The Garret: Writers on writing: Recent Episodes
Bad Producer Productions
Love writing? Looking to improve your writing? Or do you just love listening to writers talk about their craft? If yes, The Garret: Writers on Writing is for you.
The Garret is a podcast writers for writers about the craft of writing. It is hosted Astrid Edwards, and her goal is to interview the best writers in Australia (and perhaps some from abroad) about how and why they do what they do.
The Garret has ongoing partnerships with the State Library of Victoria, Writers Victoria and RMIT University.
A defining feature of The Garret is our transcripts. Each interview is published with a complete transcript (so you don’t have to write anything down while you listen).
The Garret was shortlisted for Best Literature, Arts and Music Podcast in both the 2017 and 2019 Australian Podcast Awards.
The Garret is a labour of love on behalf of all emerging writers. The Garret is supported by grants and the time of Astrid Edwards. It does not operate for revenue or profit. If you would like to support The Garret, simply subscribe wherever else you listen to your podcasts and join the conversation on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
You can also follow our host Astrid Edwards (including her published book reviews) at astridedwards.com.
Waanyi writer Alexis Wright is the only author to win the Stella Prize twice - the first time for Tracker and the second time for Praiseworthy.
Alexis is also the author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria and The Swan Book, as well as Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; and Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory.
Alexis was previously the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne, and she is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
This interview was recorded live for Vision Australia in March 2024, after Praiseworthy was longlisted for The Stella Prize.
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Sam Elkin's debut memoir is Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga.
Sam’s essays have been published in the Griffith Review, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books and Kill Your Darlings.
He co-edited Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia .
He hosts the 3rrr radio show Queer View Mirror and is a Tilde Film Festival board member.
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Laurie Steed is a novelist and short story writer. Greater City Shadows, his short story collection, was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He also published a memoir, Dad: Confessions of an Anxious Father, in 2023.
His fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in The Age, Meanjin, Overland, Island, Westerly, and elsewhere.
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Kate Larsen is a writer, poet and arts and cultural consultant with more than 25 years’ experience in the non-profit, government and cultural sectors in Australia, Asia and the United Kingdom. She is one of the contributors behind The Relationship Is the Project.
Kate is a thought leader in the areas of arts governance and cultural leadership, workplace culture and wellbeing, online communication and communities, and being an ally for inclusion and community leadership of underrepresented groups.
Kate has appeared on The Garret before, speaking about her poetry collection Public. Open. Spaces. and the crisis of arts funding in Australia. You can listen to that interview here.
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James Bradley is a writer and critic. He has returned to non-fiction with his latest work, Deep Water: The world in the ocean. His previous books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and The Penguin Book of the Ocean.
His essays and articles have appeared in The Monthly, The Guardian, Sydney Review of Books, Griffith Review and Meanjin. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia’s Critic of the Year, and he has been shortlisted twice for the Bragg Prize for Science Writing and nominated for a Walkley Award.
James has previously appeared on The Garret discussing his works of climate fiction.
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Amanda Lohrey writes fiction and non-fiction. Her latest novel, The Conversion, was released in 2023. Her previous novel, The Labyrinth (2021), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, a Prime Minister’s Literary Award, a Tasmanian Literary Award and the Voss Literary Prize.
Amanda is also regular contributor to the Monthly magazine and a former senior fellow of the Australia Council’s Literature Board.
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Nam Le is one of Australia's foremost poets. His short story collection The Boat has been republished as a modern classic and is widely translated, anthologised, and taught. 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is his first poetry collection.
Nam has received major awards in America, Europe, and Australia, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and the Melbourne Prize for Literature.
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Catriona Menzies-Pike is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, Canada. Between 2015 and 2023 she was the editor of the online journal of criticism, the Sydney Review of Books. In this period she also edited four anthologies of Australian critical writing, most recently Critic Swallows Book.
Her newsletter on literature and the internet, Infra Dig.
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Sara Saleh is a writer/poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. In 2023 she published her first novel, 'Songs for the Dead and the Living', as well as her first poetry collection 'The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat'.
Sara is the first and only poet to win both the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published widely and she is co-editor of the ground-breaking 2019 anthology 'Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity'.
In this interview Sara speaks about 'The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat'and reads 'The Gaza Suite'. Sara recently spoke on The Garret about Songs for the Dead and the Living.
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Tracey Lien was born and raised in southwestern Sydney and now lives in Brooklyn. All That’s Left Unsaid is her debut novel, and it won the Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction, the MUD Literary Prize, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Novel and the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize.
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Christos Tsiolkas is one of Australia's most accomplished writers. His latest novel, In-Between, is an exploration of class, family and love in middle age.
Christos is the author of eight novels, including Loaded (which was made into the feature film Head-On) and the international bestseller The Slap (which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, among many other honours). His work of historical fiction, Damascus, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction.
In 2021 Christos won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He has appeared on The Garret before. Listen to Christos discuss his previous novel, Damascus, here.
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Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai Woman, award-winning author and multidisciplinary artist. Her books include Bindi, Kindred and Returning. Her play, Going Home, is in development, as is her first novel, Yaraman. In 2022 she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to the arts.
You can read the transcript of this interview here. Kirli has a lso spoken on The Garret before about her verse novel Bindi.
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Richard Flanagan is a Tasmania writer. Question 7, his latest work, was published in 2023 and will no doubt become that rare thing - a commercial bestseller that attracts critical acclaim.
His novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting and The Narrow Road to the Deep North have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014.
Richard has been interviewed on The Garret before, and you can listen to his thoughts on his previous novel, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, here.
Thanks to The Wheeler Centre an RMIT Capitol
This recording took place on 9 November 2023 at RMIT Capitol for The Wheeler Centre. Thanks go to the phenomenal team at The Wheeler Centre for sharing this audio with us.
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Beejay Silcox is a writer and literary critic. She is the Artistic Director of the Canberra Writers Festival, and in 2023-2-24 the Chair of Judges of The Stella Prize.
Her literary criticism and cultural commentary regularly appears in national arts publications, and is increasingly finding an international audience, including in the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The New York Times.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry
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Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the memoir The Hate Race and the poetry collections Carrying the World and How Decent Folk Behave. Her children's picture books include the CBCA Honour book The Patchwork Bike and the illustrated poem When We Say Black Lives Matter, which was longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal.
Her latest poetry collection is It's the Sound of the Thing, which was nominated for The Guardian's Best Australian Children's Books of 2023 and shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2024.
In 2023 she was Poet in Residence at The University of Melbourne.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry
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Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in the Adelaide Hills.
Her debut novel was the wildly successful The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020), which was based on her original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives and became an international bestseller. The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023) is her second work of historical fiction, and exists in the same world as The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja writer and educator. Her 2023 memoir We Come With This Place - a book she never intended to publish - won the ALS Gold Medal and four NSW Premier's Awards, and was also listed for many other prizes.
An educator, she has worked in teaching and learning for many years – a gift given through the hard work of her parents. She continues to experience the privilege of living with country and with family. Debra completed her PhD in Narrative Theory and Semiotics at Deakin University in 2021.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry
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Lucy Treloar is a novelist. Her debut, Salt Creek, won the Dobbie Literary Award among others and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UK's Walter Scott Prize. Wolfe Island, her second novel, won the Barbara Jefferis Award and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's and NSW literary awards.
Lucy's essays and short fiction have appeared in publications including Meanjin, The Age, Overland and Best Australian Stories.
You can read the transcript of this interview here.
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Brigid Mullane is a publisher at Ultimo Press, and in this interview she discusses her career and her path into publishing.
She was previously Managing Editor at Hachette, Editor of Kill Your Darlings, and Communications Manager at Writers Victoria. She has also worked in a variety of roles at Melbourne Writers Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, Emerging Writers’ Festival, the Sun Bookshop and the Brunswick Street Bookstore.
You can read the transcript of this interview here.
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Tony Birch is an activist, historian and essayist. In this interview Tony reflects on his most recent novel, Women and Children.
His works include The White Girl (winner of the 2020 NSW Premier's Award for Indigenous Writing and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Prize), Ghost River (winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing), and Blood (shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award).
Tony has appeared on The Garret several times before, including for one of his first recorded discussions of The White Girl and reflections about creativity during the Pandemic.
You can read the transcript of this interview here.
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Charlotte Wood has won the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Award (as well as many other awards). She is the author of ten books - seven novels and three non-fiction works. Her latest novel is Stone Yard Devotional, which she describes as an 'interior' and 'austere' work, and her most personal work of fiction to date.
Charlotte has appeared on The Garret several times before, including to discuss her non-fiction work The Luminous Solution, as well as a deep-dive into her international bestseller, The Natural Way of Things.
You can read the transcript of this interview here.
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Hedley Thomas is a journalist and has won eight Walkley awards, the first for his investigations into the Australian Federal Police investigations of Dr Mohamed Haneef, and the second for the podcast 'The Teacher's Pet'. In 2023 he published 'The Teacher's Pet' the book, and in this episode Hedley takes the reader behind the scenes of the global podcast.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar and founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne. He is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (2020) and Right Story Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking (2023). His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
This episode comes with a trigger warning for suicide and mental ill-health.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. She writes about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead, and her latest novel is Edenglassie.
