Lin Van Hek
Lin Van Hek (aka Lin Van Hecke) is a writer, performer and co-founder of a political theatre performance group called Difficult Women. Lin Van Hek was born in Melbourne but lived in Europe and India for some years. She returned to Australia in the 70s and built a stone house by hand on the Brass Knocker Creek in the middle of the State forest in the southeastern corner of New South Wales.
Van Hek was the lead singer of the electro-dance band called Skin the Wig in the 80s. She co-wrote with Joe Dolce the song Intimacy which was part of the film, The Terminator. She recorded a solo CD River of Life featuring songs of New Zealand writer, Kath Tait.
She has published two novels, The Hanging Girl and The Ballad of Siddy Church. She has had stories published in two anthologies, Cat Tales: The Meaning of Cats in Women’s Lives, and Horse Dreams: The Meaning of Horses in Women’s Lives. She is a winner of the Melbourne Age Short Story Contest.
Helen Garner's character "Lilian" in Monkey Grip, is based on Van Hek. Lin is the originator of the Difficult Women show which brings to life in concert and on stage some of the most controversial and important women artists and writers, women who were labelled difficult in their day due to their willingness to go against the accepted norm of the female artist.
Lin Van Hek
I was a child with many aunties. The hotel was teeming with them ... I grew up with the poetry of aunties.
Lin Van Hek writes about the poetry of aunties in a novel that is at once thrilling and filled with the memories of wilful women. When Eadie Wilt disappears during the flood, everyone thinks she has drowned. But Siddy Church's granddaughter has more life to live in a household filled with stories and larger-than-life characters.
Filled with strong and unconventional women, The Ballad of Siddy Church tells of the lasting effect this larrikin mob has on the life of Edie Wilt. At the centre of the mayhem is Siddy Church.
My grandmother was a difficult woman, you could not get around it. She was born on three different occasions in three locations and she said her name was Siddy Church. Late at night she would sit like a giant curious toad, her heavy-lidded eyes turning with her head, her pupils like magic bullets about the room. Her past was too big and too diverse for her to govern, people talked about her shady past. She had relinquished her right to her own story.
1997 | ISBN 9781875559619 | Paperback | 195 x 130 mm | 261 pp