Worlds We can believe in

Background: For Australian writers, a key challenge in cultural exchange programs has been the ‘lack of support to develop relationships’ (Australia Council 2015, 51). At the same time, UNESCO states that ‘in an intercultural encounter, basic capacities include the ability to listen, dialogue and wonder’ (2009, 45). The WrICE collaborative residency model developed by Carlin and Rendle-Short (2016) is a novel response to the demand for deeper connections between writers and writing across Asia-Pacific borders. The research in this NTRO seeks to investigate, from the unique standpoint of a shared role as facilitator/participants, how the WrICE collaborative residency enacts conditions for ethical and creative encounter and exchange. Contribution: ‘Worlds we can believe in’ is an essay co-written by WrICE facilitator/participants Carlin and Rendle-Short, adopting the mode of an essayistic dialogue. It adopts a strategy of experimental practice in nonfiction writing—essaying (Dillon 2017)— to generate new knowledge on the dynamics of intercultural exchange. In analysing the experiences of a specific residency in Yogyakarta in 2018 it shows, both through its reflexive and dialogic mode of expression and its knit of theoretical and descriptive matter, how practices of listening, lingering (Han 2017), awkwardness (Cappello 2007) and not-knowing are vital in inviting and enabling genuine encounter. Significance: This essay is published in The Near and the Far, Vol 2, an anthology of new writing from the Asia-Pacific region that features many award-winning and internationally acclaimed writers including Ellen van Neerven, Christos Tsiolkas, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Han Yujoo and Alice Pung. The book is published by leading Australian trade publisher Scribe, on the back of the success of the first volume, praised by Bookseller & Publisher as ‘attest[ing] to the important work that can result from writers immersing themselves in a place so unlike their home.'