Her first novel was published in 1997 and since then her work has received acclaim in many literary awards. Killing Darcy won the Royal Blind Society Award and was shortlisted for an Aurealis award. Her sixth novel, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Stella Prize, two Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, two Queensland Literary Awards and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, and a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Laura Jean McKay is a fiction writer, and her latest work is the short story collection Gunflower. Her previous novel, The Animals in That Country, was awarded the international Arthur C. Clarke Award, as well as the Victorian Prize for Literature and the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year. Laura was awarded the NZSA Waitangi Day Literary Honours in 2022.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Mirandi Riwoe is an award writer of historical non-fiction. In 2023 she released Sunbirds, a historical fiction romance interrogating a bygone era - Java in 1941 before the Japanese invasion of World War II and in the lead up to the revolution to overthrow the colonial administration of the Dutch East Indies to become Indonesia in 1949.
Her 2020 novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain won the ARA Historical Novel Prize and the Queensland Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her short fiction and novellas can be found in the collection The Burnished Sun.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Sara Saleh is an award-winning writer, poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been widely published nationally in English and Arabic. She is co-editor of the groundbreaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other, and made history as the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review's 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. Songs for the Dead and the Living (2023) is her first novel.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Chris Masters has practiced the dark art of investigative journalism for decades. He spent extended periods with Australian forces in Afghanistan, and in 2023 published Flawed Hero, his account of reporting on Ben Roberts-Smith and subsequent defamation trial.
He is the author of Flawed Hero (2023), No Front Line (2017), Uncommon Soldier (2013) and Jonestown (2006). His reports 'The Big League' and 'The Moonlight State' both led to Royal Commissions.
You can read the transcript for this interview here.
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Leigh Sales is one of Australia’s most recognised and respected journalists. As the new presenter of Australian Story and the recent host of the ABC’s flagship current affairs program, 7.30, she has interviewed dozens of prominent people.
Leigh is the winner of three Walkley Awards. She has written three long form works - Detainee 002 (2007), Any Ordinary Day (2019) and Storytellers (2023), as well as the essay On Doubt. In 2023, her service to journalism and the community was recognised with an honorary doctorate from Edith Cowan University.
Leigh has previously appeared on The Garret, and you can listen to that interview here. You can read the transcript for this interview here.
About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry
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Kate Mildenhall and Robbie Arnott recorded this session 'Into the Wild' LIVE at Canberra Writers Festival in August 2023.
Robbie's acclaimed debut, Flames, won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award and a Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Not the Booker Prize.
His follow-up, The Rain Heron, won the Age Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Literary Prize and an Adelaide Festival Award.
Limberlost is his third novel. It won the Age Book of the Year Award and the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
Thanks to Canberra Writers Festival
This recording took place at 2:30pm on Sunday 20 August at Kambri Cultural Centre (ANU), and thanks go to the phenomenal team at Canberra Writers Festival for sharing this audio with us.
If you are interested in running festivals, judging prizes and writing reviews, we recommend this interview with Beejay Silcox, Judge of The Stella Prize and Artistic Director of Canberra Writers Festival.
About The Garret
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Kate Mildenhall and Astrid Edwards recorded this session 'The Hummingbird Effect' LIVE at Canberra Writers Festival in August 2023.
Kate's debut novel, Skylarking, was longlisted for Debut Fiction in The Indie Book Awards 2017 and the 2017 Voss Literary Award, and her bestselling The Mother Fault was longlisted for the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2020 Aurealis Awards. The Hummingbird Effect is her third novel. Kate also teaches creative writing and co-hosts The First Time podcast.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
Thanks to Canberra Writers Festival
This recording took place at 2:30pm on Saturday 19 August at Kambri Cultural Centre (ANU), and thanks go to the phenomenal team at Canberra Writers Festival for sharing this audio with us.
If you are interested in running festivals, judging prizes and writing reviews, we recommend this interview with Beejay Silcox, Judge of The Stella Prize and Artistic Director of Canberra Writers Festival.
About The Garret
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Erin Riley is a social worker, and has spent most of the last decade working alongside marginalised populations in community aged care. Erin is also a writer, and their A Real Piece of Work is their debut memoir and collection of essays.
Erin brings a queer lived experience to their professional work and to their writing. They were a Penguin Random House Australia Write It fellow in 2021, and have been published in Kill Your Darlings, Bent Street and various corners of the internet.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Anna Funder is the author of the international bestsellers Stasiland (2002) and All That I Am (2012).Her third major work, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life (2023) interrogates the historical record to uncover Eileen O'Shaunessy, the wife of George Orwell, and her influence on his writing.
Her books have won multiple literary awards: Stasiland received the the Samuel Johnson Prize (the UK's premier award for non-fiction and All That I Am the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Originally trained as an international human rights lawyer, Anna is a former DAAD Fellow in Berlin, Australia Council Fellow, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Briohny Doyle writes extraordinary fiction. Echolalia was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2021, and in 2023 she released Why We Are Here.
Briohny is a lecturer in creative writing at The University of Sydney and a former Fulbright scholar, and her writing also appears in The Monthly, The Guardian, Meanjin, The Griffith Review, and The Age.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Beejay Silcox is a writer and literary critic, and also the Artistic Director of the Canberra Writers Festival.
Her literary criticism and cultural commentary regularly appears in national arts publications, and is increasingly finding an international audience, including in the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The New York Times.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
About The Garret
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Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.
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Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the memoir The Hate Race and the poetry collections Carrying the World and How Decent Folk Behave. Her children's picture books include the CBCA Honour book The Patchwork Bike and the illustrated poem When We Say Black Lives Matter, which was longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. In 2023 she is Poet in Residence at The University of Melbourne.
Maxine has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to her most recent interview here.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Sally Young is professor of political science at the University of Melbourne. Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires (2023) interrogates the history of Australia's media dynasties and the move from newspaper print to radio and TV and the online world.
She is the author of six previous books on Australian politics and media, including the award-winning Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia's Newspaper Empires, which Media Monsters follows on from. Her other works include How Australia Decides, Shooting the Picture (with Fay Anderson) and The Persuaders.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Kate Larsen is a writer, arts and cultural consultant currently based on Kaurna Yerta in Tamtanya/Adelaide. As one of Australia’s best-known social media poets, her alter ego Katie Keys (aka @tinylittlepoems) wrote and posted a daily poem for over a decade. Her first printed collection, Public. Open. Space, was released in 2023.
Kate’s work has been published or commissioned by The Relationship is the Project, Meanjin, Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Voice & Verse and anthologies, magazines and arts organisations across Australia, Asia and the United Kingdom.
In this interview Kate discusses her 2023 essay inOverland, 'Tears for Peers: the hidden costs of Arts funding'.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Isabelle Oderberg is a journalist with two decades of experience across Europe, Asia and Australia. Her first book, Hard to Bear, addresses a gap in the market and demonstrates it is possible to write about an experience some dismiss as unpalatable.
Isabelle mentions her agent Melanie Ostell, and Melanie has appeared on The Garret before to discuss what a literary agent does.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Sarah Krasnostein is the multi-award winning author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer and the Quarterly Essay Not Waving, Drowning. A regular contributor to The Monthly and The Saturday Paper, she was awarded the 2022 Walkley Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism. Her latest work, On Peter Carey, was released in 2023.
Sarah previously appeared on The Garret with Jess Hill discussing writing their Quarterly Essays.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Ghassan Hage and Randa Abdel-Fattah reflect on the publication of 'The Racial Politics of Australian Multiculturalism' - a combined work celebrating the 25th anniversary of Ghassan's 'White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society' and the 20th anniversary of his 'Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society'.
Ghassan is internationally renowned for his research on the intersection of racism, nationalism and colonialism.He is a professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne and a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Germany. His most recent sole-authored books include 'Alter-Politics: Critical Anthropology and the Radical Imagination', 'Is Racism an Environmental Threat?' and 'The Diasporic Condition: Ethnographic Explorations of the Lebanese in the World'.
Randa has appeared on The Garret before 'Coming of Age in the War on Terror', which was was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She is a Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University.
In this interview, Astrid quotes Omar Sakr reflecting on the influence Ghassan has had on his poetry, and you can listen to Omar's interview here.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Omar Sakr is the author of three poetry collections, Non-Essential Work (2023), The Lost Arabs (2019), These Wild Houses (2017). His first novel, Son of Sin (2022) was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards.
Omar performs 'Iris', a poem from his latest collection, at the 6:30 mark.
The Lost Arabs won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, and the Colin Roderick Award. Omar is a widely published essayist and editor whose work has been translated into Arabic and Spanish.
Omar last appeared on The Garret in 2002 after Son of Sin was published. Listen here.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Overland Literary Journal Issue 249 features several essays, including 'A guide to the colonisation of my mother tongues' by Natalia Figueroa Barroso and 'Dovetails' by EJ Clarence.
