Video transcript
2019 NSW PRC author interview – Jordi Kerr

TAMARA RODGERS: Hi. I'm Tamara Rodgers from the Premier's Reading Challenge. We're here at Riverside Theatre Parramatta for the Sydney Writers' Festival, All Day YA, a celebration of everything that's amazing about YA literature. We've been joined by some fantastic Australian and overseas authors. We're really excited to bring you these chats.

We'd really like to thank the Sydney Writers' Festival for having us along and also thank our programme sponsors, our media partner, News Local, and our supporting partner, Dymock's Children's Charities. Thank you so much for your support.

We are backstage at Sydney Writers' Festival for All Day YA with Jordi Kerr. Hi. How are you?

JORDI KERR: Hi.

TAMARA RODGERS: Is this your first Sydney Writers' Festival?

JORDI KERR: It is, ever-- ever, ever.

TAMARA RODGERS: Oh, and so you're getting to fan-out over a whole bunch of amazing authors--

JORDI KERR: Smash.

TAMARA RODGERS: --and getting to be on a panel as well with some pretty--

JORDI KERR: Yes.

TAMARA RODGERS: --exciting ones. So I was stalking your blog last night.

JORDI KERR: Dun-dun duh.

TAMARA RODGERS: Dit-dit-da-- and this lovely little tagline on your blog, which says that you are a consumer, creator, and curator of stories. Now, I'm a fan of the alliteration. Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of stuff that you like to consume? When you were a kid, what stories kind of caught your soul?

JORDI KERR: Oh, anything with adventure.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: I was addicted to Enid Blyton when I was quite young.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: And I always alternated--

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice.

JORDI KERR: --between wanting to be Anne and wanting to be George--

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice.

JORDI KERR: --which maybe says a lot.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yes.

JORDI KERR: [laughs] And then as I got older, I've always loved reading young adult books and have never really stopped. So I think the first young adult author that I fell in love with was Sonya Hartnett. She's still writing, which is really amazing.

TAMARA RODGERS: Oh, yes.

JORDI KERR: And I'm very much in the era of John Marsden and 'Tomorrow When the War Began.'

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: And it's just-- oh, and Isobelle Carmody's 'Obernewtyn' series.

TAMARA RODGERS: Oh.

JORDI KERR: That's been a lifetime of reading.

TAMARA RODGERS: So 'Obernewtyn' is one of those kinds of things that you can kind of almost age a person by, oh, you're an 'Obernewtyn' fan. OK.

JORDI KERR: Yeah.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. Yeah, I got into a lot of trouble from my sister. Because I had her copy of 'Obernewtyn' in my high school backpack and spilt a bottle of really cheap perfume on it that just saturated and turned the book--

TAMARA RODGERS: So the book probably still smells like that now years and years later.

JORDI KERR: Yeah, it's just odour of teen now.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah, nice. So you're one of those kinds of readers then that read from kids books to YA and then just kind of got stuck at YA as you kept going.

JORDI KERR: I wouldn't call it 'stuck,' but yeah.

TAMARA RODGERS: It's a good thing. I'm not saying it with any sense of judgement. Most of my book [inaudible]

JORDI KERR: One day, let's fall into the adult section.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yes, yes. Yeah, just for a little excursion. Then come back home.

JORDI KERR: Yeah.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. So what are the kinds of things that you create? Because you're creating some pretty diverse stuff. Right? And not just books and stories, but you working in media. You work in TV and film. So can you talk to us a bit about the kinds of things that you get to create in your exciting, amazing life as an author?

JORDI KERR: Oh, everything. It's evolved a lot. I never, when I-- I've always-- this is going to age me as well. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be an authoress, back when that existed.

TAMARA RODGERS: With serious glasses and a chain to hang around your neck.

JORDI KERR: Yeah, yeah. But then as I got older, writing a book is quite intimidating. I don't know how you fill that many pages. And maybe this is why I haven't written a whole book yet.

So I really love short fiction. And for a while there, I very much followed the dream of wanting to do screenwriting and scriptwriting. And I was really lucky to get to fulfil that in a little bit in working with Crawford Productions and doing some work on 'The Saddle Club--'

TAMARA RODGERS: Awesome.

JORDI KERR: --which is really, really fun.

TAMARA RODGERS: Because 'The Saddle Club' is-- you talked about Enid Blyton being one of those things that kind of captured you when you were a kid. But horse stories--

JORDI KERR: [gasps] I was totally a horse kid.

TAMARA RODGERS: I was just obsessed. I grew up in a little country town, but I did not have horses. And I was so intensely jealous of all of my friends you got to go home to ride ponies.

JORDI KERR: That was me. That was me.

TAMARA RODGERS: What was your horse's name?

JORDI KERR: I didn't have one. I wanted one.

TAMARA RODGERS: Oh, I thought you were saying that was me, that you had one.

JORDI KERR: No, I was the kid that was jealous of everyone else's horses.

TAMARA RODGERS: But you were obsessed as well. Yeah, oh.

JORDI KERR: Yeah.

TAMARA RODGERS: So, yeah, like 'Saddle Club,' I was so jealous.

JORDI KERR: Yeah, very much so.

TAMARA RODGERS: So just group writing-- you didn't get to hang out with the horses.

JORDI KERR: No.

TAMARA RODGERS: No. That's a bit disappointing.

JORDI KERR: No. It was just a roomful of writers.

TAMARA RODGERS: You couldn't say, look, how can I--

JORDI KERR: No real horses, and the writers were--

TAMARA RODGERS: --write about a horse if I've not had the chance to meet one personally? You should have been able to find a way to work that in, I reckon.

