This week we bid farewell to one of the founders of Spineless Wonders, Linda Godfrey. Over the past (almost) five years, Linda has worked tirelessly in a range of capacities within this small press – as editor, publicist and more recently, as curator of Little Fictions. Today I’d like to pay tribute to Linda’s massive contribution, listing below only a snapshot of her total involvement!
As readers of the short Australian story, you may have enjoyed, perhaps even marvelled at, one of the many books Linda Godfrey has had a hand in producing. If you love discussing short stories and the creative writing process, you may have encountered Linda as a sometime-facilitator or participant in our online discussion group, the Spineless Wonders Bookclub. Or you may have been enlightened an enlivened by her Facebook posts via Cooking The Books or Little Fictions. Like me, you may have laughed out loud at Linda’s choice of GIFS – the cattle dog forever jumping the fence to get to Little Fictions, the stars of Friends dosey-doeing for joy that Little Fictions was on again. And if you live in Sydney or in Wollongong, you may have been lucky enough to have enjoyed the fruits of Linda’s curatorial labours at a Little Fictions gig over the past twelve months.
As our Senior Editor, Linda worked closely with Spineless Wonders authors, Alec Patri? (The Rattler and other stories), Pierz Newton-John (Fault Lines), Mary Manning (Damaged in Transit), Jane Skelton (Lives of the Dead), Vivienne Plumb (The Glove Box and other stories) and Jen Craig (Panthers and the Museum of Fire).
And as Series Editor of our microliterature anthologies, Linda has worked with hundreds of writers as well as co-editors Julie Chevalier (small wonder and Stoned Crows and other Australian Icons), Ali Jane Smith (Writing To The Edge), Bronwyn Mehan (Flashing The Square) and Kirsten Tranter (Out of Place).
Linda has also been involved in the two annual awards auspiced by Spineless Wonders – The joanne burns Award for Microliterature and The Carmel Bird Award for Short Fiction. Over the past five years, she has spent many hours assisting judges, joanne burns, Carol Jenkins, Shady Cosgrove, Angela Meyer and Richard Holt and Kirsten Tranter with culling and with liaising with selected authors.
As publicist, Linda has been instrumental in promoting our books and authors to the wider world – via national media and writers festivals and via the International Short Story Conference. Overcoming her natural shyness, Linda officiated at many of the Spineless Wonders book launches, quite often incorporating platters of home-made rum balls and other exquisite taste sensations into her seemingly effortless role of MC. The wonderful spread for the 2013 xmas bash and the Out of Place cupcakes in honour of Kirsten Tranter’s birthday are especially noted here. (A special mention, too, of Linda’s partner Greg Hodge aka Hodge for marshalling his consummate culinary skills for our inaugural launch and for his singular rendition of a Spineless Wonders’ classic at Wordstorm 2012!)
Linda is a passionate advocate for the short form and she has represented Spineless Wonders, its books, its authors and its vision, on panels, presentations and seminars in a variety of forums such as Wordstorm: the Australasian Writers Festival, Darwin, the Wollongong Writers Festival, at the University of Technology, Sydney as well as numerous launch events in Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide.
Running a short story press has been a fun and crazy ride and Linda Godfrey has been an integral part of it. Her input, skills, eye-rolling, insights, vast knowledge, biscotti, time-lines, lower case emails, intelligence, prose poetry addiction, acumen, tenacity, optimism, love of reading, intuitions, nerdiness, curiosity, perception and hard-work will all be sorely missed.
In 2015, Linda took on the role as Program Manager of the Wollongong Writers Festival. We are delighted to see her continuing in this role, and in an expanded capacity organising ‘out of festival events’ throughout 2016 , as well as hosting the popular Rocket Readings. You can keep up with her doings, as well as her musings, creative writing and her passion for all things of the Ancient world, on Facebook. And for anyone seeking a writing mentor or editor, we can, along with many happy authors, highly recommend the services of Linda Godfrey, freelance editor. lindagodfreywritereditor.wordpress.com.
We at Spineless Wonders would like to thank Linda wholeheartedly for all she has contributed and wish her all the best.
Bronwyn Mehan
Publisher