ELISE VALMORBIDA
About Elise Valmorbida
Italian-Australian émigré Elise Valmorbida runs a communications agency and teaches creative writing at Central St Martin’s in London. Honoured as a Trailblazer by the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2007), she is the producer of award-winning indie feature film SAXON, released in 2009. Her published works include Matilde Waltzing, The Book of Happy Endings, and The TV President.
http://www.word-design.co.uk
http://www.saxonthefilm.com
See Elise's top ten books on the migrant experience in The Guardian at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/10/elise-valmorbida-migrant-experience
Praise for Elise Valmorbida
'Valmorbida’s enigmatic plot is matched by an equally obscure structure and slick, musical language. The book’s swinging tempo and shifting points of view make for a challenging though worthwhile read.'
Scottish Review of Books
‘Valmorbida tells intriguing stories. Her characters feel real and could be found anywhere in London – but their hidden worlds are as unfamiliar to the protagonist Terry as to most readers. An original and compassionate study of changing social structures, The Winding Stick is well worth reading and enjoying.’ Rajes Bala
'A stark tale of interlocking immigrant stories centred around an all-night garage.' Scott Pack, The Friday Project
'[The Winding Stick] is a literary classic in the making and you should read it as soon as you can. More please from Ms Valmorbida.' Vulpes Libris
For the full review, click here.
Sunday Herald Sun and Sunday Telegraph, Australia
‘Valmorbida writes with energy and challenges the conventionality of what language can achieve … engaging, often funny, sometimes poignant’ Canberra Times
‘In The Book of Happy Endings, Elise Valmorbida achieves something rare and precious, and she writes like an angel.’
John Madden, director of Shakespeare in Love
‘Intelligent and life-affirming… This is a book that patrons will browse and be compelled to check out. Recommended for most public libraries.’
Library Journal, USA
‘Valmorbida brings her gift for elegant language to this collection of narratives about the search for love.’ Publishers Weekly, USA
An interview with Elise Valmorbida
When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?
I tried to write a Proper Book when I was seven years old. But soon I realised there was not one single story in me, just endlessly climbing trees with the boy next door or doing homework. I was totally plotless!
Then I tried again at twelve, another Proper Book – this time inspired by the epic scope of The Once and Future King and Lord of the Rings. The whole thing was plotted out: an eccentric botanist-inventor, a Victorian Villain balloonist and hysterical aliens from outer space – the collision of their worlds. I taught myself to type on my mother’s beautiful portable Olivetti. But I became so obsessed with typography and layout that the book was never finished. I still type with two fingers, max four.
Years later – too many – I did an evening course in creative writing. Just for the hell of it. And it was heaven. This was the beginning of the ZenAzzurrians. We’re a group of writers who meet every Tuesday night to read out work in progress and tell each other tales of agents, publishers, competitions. It was with ZenAzzurrian support that I began the story of Matilde Waltzing, which was a lucky first: it won me a literary agent and a publisher in one mailing. That was 1997. Literary life has not been quite so lucky since – it’s hard! it hurts! – but my addiction to writing I think has no end.
Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind this work in particular? And about what you were trying to achieve; what ideas you were trying to convey?
The Winding Stick started as a collection of short monologues inspired by real newspaper stories. The narrator was a disembodied voice. It took me a while to get to know him. When he drew breath from the mythological figure of Tiresias, the blind male-female prophet who understood birdsong, my very down-to-earth London seer began to take shape. He had to work in a petrol station. At night. This is a book about seeing, about overcoming bad faith, about darkness and light.
I spent all night at a garage, midnight shift till dawn. I was the only white person behind the glass. Apart from one African, the rest of the cashiers were Tamil. At this time, Sri Lankans were top of the UK immigration lists, but I knew nothing about Tamil people or their culture, apart from the legendary Tamil Tigers. And so my huge research journey began. Tamil film festivals, Tamil temples, Tamil websites, Tamil books, Tamil friends. And so emerged the character of Siva, the garage manager whose hidden story is at the centre of the circle.
If there’s one common element in all my books, it’s an interest in migrants and migration. I guess it’s natural given my own multi-culti origins, but it’s also at the heart of storytelling: the migrant brain is prone to metaphor – the perpetual balancing of here and there, different worlds in simultaneous play. And being translated. Being found in translation. Suitcases. Secrets. Invisible cities.
How do you go about creating your voice on the page?
My voice? I hope in The Winding Stick the voice is utterly Terry’s. He may have the power to see through things, to know things before they happen, and to tell stories. But his vocabulary and his syntax are as down-to-earth as his London streets where junk mail, butts and tabloid newspapers clutter the gutters. He’s very English, white as chicken and plain as a bucket. He has tics of speech (and he’s parasitic like a tick), he’d say ‘see-through’ rather than ‘transparent’, and his intense thoughts are constantly winding, winding, patiently coiling, never quite repeating.
How and when do you write?
I write when I can. The dog ends of days. Late nights. Weekends. On the bus, my little notebook. In bed, when theta memory kicks in. Holidays (they used to happen!) were mostly writing trips: flip flops, hat, laptop, notebooks…
What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?
Since writing fiction became an addiction, I’ve found it hard to read the stuff. Good fiction makes me an involuntary mimic. Bad fiction just makes me cross. Non-fiction feeds me. Poetry too. I’m in love with almost anything by Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and TS Eliot. And the living loves? Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, Annie Proulx. Recently a good friend gave me a funny old book: And Now All This. It has sublimely ridiculous moments like ‘The Practice and Fury of Knitting’ and ‘Geography Part II: Conceivable Countries’. Silly books make me happy. Bleak books too.
