Friday, January 11, 2013

Long time, no news. (Sorry.)


Well, that was a bit of a ‘down’ way to leave this blog and there’s been quite a hiatus. I'm going to try to blame the insanity of Xmas and hope that you don’t notice that I haven’t made an entry since the 6th of November… It’s a new year, new leaf and all that guff. I’ll try to be better.

So, to catch you up with the major events since I last wrote:

My writing is improving. That’s not to say that what I’m producing is necessarily better but just that it has gone from excruciating to uncomfortable to bearable to enjoyable and finally has become downright fun. And within that process, I think I’ve pretty much finished the first drafts of one of the collections of stories. I started in a relative comfort zone of my own cultural heritage, predominantly English, and their food & immigration stories. Now I’m making a big jump in time & familiarity to work on stories based on Somali food and experiences. So, it’s back to reading and researching for me.

The AAWP (Australasian Association of Writing Programs) annual conference held at Deakin’s Waterfront Campus in November, 2012, was my first academic conference. I went as a spectator only but was still incredibly anxious about it all. To my delight, everyone was friendly and welcoming—there was less name-tag-checking of a person’s status before striking up conversation than I expected. But there was a fair amount of academic posturing & ‘theory dropping’. There were too many interesting sessions to choose from but one of the best was one I went to ‘just because’. The others I tried to choose with my project in mind and I was able to meet others writing, researching and teaching about food and culture.

My last piece of news is my most exciting but I’m not sure that the excitement isn’t, in fact, at least 90% terror…
With the ever-ready encouragement and support of Amazing Supervisor, I applied to present a paper at the Third International Food Studies Conference to be held at the University of Texas in Austin and they have accepted my proposal! So, in October this year I’ll be off to the Lone Star State to present my findings so far to my peers and betters. If I bit my nails, I’d already have none left!




Maybe I should go & get Friday Night Lights on DVD... as research, of course.