Natalia is an Uruguayan-Australian poet and storyteller and a member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, with degrees in Communication, Screenwriting and Media Production. Her work has appeared in the collections Racism: Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry; Any Saturday, 2021: Running Westward and Between Two Worlds and various literary magazines.
EJ is an emerging writer exploring the long narrative arc of Forced Adoption through Own Voices fiction, poetry, prose and personal essays which acknowledge the tenth anniversary of Julia Gillard’s National Apology.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction.
Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize, and Throat, which was shortlisted in 2021 for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in the Adelaide Hills.
Her debut novel was the wildly successful The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020), which was based on her original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives. The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023) is her second work of historical fiction, and exists in the same world as The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Her first work was One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Zoya Patel is the author of No Country Woman, a memoir of race, religion and feminism, and Once A Stranger, her debut novel.
She is co-host of The Guardian's Book It In podcast, and the Margin Notes podcast alongside Yen Eriksen.Zoya is a columnist for the RiotACT, and regular books critic and writer for The Guardian, Canberra Times, SBS Voices, Refinery29 and more. Zoya has won numerous awards for her writing and editing, and she was a 2020 judge for the Stella Prize and Chair of the 2021 Stella Prize judging panel.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Eloise Grills is an award-winning essayist, comics artist and poet, interested in hybrid visual-textual forms.
big beautiful female theory is her first illustrated memoir-in-essays. In addition to being shortlisted for The Stella Prize, the work was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards and highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
Her first poetry collection, If you’re sexy and you know it slap your hams, was shortlisted for the 2020 Mary Gilmore Award.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Adriane Howell is a Melbourne-based writer and arts worker. In 2013, she graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing. She is co-founder of the literary journal Gargouille. Hydra (2022) is her debut novel.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Louisa Lim is an award-winning journalist, podcaster and author. Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong (2022) was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, as well as the Walkley Book Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.
Her previous book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (2014), was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing.
She is a Senior Lecturer in Audiovisual Journalism at the University of Melbourne. She previously spent a decade in China as a correspondent for the BBC and NPR, and her work can also be read in the New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja woman. Her memoir We Come With This Place is shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2023.
An educator, she has worked in teaching and learning for many years – a gift given through the hard work of her parents. She continues to experience the privilege of living with country and with family. Debra completed her PhD in Narrative Theory and Semiotics at Deakin University in 2021.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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Edwina Preston is a Melbourne-based writer and musician. Preston is the author of a biography of Australian artist Howard Arkley, Not Just a Suburban Boy (2002), the novel The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer (2012), and the novel Bad Art Mother (2022).
Her writing and reviews have appeared in The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Heat, Island, Griffith Review and The Conversation.
Read the transcript for this interview here. 🫢 And we apologise for the quality of Astrid’s audio. The mic was broken and we didn’t know…
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Sarah Holland-Batt is the author of three books of poetry –The Jaguar (2022), The Hazards (2015) and Aria (2008) – and a book of essays on contemporary poetry, Fishing for Lightning (2021).
Her honours include the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo in the United States. She is presently the Judy Harris Writer in Residence at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, and Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Studies at QUT.
Read the transcript for this interview here.
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The Garret is back. We kick off with interviews with the six writers shortlisted for The Stella Prize - Sarah Holland-Batt, Edwina Preston, Debra Dank, Louisa Lim, Adriane Howell and Eloise Grills. New interviews start Monday 10 April 2023.
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Our host Astrid Edwards is one of the judges of the 2023 Stella Prize. As a result, The Garret is on hold until March 2023.
As always, the highest rating fiction and non-fiction episodes of the year will be re-released in December 2022!
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Robert Watkins is the Publishing Director of Ultimo Press. He has over 20 years experience in the Australian book industry having worked in book retail, sales, marketing, publicity, publishing and more recently as Head of Literary at Hachette Australia.
Robert’s love for a good story well told has led to publishing some of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, including Maxine Beneba Clarke, Claire G. Coleman, Sarah Schmidt and Michael Mohammed Ahmad. He is an advocate for progressive and inclusive publishing that speaks to contemporary issues, whether that be in narrative non-fiction or literary and reading group fiction.
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Dervla McTiernan is a wildly successful crime writer. Her debut novel, The Ruin, was a critically acclaimed international bestseller which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Fiction and the Barry Award for Best Original Paperback. The second and third installments in the series, The Scholar andThe Good Turn, garnered similar praise. In 2022 she released her first stand alone crime novel, The Murder Rule.
Born in County Cork, Ireland, Dervla practised as a corporate lawyer for twelve years. After the GFC she moved with her family to Western Australia, where she now writes full time.
Dervla first appeared on The Garret in 2020, and you can listen to that interview here.
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Rick Morton is a senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, a regular guest on ABC’s The Drum and an award-winning author of three non-fiction books: 100 Years of Dirt, On Money and My Year of Living Vulnerably. In 2022 he edited the anthology Growing Up in Country Australia.
He has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to that interview from 2021 here.
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Dr Neela Janakiramanan is a reconstructive plastic surgeon and advocate, and with the 2022 publication of The Registrar she adds novelist to her list of achievements.
Neela was also one of the medical leads in the Kids off Nauru campaign and in bringing together the Australian medical community and operationalising the Australian Medevac legislation to facilitate medical care for refugees in offshore detention.
Neela is a regular contributor to Women's Agenda, and has also written for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald andThe Saturday Paper, and often appears on ABC's The Drum.
You may also be interested in our recent interview with literary agent Melanie Ostell, who is mentioned in this interview.
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Claire Coleman is a Noongar writer, born in Western Australia and now based in Naarm. Her family have been from the area around Ravensthorpe and Hopetoun on the south coast of WA since before time started being recorded.
She has written three works of speculative fiction to date - Terra Nullius: A Novel (2017), which was shortlisted for The Stella Prize, among many other awards, The Old Lie (2019) and Enclave (2022). Her acclaimed non-fiction book, Lies Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the impact of colonisation was published in 2021.
Claire has appeared on The Garret before. You can find a detailed discussion of Terra Nullius here, as well as a discussion recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in 2019 here.
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Phillipa McGuinness is a former book publisher turned author. She is the author of The Year Everything Changed: 2001, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and also Skin Deep: The inside story of our outer selves.
Phillipa has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to that interview here.
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Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese Australian writer and award-winning social advocate. She has published two middle grade novels (You Must Be Layla and the award-winning Listen, Layla), as well as her memoir Yassmin's Story. Talking About A Revolution is her 2022 anthology, which combines new and old works.
Yassmin has spoken in over twenty-five countries on social justice and inclusive leadership. She founded her first organisation, Youth Without Borders, at the age of sixteen, leading it for nine years before co-founding two other organisations focused on serving women of colour. Her TED talk ‘What does my headscarf mean to you?’ has been viewed over 2.5 million times and was selected as one of TED’s top 10 ideas.
Yassmin has appeared on The Garret before. In her previous interview she discussed writing YA fiction and who she approaches giving speeches (and preparing for her TED Talk).
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Winnie Dunn is the editor of and Amani Haydar is a contributor to 'Another Australia'.
Winnie is the General Manager of Western Sydney based literacy movement, Sweatshop. She is a writer of Tongan descent from Mount Druitt, and her work has been published in the Sydney Review of Books, Griffith Review, Meanjin, SBS Voices, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Southerly and Cordite.
Amani is an artist, lawyer, and advocate for women's health and safety based in Western Sydney. Her memoir, The Mother Wound, received theVictorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction and the Matt Richell Award for new Writer of the Year, among many other short- and long-listings. Amani's writing and illustrations have been published in ABC News Online and SBS Life and her self-portrait Insert Headline Here was a finalist in the 2018 Archibald Prize.
Winnie previously appeared on The Garret in late 2021, as did Amani in mid 2021.
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Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler are partners in life and writing. Tracks of the Missing (2022) is their second collaboration, after the highly-awarded Black Cockatoo (2018).
Carl is a Jaru and Kija man from Halls Creek. Carl works with young Indigenous boys through the Clontarf Academy focusing in improving engagement with education and providing a positive role model. Carl was nominated for Australian of the Year in 2016.
Hakea is an experienced English teacher who has taught around Australia including in remote Aboriginal communities. Hakea is committed to Indigenous education with a particular focus on story as learning and empowerment.
Carl and Hakea’s debut novella Black Cockatoo was published by Magabala Books in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Readings Children’s Book of the Year, shortlisted in the CBCA Young Reader category, shortlisted for an ABIA award, selected as a feature text for the 2018 Summer Reading Challenge.
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Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell collaborated to create a genre-defying work about motherhood.
Ceridwen is a writer based in Sydney. She’s the author of several acclaimed works of fiction (Blood Kin, Only the Animals, In the Garden of the Fugitives, Life After Truth, Once More With Feeling) and non-fiction (On J.M. Coetzee: Writers on Writers and Inner Worlds Outer Spaces: The Working Lives of Others). Her non-fiction essays have been published by newyorker.com, the Smithsonian Magazine, WIRED, Vogue, the Monthly and Alexander, among many others. She’s the recipient of an Australian Museum Eureka Award, and the 2020 and 2021 UNSW Press Bragg Prize for science writing.
