Newcastle, again!
For the Diana Wynne Jones Memorial Conference, 2014
I think it is only fitting that I post the photos from my second trip to Newcastle now, half a year after my attendance at the conference, because not only have I had time for my experience there to percolate and condense, but I have actually finished my entire M.A. project now. I successfully defended my thesis in December, and have moved on to a new chapter in my life. I hope, still, to compile an article that explains contrapuntal heroism: relative and relational, and shows how Jones uses it in her work, but I am finishing up an older project right now, and that will be a side project that I work on while I am doing other things—a journey back to the project I completed this past year.
What I have discovered about conferences—and the aspect about them that I have found most rewarding—is the amazing people you meet. Both conferences I went to last year had very narrow focuses. They were both single author memorial conferences, so rather than being filled solely with scholars and students from a particular field, they brought together individuals from all walks of life whose lives had been touched in some profound way by one of my favourite authors: Diana Wynne Jones, and (at the previous conference) Etty Hillesum—each of whom had had a lasting impact on my own life.
The Diana Wynne Jones conference was a perfect way to end one of the finest holidays I've had in years. I returned to Newcastle, which is a marvelous city, and which I felt quite at home in since I had been there only a few months before. I checked into (coincidentally) the same room at the same hostel I had stayed at the previous time, and one of the guys who had been in my room the first time WAS STILL THERE. The people working at the hostel were lovely, as usual, as well. I went back to the river for another run and checked out the shops I had liked from before. It was lovely.
The conference itself was exceptional. It was two days of listening to talks from Diana's SISTER, literary agent, friends, and people whose papers I had been reading for months—half of the people I had quoted in my thesis turned out to be there at the conference. It happened on the first day that I was standing with a group of people, chatting between talks, and I mentioned an interesting paper I had recently read comparing Howl's Moving Castle to The Wizard of Oz, and a bubbly woman with bouncy hair said, "Oh, you read my piece? I am always so delighted when I hear people have actually read these essays I put out. I feel like I just write them into the air; I never know if people ever read them" (something like that). There she was. I was talking to the woman who had WRITTEN THE ARTICLE. It probably sounds funny, but I felt like I was chatting with celebrities all weekend, and on that level alone it was marvelous. The woman I just mentioned is from Israel, and translated the Harry Potter books into Israeli for publication in Israel.
Every person I met at the conference was remarkable. As I said, there were numerous Jones scholars (almost all of them, because they are a rather tight group), there was a wonderfully vibrant student from somewhere in the States who was doing her master's in creative writing in Wales. We had some great conversations—she had done all sorts of interesting, adventurous things, and had recently been training horses somewhere in Europe. There were also the three wonderful women I spent the last night with—a Judge from somewhere in Baden-Württemberg, a computer programmer from L.A. who had also lived for a few years in Paris, and a Swedish librarian—who were all just wonderful. I think part of the interest for me in seeing all the different professions people at the conference had, was realizing that these people in all these different professions and walks of life had such similar interests.
I felt that there was a very special connection between everyone there, because we were all so passionate about the stories. The first girl I mentioned had jokingly mentioned to a group of us that she judged new friends on whether or not they liked Jones novels: she said she'd lend them one and if they didn't love it, she took note of that. Another said that she had two copies of all her favourite Jones books: her copy from when she first read it, and the copy she lent out to people. People had such great stories to share.
It was amazing, especially at that stage in my thesis, to be able to chat with people who knew the literature so well.
That is all for now—I think I have shared plenty of memories. Below I have attached a few links about the conference. There are certainly other write-ups of the conference on the web (including one by an attendee who didn't like my paper very much!), but I will just leave you with these, and you can search further if you wish.
Links to my chapter on Jones:
Ursula Jones, Diana's younger sister:
Laura Cecil, Diana's Literary Agent:
Catherine Butler, the Conference Keynote, and a friend of Diana's:
A dreamy kitchen I spied in Newcastle:
Newcastle at Night:
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