JORDI KERR: I could have tried that.

TAMARA RODGERS: You could have tried that.

JORDI KERR: Just like, can we get a miniature pony in the room?

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: That will make it better.

TAMARA RODGERS: Just for the lunch break. So you have a story in this fantastic 'Meet Me at the Intersection' anthology. This kind of-- it's not really a genre. This surgence of anthologies featuring diverse voices is one of the things that I really love about YA fiction at the moment. What was it like to be a part of such an incredible collection?

JORDI KERR: Incredible.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: At the risk of using the same word.

TAMARA RODGERS: It's OK. It's a good word.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. It's interesting, where I've worked in the industry for quite a long time, and I have spent years working with authors but had never been through that kind of formal publishing journey in the book publishing industry before. I was like, I thought I knew it all.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: How arrogant of me.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: Yeah, no, it was terrifying. And so to have Ambelin and Rebecca there, and I think they weren't just editors in that book though, really mentors, I think, for everyone that was in it, and to have them kind of helping walk people through it, because so many people in the book were, like myself, emerging and debut authors, was really just you could not [inaudible]

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah, and to provide a space for people to tell really unique and interesting stories. So can you tell us a little about your story? Because, so, I have to confess to some serious stalking.

I was reading this book on the train on the way home from work one day. And I got to the end of your story. And then I went back and read it again. And then I found you on Instagram and sent you a message.

Because I just-- like it just kind of just grabbed me, this idea, as someone who often experiences feeling really uncomfortable in their body. Right? So to see that reflected on the page, particularly when it's someone who is uncomfortable in their body because, spoiler alert, tentacles, is really, really fascinating. So can you tell us a bit about where this story came from for you?

JORDI KERR: Oh, it was an amalgamation of so many things. As a queer person, as a trans person, as a person with chronic illness, I do have a lot of discomfort around my body. And I identify as being fat as well. So I've had this journey of trying to learn to love my body, and then like--

TAMARA RODGERS: With all of these labels.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. So much, I guess, resistance sometimes, it feels like the resistance comes from inside. But when in reality, it's the world that we live in. And so I wanted to embrace that and kind of, I think, help other people lean into that that, that whatever we have, these are our bodies.

They're natural. It's OK. It may feel like you have tentacles sometimes, but that can be a really beautiful thing.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah, because tentacles making you unique.

JORDI KERR: Yeah.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. Back to your little CCC tagline on your blog, the idea of creating, can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on at the moment?

JORDI KERR: Oh, [laughs] Do you want to ask that one again?

TAMARA RODGERS: Sure.

JORDI KERR: Do you sense the pain?

TAMARA RODGERS: Yes. It's allowed to be painful. What's so painful about the process for you?

JORDI KERR: I am a slow writer.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: And actually, even something that Ambelin just said to me this week, writing is a process, not a time frame.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: Ah.

TAMARA RODGERS: Take that one, yeah.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. It feels like I've been working on it for a really long time. And one of the difficulties I think I'm working through with it is I started off on this amazing queer adventure of a queer in a country town. A city queer comes along-- other queer person is like, whoa.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: But then trying to grapple with keeping hold of your own identity and not getting caught up in someone else's journey.

TAMARA RODGERS: Wanting to be like someone else.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. With a bit of environmental activism, and that thrown in as well.

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice.

JORDI KERR: And it was the story that I wanted to tell then, but I've been telling it, telling it to myself, for so long that I don't have the passion as much that I did, and trying to balance, I think, that problem of writers of pushing through the hard bits versus actually my heart's really caught up on this other story idea.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: [inaudible]

TAMARA RODGERS: So that trying to decide then whether, is this hard because this is no longer the story I'm supposed to be writing, or do I just need to get through this bit, and then I'll get it finished?

JORDI KERR: This is my very big dilemma, which has no-- well, I thought it had no answers. But I do really believe in following your heart. So it feels, in some ways, like a grief process to have to leave a project.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah.

JORDI KERR: But I can always come back to it.

TAMARA RODGERS: You can.

JORDI KERR: That's what writing is.

TAMARA RODGERS: It is. So if you had to give some advice-- so these videos are going out to students across the state. Hi, everyone taking part in the Premier's Reading Challenge. And so there's a whole bunch of people out there who've got this story inside them that they're trying to tell.

What advice would you give to someone who's decided that, and I think my story is worth pursuing, but they aren't really knowing how to do that?

JORDI KERR: Hm. It feels so flippant to say, just tell it. I think, often-- maybe I'm speaking a lot from my own personal experience-- that you can feel afraid to tell your story. You can feel like it doesn't have value. But it absolutely does.

Your story, your experience is valid. Put it there. It doesn't have to be perfect. But just putting the words on the page, that's just the beginning.

TAMARA RODGERS: And the value, I guess, then comes from the story, not from the fact that maybe it's been published or that people have read it, but that your story was important enough to tell.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. And I think there's so many avenues of sharing stories and connecting with stories as well that we're seeing now through fandoms and places like that. I started writing fan fiction. I didn't do anything--

TAMARA RODGERS: I did the same. I still have an exercise book that when I was in school I would write these stories. And no one ever saw them. But now there's such an enormous community of people sharing stories that they've written inspired by their favourite books or-- yeah, so an enormous opportunity to be able to do that kind of stuff now.

JORDI KERR: Yeah. And it's all valid. I think every medium, every story really is. So--

TAMARA RODGERS: Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us tonight to share a bit of your story. We really enjoyed having you here.

JORDI KERR: Pleasure.

TAMARA RODGERS: Thanks, everyone.