To coincide with the Emerging Writers Festival‘s first trip to Tasmania, we decided it was time to start asking some nosey questions…
Who are you (really) and how did you get started?
I’m Katia, I’m a music-school dropout, and now I edit Stilts – a literary project that me and my buddies Bronte and Maggie started a few years ago.
One day we decided to “just do it” and we’ve been making it up ever since.
These days we publish journals (both print and digital), run an active website, and host storytelling and reading events.
What’s your favourite thing about being in a collective (and is resistance indeed futile)?
The best thing about the Stilts collective is that I get to work with my favourite people who also consider going out to breakfast a legitimate way of holding a meeting. We number about eight now.
We’re all writers working on our own material too and one of the most valuable things about this is that we have become trusted readers and editors of each other’s work. We collaborate, support, and challenge each other. We each fulfil every main role of the publishing cycle: we’re writers, and readers, and editors, and I think this helps create a sustainable literary culture that isn’t based on vanity.
Will coming down for this EWF roadshow be your first time, personally, in Tasmania?
I came to Tasmania with my family when I was fourteen or so. We boarded the Spirit on Boxing Day and I remember sitting on deck watching the cricket with my brothers – each one of us commenting how relaxing the motion of the boat was. Half an hour later we were all chucking up guts in our little cabin bathroom and we spent the rest of the ride stacked up like meerkats on the tiny cabin bunk bed.
That was the lowlight of the trip, the highlight was seeing Nathan Buckley at the top of Cradle Mountain.
What are you going to write about on your postcard at the Twitch+Stilts Postcard Project?
This I’m not planning in advance. I prefer to “live in the moment”, you know?
Who would you most like to find yourself stuck in an elevator with during the Hobart roadshow?
Maybe someone wearing a backpack full of sourdough and avocados.
Katia will be at the Emerging Writers Festival Hobart roadshow 31st Oct – 2nd Nov. See the full Program here. #ewftas
Find Stilts on Twitter
