It seems like a lot of work: don’t you have to apply for competitive grants, jump through hoops of bureaucratic red tape to abide by international visa short-stay protocols and then deal with the pressure of creating in a foreign land? And what about the possible language barriers to overcome as well? And yet the authors ArtsHub approached about their time spent in overseas literary residences all agree it was a worthwhile experience – and one that ultimately helped their writing practices.
Suzanne Smith spent two weeks at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland in April 2023. The residency was prompted by her non-fiction book called The Altar Boys about the cover-up of clerical child sexual abuse in the mainly Irish Catholic diaspora of Maitland-Newcastle in NSW. As her book was published in Ireland and the UK, Smith was invited to spend time at the Centre to focus on her latest work, a historical fiction story set during the Vietnam War in Australia.
