Australia publishers: Magabala and UWAP have taken my work on. All my recent work is about New South Wales, so it’s a mystery! But recently Benevolence was published by HarperVia in the USA and UK. My first crime novel Madukka the River Serpent will be published by UWAP in October 2022.

In what way do you think Muraging might be an empowering figure for women and young girls?

Muraging is the manifestation of all the feisty, courageous young Koori and Murri women I have encountered. I was determined she would not be a victim. And I pay tribute to Rachel bin Saleh for pushing me further in that regard. Some readers have told me they find Benevolence harrowing. I was surprised at that. My heroine is able to survive and triumph in the face of colonial horrors. We cannot whitewash our Australian history, I write back from an Indigenous point of view and the novels are pieces of ‘restorative justice’.

How do you think literature helps to shape our understanding of ourselves and others?

As a child living in a Housing Commission home in Boronia Park, Sydney, I was bookish - my mother took me the 4 kilometre walk to fill a pram with books from the Gladesville library. She loved reading and art. Literature opens our minds and hearts, and we don’t feel so alone. Through female characters such as Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, I grew in self-respect as a female. I worked as a cleaner in the Montefiore hospital at fourteen and was paid half the wage that my brother received for working there as a wardsman. I knew then it was unjust. My writing helps me to understand inequalities for both Indigenous and other people.

What was the most recent book you've read about women or girls that moved you?

I reread Manganinie by Beth Roberts and that character burns with resilience and her powerful struggle to survive in the ‘killing times’ of Tasmania. I admire the Indigenous female characters in The Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson. Strangely enough, a novel by a male also moved me enormously: The Burning Island by Jock Serong, is set in Tasmania, and it’s a masterclass in historical novel writing with a female protagonist.

Julie Janson's career as a playwright began when she wrote and directed plays in remote Australian Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. She is now a novelist and award-winning poet. Julie is a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal Nation. She is co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize, 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, 2019.

Her novels include Benevolence, Magabala Books 2020, The Crocodile Hotel, Cyclops Press 2015 and The Light Horse Ghost, Nibago 2018. Julie has written and produced plays, including two at Belvoir St Theatre – Black Mary and Gunjies and Two Plays, published by Aboriginal Studies Press 1996.