Lisette Muratore is a Melbourne based writer and illustrator who, this past summer, became the Nottingham Women’s Centre’s remote writer in residence with help of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. She phoned in from across the world to chat to us about what the experience was like, and how it impacted her creative practice.
What did you know about Nottingham before doing the virtual writers' residency? Did anything about the city or Nottingham Women's Centre surprise you?
Honestly, I didn't know a lot about Nottingham in general. I've been to the UK a few times, but never made it to Nottingham before. So that's going to have to change on my next trip. I think what really drew me to the residency with the Women's Centre was the focus on helping women. It already aligned with my interests and some of the work that I've done before. I've done a lot of work in Melbourne in the social justice space, with, for example, the RMIT Centre for Innovative Justice and working with people who have the lived experience of going through hardship and homelessness – things like that.
So I was really stoked when they wanted me to be their writer in residence. I think what also really surprised me was the lovely sense of community I encountered there; it was really strong, supportive, and quite diverse.
Melbourne is a UNESCO City of Literature, and this residency connected you with Nottingham through that. What does being part of the City of Literature community mean to you – as a writer and someone sharing their culture and identity?
I really like that the City of Literature offices are promoting ways of connecting with different cultures and communities. In addition to this writer's residency, I took part in an online writer's room called Parallel Panels with a sister City of Literature in Korea.
There were ten writers from Melbourne and Korea, and we all met on a Wednesday night and shared comics that we were creating. That was a super fun experience and really fostered this sense of community. It meant I met up, even after, with people from Melbourne City of Literature, who I’d never found the opportunity to meet and encounter before. We adopted a real sense of friendship.
As part of the residency, you led a comic-making workshop with Nottingham Women's Centre. What was that experience like, and why did comics feel like the right medium for engaging with the women and their stories?
Because I'm an artist and writer, I feel like comics are a really nice medium that combines both of those things that I love. Sometimes communicating something with an image and text can be a lot more powerful than writing in prose – at least that's what I find. Sometimes it can even unlock ideas, or a new way to tell stories.
We got some really beautiful stories about community. There was one about a woman meal-prepping in the kitchen while her son was rummaging through the toy box and upending a pot plant, basically doing what toddlers do
As a part of your residency, you have created a set of comics and illustrations influenced by the spaces in the Women’s Centre, as well as stories of women in your family who moved to the UK. Could you tell us about those pieces and what parts of the Centre inspired you most?
The first one, the stories from the Centre, was really interesting because I got a good mix of things. We tried to focus a bit on the spaces that people were using within the Centre, but also on literature, because it is a City of Literature project. So we wanted to ask what books people were reading, what books had inspired them, things like that. We got a handful of responses, including a couple from staff, and picked some stories to illustrate.
We got some really beautiful stories about community. There was one about a woman meal-prepping in the kitchen while her son was rummaging through the toy box and upending a pot plant, basically doing what toddlers do. I felt a really strong sense of connection from that because I was like, ‘oh yes, I recognise this scenario exactly’. I recognised that story in my own life – trying to get something done while your toddler is crawling around behind you creating chaos. That was really beautiful.
The one I'm doing about my family is still in progress. I've previously talked to my grandmother about moving from South Africa to Doncaster in 1960. They went on the boat and my grandmother was getting really, really sick, thinking it was seasickness. It turned out it was her seventh pregnancy at forty years old, so my mum was born in England.
They left during this period of apartheid – when my grandfather was classified as white and the rest of the family was classified as coloured. They decided to pack up, made some moves to make a bit of money, bought a ticket on the ship, came to the UK and stayed with my grandmother's sister for six or seven years. My grandmother is 105 and still doing very well.
My mum was seven when she came here, so I'm really interested in exploring that epoch, what was happening within the family, but also what was happening in the UK at the same time. I'm in the process of figuring out what shape that takes. I've done some interviews with my family and had some chats, and now I'm just trying to work out what the story becomes.
Now that the residency has come to an end, what is your biggest takeaway from the experience? Is there anything about Nottingham, its community, or the Women's Centre that you particularly connected with?
I got really keen to visit at some point. I'd love to pop my head in, have a look at the space and chat to the people I was working with. Christie, Simone and Rebi at the Centre were so much fun to work with.
It's also opened my eyes to the literary scene in Nottingham and what's happening there. It looks like a beautiful place, and I would really like to come and visit. That's probably my main takeaway. My husband's French and my kids are French, so at some point we're going to do a big tour of France to visit friends and family. I think we're going to have to visit the UK at the same time.
And I guess the only other thing is a big thank you to the Women's Centre for choosing me as the writer in residence. I imagine they got a lot of applications, and I was so excited to be the writer who was chosen.
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