Enza Gandolfo is a writer who has lived most of her life in Melbourne’s western suburbs. She has published two novels, Swimming (2009) and The Bridge (2018) which is partly inspired by the Westgate bridge collapse. Until recently, Enza was an academic at Victoria University. She has also written a series of non – fiction books, including Inventory on Op Shops with Sue Dodd and It Keeps Me Sane: Women Craft Wellbeing with Martyn Grace, the former involving a collaboration with Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West.
Enza’s novel The Bridge begins with the story of young Italian migrant Antonello who has taken up a job on the Westgate bridge as a rigger. He later witnesses the collapse and grapples with the trauma of that event for years to come. In the novel, the Westgate bridge is a character in and of itself – it maintains a foreboding presence for Antonello and other characters in the novel who decades later are forced to deal with a tragic event. Enza explores class, culpability and trauma in The Bridge and it is some of these themes we have sought to explore in these audio pieces.
You can learn more about Enza and her work here: https://enzagandolfo.wordpress.com/
Enza discusses her experience being a local when the Westgate bridge collapsed. For Enza, the collapse highlighted the recurring safety risks that many of the working class community experienced in their daily working lives.
In this next chapter, Enza speaks of her connections to the bridge which served as inspiration for her novel.
Enza discusses the challenges of telling such a personal story in a sensitive and strong manner
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