Eliza is a teacher, writer and theatre actor, originally from America and now living permanently in Australia. Her theatre performances include: The Memory of Water, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, New Jerusalem, The Accident, Charles Mee’s Snow in June, Donnie Darko and Three Sisters. She trained at Studio Magenia Ecole de Mime in Paris and the Moscow Art Theatre, UC Berkeley and the ART Institute at Harvard University.
Ceridwen has appeared on The Garret twice before, and you can listen to her interview from 2018 here, and her interview from 2020 here.
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Melanie Ostell is a literary agent. She advocates for her authors and their works, and helps them build a writing career. She has more than twenty-five years’ experience in the Australian book publishing industry across a range of roles, including editor, publisher and educator. In this interview, she considers the role of the literary agent, why she represents the writers she works with, and what she looks for when reading an unpublished manuscript.
Melanie mentions Tara June Winch, who she represents, in this interview. You can listen to Tara speaking about her phenomenal work The Yield here.
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Julianne Schultz is a journalist and the author of several books,including The Idea of Australia, Reviving the Fourth Estate and Steel City Blues.
She is the Chair of The Conversation and Professor Emeritus of Media and Culture at Griffith's Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Julianne was the publisher and founding editor of Griffith Review. She has served on the board of directors of the ABC, Grattan Institute and Copyright Agency, and chaired the Australian Film TV and Radio School, Queensland Design Council and National Cultural Policy Reference Group.
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Anita Heiss is a proud member of the Wiradyuri nation of central New South Wales, and she writes across genres including non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial fiction and children’s fiction. Her memoir Am I Black Enough for You? was a finalist in the 2012 Human Rights Awards, and was updated and republished in 2022.
Anita’s other non-fiction works include Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight): Publishing Aboriginal Literature, and, as editor, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia and The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, which she co-edited with Peter Minter.
Her adult fiction includes Not Meeting Mr Right, Avoiding Mr Right, Manhattan Dreaming, Paris Dreaming and Tiddas. Her novel Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize, and was the University of Canberra 2020 Book of the Year. Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray was shortlisted for the 2021 HNSA ARA Historical Novel.
Anita has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to her 2021 interview discussing Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray here.
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Lee Kofman is a Russian-born, Israeli-Australian novelist, essayist and memoirist. She has published a number of books, including her memoir, The Dangerous Bride, and Imperfect: How Our Bodies Shape the People We Become. In 2022 she released The Writer Laid Bare, a book about the craft of writing. Lee holds a PhD in social sciences and MA in creative writing. She has also published three fiction books written in Hebrew and published in Israel.
Lee has previously appeared on The Garret, and you can listen to her first interview here. Lee also mentions her friend Leah Kaminsky, who speaks about her own writing process on The Garret here.
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KáriGíslason is a writer who crosses forms. His memoir, The Promise of Iceland, told the story of his return to his birthplace, Iceland. He co-wrote Saga Land: The island of stories at the edge of the world, which won the Indie Book Award for Non-Fiction, with Richard Fidler. He also writes fiction, including The Ash Burner and The Sorrow Stone. Kári lectures in Creative Writing at QUT.
In this interview, Kári talks about writing with his friend Richard Fidler. Richard has previously appeared on The Garret, and you can listen to Richard reflect on writing with Kári in this interview (recorded live at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in 2019).
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Mirandi Riwoe is the author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which won the 2020 Queensland Literary Award – Fiction Book Award and the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 2022 she has released The Burnished Sun, a collection of novellas and short stories. Mirandi's work has also appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories.
Mirandi has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to her reflect on Stone Sky Gold Mountain here.
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Jane Caro is a Walkley Award-winning columnist, novelist, broadcaster and social commentator.
She has published twelve books, including a young adult trilogy about the life of Elizabeth Tudor, her memoir Plain Speaking Jane, and The Mother (her first novel for adults).
She created and edited Unbreakable, which featured stories women writers had never told before and was published just before the Harvey Weinstein revelations.
Her most recent non-fiction work is Accidental Feminists, about the fate of women over 50. Jane has previously appeared on The Garret, and in this interview she reflects on her non-fiction works and Accidental Feminists.
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Jess Hill and Sarah Krasnostein are the two most recent authors of Quarterly Essays. Jess released The Reckoning: How #MeToo Is Changing Australia in late 2021, and Sarah released Not Waving, Drowning: Mental illness and Vulnerability in Australia in early 2022. Quarterly Essays are prestigious, but they are notoriously difficult and always come with intense time pressure. In this interview, Jess and Sarah discuss how they did it and why they signed up for it.
Jess is an investigative journalist and the author of See What You Made Me Do. She has been a producer for ABC Radio and journalist for Background Briefing, and Middle East correspondent for The Global Mail. Her reporting on domestic abuse has won two Walkley awards, an Amnesty International award and three Our Watch awards. See What You Made Me Do won the 2020 Stella Prize and the ABA Booksellers’ Choice Adult Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
Sarah is the multi-award-winning author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer. Her writing has appeared in magazines and journals in Australia, the United Kingdom and America. She holds a doctorate in criminal law.
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Josh Kemp writes Australian gothic fiction. Banjawarn, joint winner of the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, is his stunning debut novel. His short stories have been published by Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Seizure, Tincture and Breach. He’s previously been shortlisted for the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award and longlisted for the Fogarty Literary Award.
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Yumna Kassab's debut collection of short stories, The House of Youssef, was listed for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award, the NSW Premier's Literary Award and The Stella Prize. Australiana, published in 2022, is her first novel.
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Eliza Hull is a musical artist, writer, journalist and disability advocate. In 2022 she is the editor behind We've Got This: Stories By Disabled Parents. Her podcast series by the same name, We've Got This, was one of Radio National’s and ABC Life’s most successful series of all time. Eliza was also a contributor to Growing Up Disabled in Australia.
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Justin Smith is a Melbourne writer, journalist and broadcaster. He is a columnist with the Melbourne Herald Sun and a weekly guest on Channel Seven’s Sunrise. He has recently turned his hand to novel writing, publishing Cooper Not Out in 2022 and Babies of the Rose in 2020.
Justin has had a long career in radio as a presenter and executive producer. He has hosted national programs, he was embedded with Australian troops in Afghanistan, and was the Drive host on Sydney’s 2UE. He’s won multiple awards for journalism and broadcasting.
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Dr Jackie Huggins, a member of the Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru peoples, is currently leading the work for Treaty/Treaties in Queensland. Her biography of her mother, Auntie Rita, was published in 1994, and in 2022 she will publish her biography of her father, Jack of Hearts: QX11594. A new edition of her classic work Sister Girl: Reflections on Tiddaism, Identity and Reconciliation was released in early 2022.
Jackie is the former Co-Chair National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, former member of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Co-Chair Reconciliation Australia, the State Library Board of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. She was Co-Commissioner for Queensland for the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, and for several years was a Judge of the annual David Unaipon Award.
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Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses and The Lost Arabs. Son of Sin is his first novel, and in this interview we also find our about his forthcoming poetry collection and a possible fantasy book on the horizon.
The Lost Arabs won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, and the Colin Roderick Award.
Omar is a widely published essayist and editor whose work has been translated into Arabic and Spanish.
If you enjoy this interview, listen to Omar's first interview on The Garret from 2020.
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Omar Musa is a Malaysian-Australian author, poet and woodcutter. His latest work is the one-of-a-kind Killernova.
He has also released three poetry books (including Parang and Millefiori), four hip-hop records, written an acclaimed one-man play (Since Ali Died), and received a standing ovation at TEDx Sydney at the Sydney Opera House.
His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was published in 2014 and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Award. Musa was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
About The Garret
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We have a bit of a different episode for you today. There are no writers or guests, just our host Astrid Edwards doing a reading audit of what she has read so far this year.
About The Garret
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Jennifer Down is a highly awarded writer, named a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year consecutively in 2017 and 2018. Her third long form work is 2021's Bodies of Light.
Our Magic Hour, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her second book, Pulse Points, was the winner of the 2018 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2018 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was shortlisted for a 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Award.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Emily Bitto is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her debut novel, 'The Strays', was the winner of the 2015 Stella Prize, and in 2021 she released her second novel, 'Wild Abandon'.
Her fiction, poetry and non-fiction has appeared in various publications, including Meanjin, The Age, the Monthly, the Saturday Paper, The Big Issue, and The Sydney Morning Herald. She is also the co-owner of Carlton wine bar Heartattack and Vine.
About The Garret
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Andy Jackson is a poet of compassion and intellect. His 2021 collection, 'Human Looking', explores the voices of the disabled and ill with tenderness and love.
Andy's first collection, 'Among the Regulars', was shortlisted for the 2011 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and his 2020 collection 'Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold' was shortlisted for the John Bray Poetry Award.
Andy has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Ireland, India, the USA and across Australia, and has co-edited disability-themed issues of the literary journals Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. He works as a creative writing teacher and tutor for community organisations and universities.
About The Garret
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Charlotte Wood is the award-winning and acclaimed author of six novels, a collection of interviews and a book about cooking. She has won the Stella Prize, the Prime Minister's Literary Award, the Indie Book of the Year, and most recently the ABIA for Literary Fiction.
This interview explores her 2021 work of non-fiction, The Luminous Solution: Creativity, Resilience and the Inner Life. Charlotte has appeared on The Garret before, once exploring her most famous work, The Natural Way of Things, and again discussing her novel, The Weekend.
About The Garret
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Louise Ryan has been working in the Melbourne Publishing industry for 32 years, ten years at Readings and 22 in publishing houses Allen & Unwin and Penguin Random House. A recent recipient of the George Robertson Award for distinguished service in the publishing industry, she is now the manager of Readings flagship Carlton store. She serves on the Board of Melbourne Writers Festival, and is the co-author of Twins: A Practical and Emotional Guide to Parenting Twins.
About The Garret
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Winnie Dunn is a writer of Tongan descent from Mount Druitt. She is the general manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and the editor of several critically acclaimed anthologies, including Sweatshop Women, which is Australia’s first and only publication produced entirely by women of colour. Her work has been published in the Sydney Review of Books, The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review, Meanjin, SBS Voices, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Southerly and Cordite.
About The Garret
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Jay Kristoff has such a devoted audience his readers tattoo his characters on their own bodies. Jay writes fantasy, science fiction and YA, and his work repeatedly makes it to the New York Times bestseller list.
Jay's latest book is 'Empire of the Vampire', the first in a trilogy that our host Astrid has been waiting for since she was 13 and read Anne Rice's 'Interview with the Vampire'.
Jay has appeared on The Garret before to discuss 'The Nevernight Chronicles', and also ata live event with Amie Kaufman, his regular YA writing partner.
About The Garret
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Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. In 2021 she released her first work of non-fiction, Lies, Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the impact of colonisation.
During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, Terra Nullius: A Novel, which won the black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship and was listed for eight awards including a shortlisting for The Stella Prize. Her second novel was The Old Lie, and her third, Enclave, will hopefully be released in 2022.
Claire has appeared on The Garret twice before - talking about Terra Nullius: A Novel, and at a live event at the 2019 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Indonesia.
NOTE: Claire was on the road due to the pandemic when we recorded this interview, and the sound quality is not at our usual standard. We recommend reading the transcript whilst listening to the interview.
About The Garret
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Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a journalist, essayist, writer, and legal researcher. Her debut was the 2020 memoir 'I Choose Elena', a work she has followed up in 2021 with 'My Body Keeps Your Secrets'.
Her news reporting has appeared in ABC News, Guardian, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Women's Agenda. Her long-form writing has appeared in The Lifted Brow and Meanjin.
About The Garret
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Dr Yves Rees is a Lecturer in History at La Trobe University and co-host of Archive Fever. Rees was awarded the 2020 Calibre Essay Prize for their essay 'Reading the Mess Backwards' and 'All About Yves' is their memoir and debut.
Rees has a regular history segment on ABC Radio Melbourne and their writing has featured in the Sydney Review of Books, The Age, Archer magazine, Guardian Australia, Overland, Meanjin, Junkee, Australian Book Review and The Conversation. Rees is trans and uses they/them pronouns. They are the co-founder of the Spilling the T transgender writing collective and volunteer with Transgender Victoria.
About The Garret
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Jennifer Mills is the author of the novels The Airways, Dyschronia, Gone and The Diamond Anchor, as well as a collection of short stories, The Rest Is Weight. In 2019 Dyschronia was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious prize for literary fiction, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and the Aurealis Awards for science fiction.
She has previously appeared on The Garret, once to discuss her literary career and once after she was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
About The Garret
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Terri-ann White is the founder of Upswell Publishing, a new publishing imprint in Australia.
Between 2006 and 2020 she was Director and Publisher at UWA Publishing from 2006. In that time published around 450 books, including works of fiction, poetry and narrative non-fiction.
Prior to this, she founded and directed a cross-disciplinary research centre at UWA, taught literature and writing in universities, was a bookseller for 16 years, and organised festivals.
About The Garret
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Briohny Doyle is the author of The Island Will Sink, Echolalia and Adult Fantasy. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Monthly, Meanjin, Overland, The Griffith Review, The Good Weekend, The Guardian, and the Sunday Times. She is a lecturer in writing and literature at Deakin University and a 2020 Fulbright Scholar.
About The Garret
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Larissa Behrendt, a Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman, is a writer, lawyer and academic. She is the Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and at the Director of Research and Academic Programs Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research.
Larissa won the 2002 David Uniapon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for her novel Home. Her second novel, Legacy, won a Victorian Premiers Literary Award. Her most recent novel, After Story, was published in 2021. She has also published numerous textbooks on Indigenous legal issues.
Larissa wrote and directed the feature films, After the Apology and Innocence Betrayed and has written and produced several short films. She won the 2018 Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Documentary.
Larissa is on the board of Sydney Festival and a board member of the Australia Council’s Major Performing Arts Panel. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year.
Larissa has appeared on The Garret before to discuss Finding Eliza: Colonial Power and Storytelling.
About The Garret
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Mark Brandi's debut novel, Wimmera, won the coveted British Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger, and was named Best Debut at the 2018 Australian Indie Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year, and the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year. His second novel, The Rip, was published to critical acclaim and his third novel, The Others, was released during Sydney's 2021 lockdown.
Mark graduated with a criminal justice degree and worked extensively in the justice system, before changing direction and deciding to write.
Mark has appeared on The Garret before to discuss his first two books, Wimmera and The Rip.
About The Garret
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Amani Haydar is an artist, lawyer and advocate for women's health and safety. Her devastating and yet hopeful debut is 'The Mother Wound'.
Amani experienced the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Writing with grace and beauty in 'The Mother Wound', Amani shares the stories of her mother and grandmother to help other survivors find their voices.
Amani was a finalist in the 2018 Archibald Prize, and she uses visual art and writing to explore the personal and political dimensions of abuse, loss, identity and resilience.
About The Garret
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Michael Mohammed Ahmad is the founding director of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and editor of the critically acclaimed anthology 'After Australia'. Mohammed's debut novel, 'The Tribe', won the 2015 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists of the Year Award. His second novel, 'The Lebs', won the 2019 NSW Premier's Multicultural Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award. 'The Other Half of You' is his third novel.
Mohammed has previously appeared on The Garret discussing his 2019 shortlisting for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the 2020 anthology 'After Australia'.
About The Garret
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Alice Pung is an award-winning Melbourne writer who found a few minutes to speak to us during Melbourne's latest lockdown. Alice was at home with her newborn child, and you can hear them in the background of this short bonus interview.
Alice is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. One Hundred Days is her most recent novel.
Alice previously appeared at a live event on The Garret, alongside Hannah Kent and Clementine Ford.
About The Garret
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Dr Tony Birch is an activist, historian and essayist. He is the author of three novels - 'The White Girl' (winner of the 2020 NSW Premier's Award for Indigenous Writing and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Prize), 'Ghost River' (winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing), and 'Blood' (shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award).
He is also the author of 'Shadowboxing' and four short story collections, 'Dark As Last Night', 'Father’s Day', 'The Promise' and 'Common People', as well as the poetry collection 'Whisper Songs'.
Tony appeared on The Garret in 2020 and spoke in-depth about The White Girl.
About The Garret
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Dr Anita Heiss is an award-winning author of non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction, children’s novels and blogs. She is a proud member of the Wiradjuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, the GO Foundation and Worawa Aboriginal College.
Her novel Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms, set in Cowra during World War II, was the 2020 University of Canberra Book of the Year. Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray is her second work of historical fiction, and it is the first commercial work published with only Aboriginal language on the cover in Australia.
Anita is a board member of University of Queensland Press and Circa Contemporary Circus, and is a Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. As an artist in residence at La Boite Theatre in 2020, Anita began adapting her novel Tiddas for the stage.
About The Garret
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Dr Jonica Newby is a science reporter, author, TV presenter and director best known for her two decades on ABC TV’s popular weekly science program, Catalyst. She has twice won the Eureka Award, Australia’s most prestigious science journalism prize, and is a recipient of a World TV Award. Beyond Climate Grief: A journey of love, fire, snow and an enchanted beer can is her first book.
About The Garret
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Rebecca Starford is publishing director of Kill Your Darlings magazine and author of acclaimed memoir Bad Behaviour: A Memoir of Bullying and Boarding School, which is currently in development with Matchbox Pictures for adaptation into a TV series. The Imitator, released in 2021, is her first novel.
About The Garret
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Emily Maguire is the author of six novels, including the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted An Isolated Incident. She was a Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, an experience which enabled her to write 2021's masterful Love Objects.
Emily works as a teacher and as a mentor to young and emerging writers, and her articles and essays on sex, feminism, culture and literature have been published widely including in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Observer and The Age.
