Suzanne Covich's Blog
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May.17.2013
Being a mother with four children to raise, on an Australian Single-Parent Pension, 1980’s-90’s was one hell struggle. How could I pay for the roof over our heads, put food on our table and ensure an education for us all?
While I was still married, I was fortunate to be living in a home that was...
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May.02.2013
I’ve taken up fishing again, so unlike the old days. I am heartbroken by the changes to Fremantle’s shores. Jetties to the south have disappeared, small dirt roads through bush—almost all gone. Packed in, multi-story houses lining streets have taken over. Cultivated green verges, brick paving. Park...
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Apr.18.2013
Early to school this morning, I’d just stepped from the front office foyer into the Year 9 quadrangle and a boy, shaved head, big smile, about fourteen-years-old, carrying a big black bag, rushed along the path in the direction of the computer rooms. “Why are you rushing, what’s in that big black...
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Apr.08.2013
How easy it is for readers to pick up a book and enter the world of others. I doubt that the majority would ever contemplate the hundreds of hours it takes to get it in their hands. Pop into a bookshop, cruise the shelves, the areas of interest, the best title, cover picture and back page spiel and...
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Apr.04.2013
I can’t live without the country, getting out of the city, driving alone for hours on roads with few cars, tall gumtrees, sweeping paddocks, rolling hills, sheep, cattle, rivers and green, kangaroos, emus and rabbits that run in front of my car—birds that swoop, narrowly escaping with their lives....
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Feb.28.2013
I want to know my deceased grandma, a courageous woman who married my Tasmanian-born soldier grandpa in London in 1919 and died aged thirty-nine, well before I was born. I never heard stories about her when I was a kid, apart from the fact that she sent my mum and her siblings to church on Sundays...
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Feb.19.2013
As a West Australian English teacher, child rights activist and a woman whose 1950-60's childhood 'fertilized' my passion for writing my childhood memoir, I did so knowing that publishers are reluctant to take on board such stories and, people are reluctant to read them because they want to stay...
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Feb.11.2013
Suzanne, can you tell us what your memoir is all about?
My memoir is about a small town Australian country girl in the 1950’-60’s, who’s dux of her class every year at Primary School, loves the bush, the river, the mountains, reading, writing and singing and, always wants trousers with a fly.
She...
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Jan.18.2013
Country is wonderful! The long drives through Western Australia's wheatbelt listening to music I adore, music that affirms and inspires me in my beloved Nissan Dualis to end up in Katanning where the people show such welcoming care for me and the issues my memoir addresses is nothing short of...
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Dec.19.2012
Christmas is a few days away and I so love the Christ child, born to the Mary who could well have been stoned to death if not for the story of the seed God popped into her, if not for the Joseph standing alongside—outcastes, the pair of them. The innkeeper and others who turned them away sure knew...
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Dec.16.2012
Dear Suzi
I am writing you this letter to talk about your book ‘When We Remember They Call Us Liars’. I had so many thoughts when reading this book that I actually found it quite hard to talk to you about it in person, as I wasn’t sure what exactly to say, and I felt quite strange knowing so...
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Nov.30.2012
With Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s recent announcement of a National Enquiry into child abuse in my country (Nov 12, 2012), you’d have thought that the guardians of education would have woken up. Some, I am sure would be up to speed, on the ball with current affairs, but according to a...
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Nov.22.2012
I am often asked whether or not writing my memoir was ‘therapeutic’. No. It was a celebration to make my words sing loud and dance across the page giving voice to the writer I knew I was at eleven years of age. I raged, I wept, I laughed and soaked in lavender baths, took long country drives...
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Nov.17.2012
Breaking the silences of child sexual assault is a frightening, costly, painful thing to do. Confronting and weaving in and out of apathy and ignorance is even more painful. Being misunderstood and labeled is heartbreaking. But oh, let’s not forget the joy, the joy of finding my own voice, seeing...
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Nov.16.2012
Feeling soft this morning, reflective. Ben Okri's memoir, A Way of Being Free (1998), an amazing Nigerian poet and social justice advocate has this to remind and affirm me: 'He acknowledges the painful commitment to the process of writing, and the fact that it could be misunderstood...
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When the words I write sing to me, I dance.”
—Suzanne Covich, September 2012
About Suzanne
Suzanne Covich, the author of a childhood memoir, When We Remember They Call Us Liars (Fremantle Press, 2012) spent her early years in a large family in the country, leaving school unwillingly at thirteen to work in an old people’s home. After entering...
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