BACK STORIES

BACK STORIES is an anthology of Pippa Kay's best short stories and a couple of her poems. Most of these have won awards in literary competitions and some have been published elsewhere.

Pippa focuses on her characters and their back stories, that is, the story that happened before the current story. She skillfully weaves the two stories together so the reader understands why and how her characters got to where they are. Many of her characters are victims - victims of love or victims of crime.

Pippa wrote The Old Feller which won the Society of Women Writers National Short Story Award in 1999, after hearing about an old inmate in one of our prisons who was so institutionalised he was frightened that one day they'd set him free. She was also keen to accept a challenge to make a cruel and violent man sympathetic to the reader. Early drafts were in the third person, but, as often happens, she got to know this character so well she decided to write it in the first person, using his rough, uneducated voice.

After reading a newspaper story about a woman whose son's body had been found after many years of being "missing", Pippa wrote The Bella Vista. She asked herself how she would react if it were her son? How do parents of missing children cope with not knowing? Do they live in hope or do they give up?

The Full Back was inspired by a visit to Silverwater Correction Centre. In the Reception area visitors are often lined up for a sniffer dog parade. On this occasion the dog picked out a young boy of about twelve years of age. Was the boy carrying drugs? What was his 'back story'? She uses the boy's voice to tell the story.

The Triggerman is a non-fiction story that was first published in On Murder 2: True Crime Stories in Australia edited by Kerry Greenwood. It was inspired by the puzzle of Bill Vandenberg, a most unlikely hitman who confessed to the Kalajzich shootings and later committed suicide in prison. Pippa uses the text of Vandenberg's suicide note as device to tell his back story.

Compound Interest was also inspired by a true story. It recently won first prize in the FreeXpresSion Short Story Competion 2005. As the judge, Peter Hanbury, said:
"Perfectly in character throughout, this is a convincing first person account of a self-centred teenager's attempt to evade a maths test, and how her spur-of-the-moment excuse snowballs into a police investigation..."

Before they died Pippa interviewed her parents-in-law, Ivan and Rosina Kalajzich, and it is their story that inspired Veneer Inlay. Pippa used a veneer inlay table, crafted by Ivan, as a metaphor for their love. As Ivan gathers up his tiny pieces of wood veneer he says in his broken English: "Now this... looks terrible. But when I finish it will look good. Now it looks like all the bits and pieces are different. Like nothing belongs and nothing fits. But all the leedly pieces, I can make them fit... it will be one smooth piece of wood."

The Snowcave won First Prize in the Open Poetry Wollondilly FAW Literary Competition 2001 with the judge's comment: "Strong use of an infrequently used verse form - the villanelle - to deal with a recent and well-known tragedy. The poem avoids over-sentimentality, and it similarly refuses to 'exploit' the subject matter. Well balanced and mature writing."

The Investigative Reporter recently won 2nd prize in the Free Xpression Modern Free Verse Poetry Competition 2005. Judge, Dulcie Meddows, commented: "A tell-all, well crafted poem in black and white truth".