HIGH ANXIETY: WRITING IN THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

We are living in anxious times – and, as we all know, there is plenty to be anxious about. Many of us worry about the state of the world, the climate, the future – for ourselves and those we love. At the same time, individual anxiety can take many forms, from persistent negative thoughts to full-blown panic attacks. Some of us contend with complex health issues as well. All of us often feel helpless and alone with our concerns.

But creative expression can be a powerful outlet for turning those fears and challenges into meaningful action. In this panel session, three Australian writers discuss how they have pinned their anxiety to the page. Donna Cameron, a much-loved novelist, uses her Climate Fiction, The Rewilding, to encourage others to feel empowered to take positive action. Sonya Voumard, an acclaimed journalist, through her memoir, Tremor, explores the way the body and the mind are inextricably connected in our experience of anxiety, especially where health challenges are concerned. And Kim Kelly, local author, with humour and heart, in her memoir, Touched, recounts a three-day panic attack she experienced right at the moment she should have been on top of the world.

What each of these authors will show is that there is beauty and power to be found inside anxiety arising from the deep understanding of vulnerability that it brings. Knowing and accepting vulnerability is key to understanding our own humanity and that of others. But in the fast, harsh clamour of online discourse and our increasing real-world disconnection from each other, we are forced to mask our anxieties, pretend we’re just fine. There is constant pressure to appear competent, ‘normal’ – the opposite to unhinged. Opening up about anxiety can enable connection, or reconnection, with others. It can help us believe we’re all in this together – in a world that seems bent on tearing us apart.

This is a discussion between three variously anxious writers who are intent on doing whatever they can to save themselves and the world.

Kim Kelly

Kim Kelly is an award-winning author of several fictions and creative non-fictions, long and short, including Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room and Touched: A small history of feeling. Currently a Creative Writing PhD candidate and sessional academic at Macquarie University, she has presented research papers at various conferences across Australia and in Germany. Kim lives and works in Sydney and Central West NSW, on Eora and Wiradjuri lands, grateful every day.

Touched is winner of the Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Prize for nonfiction.

Documenting the damaging role of anxiety in our lives is hardly new, but Touched takes us inside the destabilising riot of a three-day panic attack with such insight, honesty and humour that the perspective we gain is revelatory and overwhelmingly hopeful. This book has a wonderful breadth of understanding—of the author’s own crazily complex family, of the wider issue of anxiety across society, and of her own voyage as a highly competent yet vulnerable being in a worryingly unhinged world.

“So vulnerable, but also wise and powerful … Extraordinary.” – Nigel Featherstone

Donna M Cameron

Novelist Donna M Cameron is an AWGIE nominated radio dramatist, award-winning playwright and short film writer. Her novels include ‘Beneath the Mother Tree’ (2018), which was selected for the Screen Queensland’s Adaptable program, ‘The Rewilding’ (2024) which was shortlisted for the Davitt Awards and ‘Bloomfield,’ (2027) which is scheduled for release in February.

An exhilarating and unforgettable love song for our world.

Heartbroken and in fear for his life, corporate whistle blower, Jagger Eckerman, escapes to hide out in a remote cave, but kick-arse radical, Nia Moretti, is furious a ‘capitalist suit’ has taken over her cave. It is hatred at first sight. Yet Nia is hiding for reasons of her own, ones that drag Jagger closer to death as they are forced on the run together and he is unwittingly pulled deeper into Nia’s reckless mission to help save the planet. But who can save Jagger from the relentless pursuit of the man who wants him dead?

Both an electrifying cat-and-mouse-chase and an odd couple love story, The Rewilding captures the essence of what it means to be alive today in this cusp of change pulsing with possibilities. It is a passionate intimation of hope.

Sonya Vounard

Sonya Voumard is an award-winning nonfiction writer and a former political journalist with the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Her most recent book, Tremor won the nonfiction category of Finlay Lloyd’s 20/40 annual publishing prize for 2024. Her essays and stories have been published in Griffith Review, Meanjin, Island and Neighbourhood. She has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from UTS where she taught nonfiction writing for nine years. She now lives in the NSW Northern Rivers.

Tremor, A movement disorder in a disordered world is a gripping memoir about living with rare, undiagnosed movement disorder.

A hand tremor Sonya Voumard’s early teens worsened with age, followed by painful neck spasms, which struck in her twenties while working as a political journalist in Canberra. All this came with mental health effects including severe anxiety. None of the medical specialists Voumard consulted over many years landed on a diagnosis. That was until her late fifties, when a leading neurologist told her she had Dystonia. Tremor charts Voumard’s journey before and after diagnosis, as well as a radical new form of brain surgery she underwent in 2020.