Adele Aria
With the support of the Copyright Agency‘s Cultural Fund, and in partnership with the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, Westerly delivered our fifth Writers’ Development Program in 2020–21.
Three talented emerging writers were offered professional guidance and support in developing their work for publication in Westerly, both in print and online. We are delighted to showcase their reflections on the Program at the Editor’s Desk, and will celebrate the publication of their writing in the upcoming Westerly 66.2.
Knowing we might share reflections upon concluding the Westerly program, I decided to align my participation with Julia Cameron’s often recommended The Artist’s Way. I attempted almost every exercise as detailed in the prescribed timeline, trying to be the diligent and disciplined student. My internalisation of the survival myth drives this relapsing habit of model minority performance.
It took time to stretch into the apparently difficult practice of accepting my hesitations, not always demanding of myself to do the things that discomforted me, instead permitting myself to resist when something was not right.
Work Cited:
Ridley, LaVelle. ‘Imagining Otherly’, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6.4 (2019): 481–490. Sourced at: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7771653.
Adele is a queer disabled writer, advocate and artist whose writing, informed by lived experiences and studies, focuses on human rights and social justice. Their non-fiction, poetry and performance writing has featured in local, Australian and international publications and events. Adele has been awarded several emerging writer and development fellowships. A person of colour, Adele is grateful to be living on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar.