As a teenager who aspires to be an author one day, one of the best experiences a young writer could have been actually having the opportunity to interview a published author. It was the author of The Pakana Voice, a historical fiction book that revolves around the newspapers and what they said about Aboriginals in Tasmania. Dr Ian Broinowski helped me with many things through our interview, answering questions that I didn’t even realise I had at first. His book is told through W.C, a war correspondent who was posted to Tasmania in order to cover what had happened between the Pakana people and the British, retelling the story through newspaper clippings from his time spent in Tasmania (1814-1856). He soon admits his love for a Panaka woman who has been haunting his dreams for a long time, Lowana. W.C then spends his days in the comfort of his home, being comforted by his dog, Bent, sharing his press clippings and retells the stories of the graphic nature that unfolded during early days of the colony.
Through this experience with Ian, I’ve learnt many things about not only actually writing books, but the research behind them, the process and was taught in a mentorship-like way by the author. He not only helped me by showing me some websites that could help me with self-publishing but also showed me some online publishing groups in order to help with the journey.
Ian is not only a passionate writer, but also a passionate teacher and those facts showed in my conversations with him…Ian made sure to answer each of my questions and even asked some himself, making sure I understood everything that I was hearing. Ian taught me not only about publishing, but also how ideas can come to a writer, about writing voices and even target audiences, which will all help me in the future with my own novels and/or books. He has a diverse range of books, ranging from childcare, education, animals and even history.
This was truly a wonderful experience, not only for me, but I believe for Ian as well…Allowing us both to learn about each other and answer questions for the other one, proving it to be a real positive experience. I learnt from Ian that every author has a specific voice that they write in, allowing them to write for specific audiences (age, race, orientation, job status, etc), helping me figure out that I need to figure out what my voice is when it comes to writing. He also helped me by telling me about self-publishing sites that I could use, allowing me to look into them and compare the prices of how much a singular book could cost for me to publish it.
I’m hoping that Ian gets in touch with more young, local authors/aspiring authors, since this experience helped with multiple aspects of writing, publishing and looking into the historical aspects of the meaning behind events, allowing you to better write scenes based off of those events. Ian is warm, generous and outgoing with a genuine interest in young people, a result of his passion for education.
You can find Ian online
At Skillshare
On Goodreads
And his books are available through the Book Depository or local retailers like Hobart Bookshop and Fullers.
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