Feb 20 2010
About
You are born in Scotland but in the first twelve years of your life your parents move around the world living in Turkey, Argentina, Colombia and Japan. You remember something of South America: swimming pools, fancy dress parties, the garden, going up into the hills on horseback (you on Mum’s horse, your brother on Dad’s). People shooting ducks by a lake.
There’re more memories from Japan. Being the only boy in a class of girls in the school run by American nuns. The old couple in the little shop down the road from the house; they gave you sweets and touched your blonde hair. Looking up the skirts of department store mannequins, the nervous laughter of shop assistants. Television, understanding Japanese, enough. Walking home from school and reading a book at the same time.
School in Scotland. Rain, sandstone, Troon Boot Boys, Celtic-or-Rangers. Parents in Malaysia, boarding school, girls-as-concept, institutionalisation, flying unaccompanied minor to Kuala Lumpur. Then to Hong Kong. Inferiority Complex fanzine, Carlsberg, fumbled first kisses, Two-Tone, punk, boredom, snakebite, leather jackets, motorcycles (175cc), gigs, tinnitus. Stella, Asteroids, uni, boredom. Work, London, computers, finance, Australia.
Then, 2004, you do something completely different. You go to the University of Technology, Sydney to study writing and end up doing manuscript appraisal (www.mountainmanuscripts.com), freelance editing and proofreading, organising festivals for the NSW Writers’ Centre. You teach at the University of Western Sydney (Children’s Literature) and UTS (Cultural Studies) and you’re a candidate for PhD at UTS.
Your short story “The Dogs”, an account of a trek along the Moroccan coastline, is published in Island magazine and your three stories, “Lines in the Sand”, “The Song of the Many” and “H, and the City Within the City” are published in consecutive UTS Anthologies. “The Song of the Many” is also excerpted in the Canberra Times. A couple of short pieces appear in the main newspapers. In 2009, “The Last Travel Story” is published in the Cutwater literary journal. You are currently working on two novels. Your name is Mark Rossiter.