When Kim Hodges first sat down to write about her life growing up in the small town of Coolah, she never expected to share the story outside her family.
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“When I first started to write it, I would say I was only writing for the cupboard, because I thought, you know, there was shame, there was stigma, embarrassment,” she said.
Kim planned to give the memoir to her three teenage sons to give them an idea of her upbringing. However as she continued to put the pieces together, she realised her struggles with alienation, inequality and resilience could benefit others.
“Those scales tilted as I wrote it. So what got bigger was the desire to get it published, and maybe other people or young people will identify with the resilience in the book,” she said.
Kim is now bringing her story, Girl On The Edge to Inverell. She described the book as a coming of age story, written from her 16 to 18 year old self’s perspective with the added hindsight of an adult lense.
“Trying to make sense of the community around me, my family, the school, the graziers and the town. So trying to make sense of what, you know, my lived experience,” she said. She said the crux of the story was the resilience she built while overcoming a major life crisis.
The thought of sharing her story first occurred at age 20, when Kim noticed how different her country upbringing of riding camels and chasing kangaroos was to her Sydney-bred friends.
“I think from 20 I had the little seed, and then at 45 that the seed got bigger and bigger and bigger and I had to take some time off and write.”
Despite knowing she had a worthwhile tale, Kim said the writing process didn’t come naturally. “I thought I had a great story that’s quite unique, but I found putting sentences together, sentence structure and grammar, creative writing didn’t come easily to me,” she said. Kim loves telling students she failed her HSC.
“I wasn’t real good at English, I wasn’t a nerdy person who’d read lots of books, but I had this amazing story that eventually I knew could be published.”
Kim will visit the Dust Jacket between 10.30am-12pm on Saturday, followed by a free memoir writing workshop at the library from 2pm.