YA AUTHOR INTERVIEW: An interview with Allayne Webster - Australian YA novelist.

Welcome to episode 3 of the blog series:

YA authors in conversation!

I am very excited to be hosting #LoveOzYA author, Allayne Webster today on my blog.

Allayne is the author of multiple YA and middle grade novels, including her most recent release, The Centre of My Everything.


We had a lovely chat about her novel, her writing, and how she tackled some pretty heavy content in her story.

I hope you enjoy Allayne's answers as much as I did!


Click read more below to go and read some more....

Allayne Webster Interview:
Questions asked by Poppy Nwosu.


Your latest book, The Centre of My Everything, is a hard hitting YA novel that touches on a lot of heavy issues facing Australian teens today, particularly in regional areas of our country.

This novel can be quite shocking at times, definitely not flinching away from describing our Australian binge-drinking youth culture in realistic detail and openly discussing racism and sexual abuse.

• QUESTION: I wondered if you set out writing this novel to provide commentary on these topical issues, or if the story came first and these hard-hitting elements were by-products of the kind of story you wanted to tell?

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

I think the seeds for this novel were planted a long time ago, perhaps in my very early childhood. My step-father, Peter, a Ngarrindjeri man, raised me from age five. Our family was often subject to racist assumptions, eg, 'Your dad's an Abo, he must be a drunk.' 'Bet you get lots of free stuff from the government.' 'Isn't he more white than black?' The list goes on. It angered me that what I saw at home of my step-father - a hard working family man who played sport and volunteered in his community - was not what people chose to acknowledge. I wanted to write a story where I turned racist stereotypes on their head; where I depicted binge-drinking economically disadvantaged white people juxtaposed against a functional, community oriented, financially solvent Aboriginal family. I then fashioned much of the story around that.

• QUESTION: This is a long one! I recently heard you speak at your fascinating panel, Writing Towards Reconciliation, and you mentioned that in country Australia, people often don’t pay the respects due to Aboriginal burial sites found on or near their land, feeling like it has nothing to do with them. You even mentioned a case here in South Australia where ancient Aboriginal remains were found stuffed into barrels on the side of the highway (most likely to avoid the original site facing temporary closure and attention, perhaps because it was a working farm). Your book includes a scene where drunk teenagers desecrate the graves of a small town cemetery (much to the townfolk’s horror). Did you select this plotline to explore these kinds of situations from a reverse angle? 

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

The short answer is YES, absolutely. It always perplexed me to hear blatant disregard for Aboriginal remains (Oh, they're long since dead, what does it matter to dig them up?) and yet, walk into one of our graveyards and start desecrating graves without permission and people are duly horrified. The hypocrisy! In this story, I exhume a white woman (*her ethnicity isn't  initially revealed) to highlight how angry and indignant we become over such an act.


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• QUESTION: One aspect I absolutely loved about your novel was the running theme of cycles of abuse. No characters are painted as simply evil (even those that do truly terrible things), and rather you present a very realistic and layered portrait of why people do the things they do. Can you perhaps touch on this theme a little more and why you wanted to include this in your novel as such a focal point?

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

None of us are perfect, all of us are flawed. Fictional characters should be the same. Social and economic disadvantage, particularly in the case of young people (I suspect anyway!) is more often than not the cause of challenging unsavoury behaviour. Some of it is generational - if your role models had no role models, where does the cycle end? Life - real life - is messy and I don't know what we gain from sanitizing that. In my mind, it's far better to confront issues head-on than to pretty them up for digestible consumption. Be honest, be real, that's how you connect with readers.

• QUESTION: In this story, I quite admired how you painted each character in an unexpected light. For instance, the good for nothing teen binge-drinker has a soft side. Did you enjoy playing with people’s expectations? (or upending stereotypes?)

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

Storytelling is about walking a mile in someone else's shoes and imagining how life must be for them. What drives them to make the decisions they do? Are they conscious decisions or are they impulsive ones? Is there a biological aspect influencing how we behave? Were there external influences blocking their path? Do we do things to impress others, to conform to social norms, to further or advance ourselves somehow? Why, why, why. Authors play amateur psychologist and examine motivations in-depth, but with the limited lens of our own experience.

• QUESTION: I thought I might also ask you about the portrayal of rape within this novel. Were you nervous about exploring this topic? ​

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

It was stated in a review of The Centre of My Everythingthat with the advent of the worldwide #MeToo movement, this novel could not be better timed. Statistically it's thought one in three are the victim of some form of sexual assault. For many, this happens during their formative years. The legacy is one of silence and shame; an inability to speak openly for fear of judgement. Who wants to be seen as a victim? I view books as friends; a place to find a voice and representation, when the real world doesn't always provide that opportunity. I think it's essential stories like this exist and are accessible to teenagers. I was nervous about writing about rape because it's an unpleasant confronting subject and there's the potential for victim-blaming if the portrayal is insensitive. In the novel, when one of the girls is assaulted, I deliberately make reference to the fact she's dressed provocatively, to her prior consensual sexual behaviour, to her physical state (she's impaired by alcohol at the time) because they're all things our legal system uses to discredit women and blame them. I wanted the reader to grasp that all those things are irrelevant. Rape is a criminal act. The perpetrator is to blame, end of story.

• QUESTION: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

Don't panic. Not everything you write will find a home (publisher) straight away. Sometimes it's a case of 'right time, right story.' If a manuscript is rejected, keep writing, move on. You can always come back to the proverbial bottom drawer, find old works and revisit and revive. No work is truly lost. Everything you produce teaches you something about creative process.

• QUESTION: Lastly, can you tell us what we can look forward to reading from you next? (or any current projects you are working on?)

ALLAYNE WEBSTER:

Sensitive is my next YA novel due for release with UQP mid 2019. This story is part memoir, inspired by my childhood years surviving chronic illness. I'm also working on another YA novel, plus I have a few other manuscripts (junior fiction and middle grade) doing the rounds which will hopefully be picked up soon. Always working and always writing!

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Thanks so much for your time and wonderful answers Allayne! 
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ALLAYNE L. WEBSTER.

2018 South Australian Premier's Reading Challenge Ambassador

Allayne is an internationally published author who grew up in rural South Australia. She now lives in Adelaide with her husband and teenage son.

She's the proud recipient of three South Australian arts grants and she helped to establish the Women's Professional Development Network Book Club at the University of Adelaide.

Allayne served for ten years as a board member of the Salisbury Writers' Festival and she's currently on the planning committee of the Adelaide Festival of Children's Books.
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CONNECT WITH ALLAYNE:

• Website.
• Twitter.
• Instagram.
• Facebook.