About The Garret
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Evelyn Araluen is the coeditor of Overland, as well as a poet, educator and researcher working with Indigenous literatures. 2021's Dropbear is her first collection.
Her shorter works have won the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize and a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship. Born, raised, and writing in Dharug country, she is a Bundjalung descendant.
Evelyn has appeared on The Garret before (talking about literary journals in Australia), and you can listen here.
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Rick Morton, author of the acclaimed memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder in 2019. His second - dare we say exquisite - memoir My Year of Living Vulnerably explores not only complex PTSD, but also love, history and forgiveness.
Rick has been a journalist for more than 15 years. He was a social affairs writer for The Australian, and he is now a senior reporter for the Saturday Paper. Rick regularly appears on television, radio and panels discussing politics, the media, writing and social policy.
About The Garret
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Declan Fry is a critic, writer, poet, essayist, and proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta. Born on Wongatha country in Kalgoorlie, in 2020 he became a critic for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald. He was also awarded the 2021 Peter Blazey Fellowship and the Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Award for memoir. His work has appeared in Meanjin, The Saturday Paper, Liminal and Overland.
About The Garret
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Sam van Zweden is a freelance writer interested in experimental nonfiction, essays, mental health, body writing, food, and memory.
Her collection of personal essays, Eating With My Mouth Open, won the 2019 KYD Unpublished Manuscript Award. Sam’s writing has appeared in the Saturday Paper, Meanjin, The Big Issue, The Lifted Brow, Cordite and The Sydney Review of Books.
In this interview Sam mentions Fiona Wright, Meera Atkinson and Kate Richards - all of whom have appeared on The Garret before.
About The Garret
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Randa Abdel-Fattah is a prominent Australian author, academic and human rights advocate.
She seeks to translate her academic work into creative interventions which reshape dominant narratives around race, human rights and identity in popular culture - and she does this well in her 2021 non-fiction work Coming of Age in the War on Terror.
Her debut novel Does My Head Look Big in This? has sold more than 100,000 copies in Australia, is published around the world and was performed on the stage in America. Randa is currently adapting the world as an Australian feature film.
Randa has also published eleven novels across a range of genres. In 2018 and 2019 she was nominated for Sweden's 2019 Astrid Lindgren Award, the world's biggest children's and young adult literature award.
In this interview Randa mentions the anthology After Australia. You can listen to an interview on The Garret with Michael Mohammed Ahmad, the editor of After Australia, here.
About The Garret
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Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai Woman and award-winning international writer of poetry, plays and picture books. She is a teacher, cultural consultant and artist. In 2020, Kirli was named the NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year.
Kirli created Poetry in First Languages, delivered by Red Room Poetry. Her debut picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and CBCA notables. Her poetry collection, Kindred was shortlisted for the ABIA 2020 Book Awards. Her verse novel, Bindi was the inaugural winner of the WA Premier's Book Awards and the Daisy Utemorrah Award.
Kirli has been shortlisted for the Nakata Brophy prize in 2018 and 2020. She is an esteemed judge for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, QPF Val Vallis Award and Blake Poetry Prize.
As a playwright, Kirli is co-creating Dead Horse Gap with Merrigong Theatre and South East Arts. Her first Solo play, Going Home has been supported by Playwriting Australia, and will take the stage in 2022.
Kirli mentions Ali Cobby Eckermann's verse novel Ruby Moonlight, and you can listen to an interview with Aly on The Garret about Ruby Moonlight here.
About The Garret
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Charlotte Wood is #1 on our list of our highest rating non-fiction interviews in 2020.
Charlotte Wood is one of Australia's most loved writers. This interview is an in-depth exploration of her most famous work, The Natural Way of Things, which is on its way to becoming an international classic. Be warned, there are spoilers.
The Natural Way of Things received the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction and was the University of Canberra Book of the Year for 2019.
In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.
You can also listen to this interview with Charlotte, recorded in late 2019 about her other works.
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Melissa Lucashenko is #2 on our list of our highest rating fiction interviews in 2020.
Melissa is a multi-award winning Goorie writer. Her novel Too Much Lip received the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award. It was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Australian Book Industry Association Awards.
Her 2013 novel Mullumbimby was awarded the Deloitte Queensland Literary Award for Fiction, won the Victorian Premiers Prize for Indigenous Writing, and was longlisted for both the Stella and Miles Franklin awards as well as the Dublin IMPAC Literary Prize 2015.
Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, as well as a founding member of the prisoner’s human rights group, Sisters Inside.
You can also listen to this interview with Melissa, recorded in 2019 the day after Too Much Lip was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
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To celebrate the end of 2020, we've re-released our highest rating fiction interviews of the year: #3 is Favel Parrett.
Favel Parrett has an extraordinary command of the literary form. Her first novel, Past the Shallows, received the Dobbie Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin. She herself was awarded Newcomer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Her second novel, When the Night Comes, overcame all the challenges a second novel often faces and was shortlisted for a host of prizes and longlisted for the Miles Franklin. There Was Still Love is Favel’s third novel, and in 2020 it was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards and longlisted for The Stella Prize.
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Carly Findlay is #1 on our list of our highest rating non-fiction interviews in 2020.
CarlyFindlay is an award winning writer, speaker and appearance activist. She is the author of the memoir Say Hello, and has been published in The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Life, SBS and Frankie. In 2020 Carly is editing the anthology Growing Up Disabled in Australia.
In 2020 Carly was awarded an Order of Australia (OAM) for services to people with a disability, and in 2014 she was named as one of Australia's most influential women in the Australian Financial Review and Westpac 100 Women of Influence Awards. She has appeared on ABC's You Can't Ask That and Cyber Hate with Tara Moss, and has been a regular on various ABC radio programs. She organised history making Access to Fashion - a Melbourne Fashion Week event featuring disabled models. Carly identifies as a proud disabled woman - she lives with a rare severe skin condition - Ichthyosis.
Growing Up Disabled in Australia is part of a series. You can listen to previous episodes on The Garret about the series, including Ben Law discussing Growing Up Queer in Australia and Maxine Beneba Clarke, Magan Magan and Shantell Wetherall discussing Growing Up African in Australia.
About The Garret
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Bri Lee is #2 on our list of our highest rating non-fiction interviews in 2020.
Bri Lee is a writer and editor with a career to watch.
Her first book, Eggshell Skull, was published in 2018. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in non-fiction, winning the 2019 People's Choice Award, and also won the 2018 People's Choice at the Nib Awards for research in writing, and the 2019 ABIA for Biography of the Year. Eggshell Skull was also shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and longlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize.
Her second work, Beauty, is a meditation on beauty and body image. It was published in 2019, and will be followed by Brains in 2021.
Bri was the Founding Editor of the quarterly print periodical Hot Chicks with Big Brains, commissioning and publishing diverse non-fiction about women and their work from 2015 to 2018.
Bri's shorter pieces have been published in The Monthly, Harper's Bazaar Australia, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The Guardian, Griffith Review, i-D, VAULT Art Magazine, and elsewhere. She regularly appears on The Drum on ABC TV, various ABC Radio National programs, and often gives talks on writing, law, feminism, fashion, pop culture, and art.
In 2016 Bri was the recipient of the inaugural Kat Muscat Fellowship, and in 2017 was one of Griffith Review's Queensland writing fellows. She has received numerous other fellowships, residencies, and mentorships, most recently the 2018 Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award at the Queensland Literary Awards.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com.
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To celebrate the end of 2020, we've re-released our highest rating non-fiction interviews of the year: #3 is Hilary McPhee.
Hilary McPhee is a legendary writer and editor. She founded McPhee Gribble Publishers with Diane Gribble in 1975, was Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts from 1994 to 1997, and was the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University until 2004.
Hilary's books include Other People’s Words (2001), Wordlines (2010), Memoirs of a Young Bastard: the Diaries of Tim Burstall (2012) and Other People's Houses (2019).
About The Garret
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Sophie Cunningham is the editor behind the 2020 anthology Fire, Flood, Plague. She is also the author of six books, including City of Trees and Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy.
Sophie is a former publisher and editor, was a co-founder of the Stella Prize and is now an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University’s Non/fiction Lab. In 2019 Sophie Cunningham was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her contributions to literature.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Louise Milligan is an investigative reporter for ABC TV's Four Corners. Her first book was Cardinal: The rise and fall of George Pell (2017), which won the Walkley Book Award and broke massive international news about the court case and successive and ultimately successful appeals involving one of the most senior members of the Catholic Church hierarchy.
Her second book is Witness: An investigation into the brutal cost of seeking justice (2020). Among many awards for her work, she's also the recipient of the 2019 Press Freedom Medal.
Louise mentions her ongoing professional relationship with her publisher Louise Adler, who has been a guest on The Garret before.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Maxine Beneba Clarke explores her gorgeous picture book, When We Say Black Lives Matter, in this 2020 interview.
Maxine is a widely published Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. Maxine's short fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in numerous publications including Overland, The Age, Meanjin, The Saturday Paper and The Big Issue.
Her critically acclaimed short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2015 and the 2015 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Matt Richell Award for New Writing at the 2015 ABIAs and the 2015 Stella Prize. She was also named as one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists for 2015.
Maxine has published three poetry collections including Carrying the World, which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry 2017 and was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award.
The Hate Race, a memoir about growing up black in Australia won the NSW Premier's Literary Award Multicultural NSW Award 2017 and was shortlisted for an ABIA, an Indie Award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and Stella Prize.
In 2019 Maxine co-edited the anthology Growing Up African in Australia.
The Patchwork Bike, Maxine's first picture book with Van T. Rudd was a CBCA Honour Book for 2017. She has since written three more picture books - Wide Big World (2018), Fashionista (2019) and When We Say Black Lives Matter (2020).
Maxine has appeared on The Garret twice before - the first interview was a live event about Growing Up African in Australia, and the second was a close reading of her memoir The Hate Race.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Ceridwen Dovey writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and in-depth essays and profiles. Born in South Africa, she grew up between South Africa and Australia, went to Harvard University on scholarship as an undergraduate, and did her postgraduate studies in social anthropology at New York University.
Her debut novel, Blood Kin, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award and selected for the U.S. National Book Foundation’s prestigious "5 Under 35" honours list.
Her second book, Only the Animals, won the inaugural Readings New Australian Writing Award, the Steele Rudd Award for a short story collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was co-winner of the People's Choice Award for Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Her 2018 novel, In the Garden of the Fugitives was longlisted for the 2019 ABIA Awards. Life After Truth, published in 2020, is her latest work.
Listen to Ceridwen's previous interview on The Garret here.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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This episode, 'Burnt Sugar', was a part of the 2020 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, and was originally released on 5 November 2020. It features Avni Doshi in conversation with Astrid Edwards.
Avni Doshi’s 'Burnt Sugar' has been shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. “An unsettling, sinewy debut, startling in its venom and disarming in its humour from the very first sentence,” according to The Guardian, it’s a love story and a story about betrayal. But not between lovers – between a mother and daughter.
Avni is an award-winning author with an Art History degree from Barnard College in New York and a Masters in History of Art from University College London. She was awarded the 2013 Tibor Jones South Asia Prize and 2014 Charles Pick Fellowship.
Burnt Sugar, karya Avni Doshi, telah masuk daftar panjang untuk penghargaan Booker Prize 2020. “Sebuah debut yang mengguncang, mengejutkan dengan bisanya dan melucuti dengan humornya dari kalimat paling pertama,” menurut The Guardian, ini adalah sebuah kisah cinta dan pengkhianatan. Namun bukan di antara sepasang kekasih, melainkan antara ibu dan anak. Bergabunglah dengan Avni saat ia membongkar ikatan memori dan mitos yang mengikat dan memisahkan kedua perempuan tersebut.
Avni adalah penulis peraih penghargaan dengan gelar Sejarah Seni dari Barnard College di New York dan Magister Sejarah Seni dari University College London. Ia dianugerahi Tibor Jones South Asia Prize 2013 dan Charles Pick Fellowship 2014. Novel pertamanya, Burnt Sugar, telah masuk dalam daftar Booker Prize 2020.
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Evelyn Araluen is Co-Editor of Overland, as well as a poet, educator and researcher working with Indigenous literatures at the University of Sydney. Her work has won the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship. Her debut poetry collection Dropbear will be published in 2021. Born, raised, and writing in Dharug country, she is a Bundjalung descendant.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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In 2020 Jamila Rizvi is the force behind two books pitched, written and published during the pandemic. The first is Untold Resilience: Stories of Courage, Survival and Love from Women Who Have Gone Before - an anthology of life stories from 19 older women. The second is I'm A Hero Too - an illustrated story for children about living during a time of pandemic.
Jamila is the Chief Creative Office of the Nine Network’s Future Women, and a weekly columnist for TheSydney Morning Herald and The Age. She has previously published two best-selling books - Not Just Lucky (2017) and The Motherhood (2018). Jamila is also a regular commentator on The Project, Today, The Drum and Q and A.
Jamila first appeared on The Garret in 2018, and you can listen to that interview here.
About The Garret
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Lisa Fuller is a Wuilli Wuilli woman from Eidsvold, Queensland, and is also descended from Gooreng Gooreng and Wakka Wakka peoples.
Ghost Bird is her debut YA novel. She received the 2017 David Unaipon Award for an Unpublished Indigenous Writer, the 2018 Varuna Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship, and was a joint winner of the 2018 Copyright Agency Fellowships for First Nations Writers.
Lisa is an editor and publishing consultant, and is passionate about culturally appropriate writing and publishing.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Richard Flanagan is one of Australia's most beloved novelists. He is also our most recent recipient of The Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. In this interview, he discusses his latest work, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams.
We recorded this interview remotely and Richard was at his home in Tasmania.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Alice Robinson is a highly awarded writer of literary fiction, and The Glad Shout can only be described as great literature. In this interview, Alice reflects on the impetus to write The Glad Shout, how she's approaching her writing craft in 2020 and what great literature she thinks will come out of this time.
Alice's debut novel, Anchor Point, was longlisted for The Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards. The Glad Shout was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award and The Colin Roderick Literary Award and won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.
Alice's stories, essays and reviews have been published widely in literary journals, including in Meanjin, Overland, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue Fiction Edition, Fireflies, Arena, The Australian Humanities Review and Australian Book Review.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Jessica Townsend is the mind behind the record-breaking middle grade fantasy series The Chronicles of Morrigan Crow. Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow kicked off the series, followed by Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow and Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow.
This is projected to be a nine-book series, and honestly, this is a magical series of inclusivity, adventure and excellent reader pay offs.
Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow was the biggest-selling Australian children's debut since records began. It received the 2018 ABIA for Book of the Year, Book of the Year for Younger Readers and Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year; the 2018 Indie Book Awards Book of the Year and Children's Category; the 2017 Aurealis Award for Best Children's Fiction and the 2018 Waterstones Children's Book Prize for Younger Fiction.
Jessica has previously appeared on The Garret, and you can listen to her previous interview here.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Paddy Manning is the author of four books, including 2020's Body Count: How Climate Change is Killing Us. In this interview, Paddy explores what may be one of our biggest questions, how do we write about the climate crisis? He also explains how he went about interviewing the family members of Australia's first climate casualties.
Paddy is contributing editor for The Monthly. Over a twenty-year career in journalism he has worked for the ABC, Crikey, SMH/The Age, AFR, and The Australian, and he was the founding editor and publisher of Ethical Investor magazine.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Trent Dalton is a dual Walkley Award winning journalist, who also happens to be an exquisite novelist. Boy Swallows Universe took out the awards season – and the hearts of readers – and there is little doubt All Our Shimmering Skies will do the same. This interview is one of Trent's first in depth interviews about All Our Shimmering Skies, and believe it or not, he also has news about Boy Swallows Universe.
Boy Swallows Universe is a much-loved national bestseller and critically acclaimed novel. It received the Indie Book of the Year Award and the People's Choice Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, as well as a record of four ABIA Awards in one year.
Trent is a staff writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine. He is a two-time winner of the Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a four-time winner of a Kennedy Award for Excellence in NSW Journalism and a four-time winner of the national News Awards Features Journalist of the Year.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Jane Harper's debut novel, The Dry, received too many awards to list here and has now been turned into a feature film (to be released in 2021). Her subsequent novels, Force Of Nature and The Lost Man, received similar praise, and there is little doubt her most recent work, The Survivors, will as well.
Jane's books are published in forty territories worldwide. She worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the United Kingdom before beginning to write full time.
You may also be interested in Jane's previous interview with Astrid on The Garret.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner are New York Times bestselling author duo. They have now published three YA series together, and in this interview Amie and Meagan discuss how they write together (even when living on different continents), how they ensure so many gripping pay-offs for their devoted readers, and even how they achieved the impossible - combining fantasy and science fiction in one novel.
Their first series together was The Starbound Trilogy (These Broken Stars, This Shattered World and Their Fractured Light), followed by the Unearthed duology (Unearthed and Undying). They have just released The Other Side of the Sky, the first in a series.
You may also be interested in Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff talking about their writing partnership.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.
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Omar Sakr is a poet and writer who brings the personal and political to life. In this interview, he discusses his writing craft, his foray into speculative fiction and the difference between what he publishes and what he writes for himself.
Omar is the author of These Wild Houses, a collection of poetry shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, as well as The Lost Arabs, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards, the John Bray Poetry Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2020, Omar contributed to the anthology After Australia with the short story 'White Flu'.
Elsewhere, Omar's articles and essays are published in The Saturday Paper, The Guardian,The Sydney Morning Herald, Archer, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Going Down Swinging, SBS Online, SBS Life, SBS Comedy, The Wheeler Centre, and Junkee.
If you enjoy this interview, you may also be interested in this interview with Michael Mohammed Ahmad, the editor of After Australia.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview soon at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Kate Mildenhall tackles the big questions. In this interview she considers how to write about our rapidly changing world (including about climate change and online surveillance), the role of writers in this time of crisis, and whether or not there could be a sequel to her dystopian literary thriller.
Kate is a writer, teacher, and the mind behind the novels Skylarking and the utterly brilliant The Mother Fault.
Kate mentions her mentor Charlotte Wood and her phenomenal work The Natural Way of Things. You can listen to Charlotte unpick the craft behind that work with Astrid here.
- And apologies for the quality of Astrid's audio. Astrid set her recording settings wrong, and will have to live with this embarrassing podcaster tech failure for quite some time to come. Kate, on the other hand, who is co-host of The First Time Podcast, set her's correctly and sounds perfect.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Richard Fidler, host of ABC's Conversations, discusses his love of history and what drives him to write about it, the role of literature in this most tumultuous of years and what we can learn from the history that has gone before.
Richard is a writer of historical travel non-fiction and his works include The Golden Maze, Saga Land and Ghost Empire.
Richard and Astrid have previously spoken about historical fiction, and you can listen to their discussion recorded at the Ubud Writers and Readers festival in 2019 here.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Our host Astrid Edwards is part of Anonymous Was A Woman with Jamila Rizvi.
In a recent special episode of Anonymous Was A Woman, Astrid conducted a reading audit of the 89 books she read between 1 January and 30 June 2020. The goal is accountability - how can Astrid recommend books and interview authors without being transparent about her reading and interview choices?
And don't worry, The Garret: Writers on Writing will be back with new episodes on Thursday 3 September 2020.
Anonymous Was A Woman is brought to you by Future Women. Like The Garret: Writers on Writing, the podcast is produced by Bad Producer Productions.
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Bruce Pascoe, a Yuin, Bunarong and Tasmanian writer, has turned his craft to picture books. Found, illustrated by Charmaine Ledden-Lewis, is the story of a lost calf finding his family. It is also an allegory for the Stolen Generations.
In this interview, Bruce introduces the stunning illustrator Charmaine Ledden-Lewis, explores the real life impetus behind Found, reflects on Dark Emu and looks forward to his forthcoming novel, Imperial Harvest.
Note, this interview was recorded via Zoom and in parts you can hear Bruce's dog in the room with him.
You can read Astrid's previous interview with Bruce Pascoe about Imperial Harvest here.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral Country is in South Coast Western Australia. This interview is an exploration of her debut novel and speculative fiction masterpiece, Terra Nullius: A Novel.
Claire wrote her black&write! fellowship-winning manuscript Terra Nullius while travelling around Australia in a caravan. The novel went on to win the Norma K Hemming Award, and was shortlisted for The Stella Prize and Best Sci-Fi Novel in the Aurealis Awards. The work was also Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards.
Claire and Astrid have previously spoken about speculative fiction, and you can listen to their panel (including Krissy Kneen, Pitchaya Sudbanthad and Michelle Tanmizi)) recorded at the Ubud Writers and Readers festival in 2019 here.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com soon. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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A. J. Betts' novel Zac and Mia won the 2012 Text Prize and the 2014 Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adults at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Not only is the novel published in 14 countries, it was adapted for American television and will soon be available globally.
Her other novels include Hive, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and 2019 ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children, and its sequel Rogue. And believe it or not, she has a PhD on the topic of wonder in life and in reading.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Tara June Winch was awarded the Miles Franklin Literary award today for The Yield. In honour of that historic win, we are revisiting our interview with Tara on her masterpiece.
Tara is a Wiradjuri writer based in France. Her first novel, Swallow the Air, was critically acclaimed and saw Tara named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. Her second book, the collection After the Carnage, was longlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for fiction, shortlisted for the 2017 NSW Premier’s Christina Stead prize for Fiction and the Queensland Literary Award for a collection. Her third novel, The Yield, was released in 2019 and is simply stunning.
Tara's Indigenous dance documentary, Carriberrie, screened at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. Tara was previously mentored by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
About The Garret
You can read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com.
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Jane Harrison, a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW, is a playwright, novelist, and the Festival Director of Blak & Bright, the First Nations Literary Festival based in Melbourne.
Her novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis won the 2014 Black&Write! Prize, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minster’s Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Awards.
In terms of her works for the stage, Stolen, her first play, was the co-winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award and has been performed throughout Australia as well as the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan. She has also written The Visitors, Rainbow’s End, On A Park Bench and Blakvelvet.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com soon. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Michael Mohammed Ahmad is both a writer and editor. He received the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelist Award for his debut novel The Tribe, and the sequel, The Lebs, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
In 2020 he is the editor behind After Australia, a collection of short stories about Australia's potential futures, and it is this work that the interview focuses on. The anthology includes works from Ambelin Kwaymullina, Claire G. Coleman, Omar Sakr, Future D. Fidel, Karen Wyld, Khalid Warsame, Kaya Ortiz, Roanna Gonsalves, Sarah Ross, Zoya Patel, Michelle Law and Hannah Donnelly.
Mohammed is also the founder and director of Sweatshop Literary Movement in Western Sydney.
If you enjoy this interview, you may also be interested in this subsequent interview with Omar Sakr, a contributor to After Australia.
About The Garret
Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com soon. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.
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Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was awarded local and overseas prizes, has been adapted for the stage and as an acclaimed television miniseries, and is now a much-loved classic. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Dark Places and the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection.
In 2020 she returns to the first years of European colonisation in Australia with A Room Made of Leaves, an alternative memoir of Elizabeth Macarthur.
Kate has also written non-fiction, including One Life: My Mother’s Story and The Case Against Fragrance, as well as three books about the writing process.
In 2017 Grenville was awarded the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.
About The Garret
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Ellena Savage is an author and academic. Her work is published in literary journals and anthologies around the world, including Paris Review Daily, Sydney Review of Books, Choice Words and Lifted Brow. Blueberries is her first collection.
Ellena is the recipient of several grants and prizes, including the 2019–21 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship.
About The Garret
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Larissa Behrendt, a Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman, is a writer, lawyer and academic. This interview is an in-depth discussion of her work Finding Eliza: Colonial Power and Storytelling.
Larissa is the Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and at the Director of Research and Academic Programs Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research.
Larissa won the 2002 David Uniapon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for her novel Home. Her second novel, Legacy, won a Victorian Premiers Literary Award. She has also published numerous textbooks on Indigenous legal issues.
Larissa wrote and directed the feature films, After the Apology and Innocence Betrayed and has written and produced several short films. She won the 2018 Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Documentary.
Larissa is on the board of Sydney Festival and a board member of the Australia Council’s Major Performing Arts Panel. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year.
About The Garret
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Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning poet and writer of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction.
Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen’s second book, a collection of poetry, Comfort Food, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize and highly commended for the 2016 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. Throat is Ellen’s third word and her second poetry collection.
Ellen mentions working on Ali Cobby Eckermann's Ruby Moonlight, and you can listen to Ali discuss Ruby Moonlight here. And apologies for the sound quality, we recorded this interview remotely on 25 May 2020.
About The Garret
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Ronnie Scott is a novelist, editor, critic and comic specialist. He published the Penguin Special Salad Days in 2014 and released The Adversary, his first novel, in 2020. In this interview, Ronnie unpicks the idea of writing craft using the example of how he wrote The Adversary.
Ronnie lectures at RMIT University and has edited several anthologies. His short works are published in everything from major news outlets to independent journals.
And apologies for the sound quality, we recorded this interview remotely in May 2020.
About The Garret
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Trent Jamieson discusses writing children's literature and creating fantasy worlds, as well as how we communicate about climate change to the next generation.
Trent is a multi-award winning novelist and short story writer. He is the author of the picture book The Giant and the Sea, the fantasy work Day Boy, and the Death Works series. He has twice won Aurealis Awards for his short stories.
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Jess Hill is an investigative journalist. Her exceptional 2019 work See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse received the 2020 Stella Prize, and is now being published around the world.
Jess has done what few writers can - she has taken difficult subject matter and not only made it compelling, she has contributed to a societal shift. In this interview, Jess discusses how writers can 'find the way' to the story, and also reflects on what topics she may tackle next.
You can listen to Jess' previous interview on The Garret here, as well as watch the livestream discussion between Jess and Astrid for the State Library of Victoria here.
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James Bradley's work explores the environment and climate, as well as time - our past, our present, and our possible futures.
He is the author of five novels - Ghost Species, Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist and Clade. His works are highly awarded, and he has been shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Christina Steed Prize for Fiction.
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Dervla McTiernan's novel, The Rúin (2018), was a critically acclaimed international bestseller. In Australia, The Rúin won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Fiction. In America, it won the Barry Award for Best Original Paperback, and was on the Amazon US Best Book of the Year list.
Dervla continued the crime trilogy with The Scholar (2019) and The Good Turn (2020, both of which are also best sellers around the world. The screen rights have been snapped up by Hopscotch Features.
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Our host Astrid Edwards is launching a new podcast, Anonymous Was A Woman.
In the first episode, widely acclaimed author Chloe Hooper joins Astrid and co-host Jamila Rizvi to discuss anxiety and books in times of crisis.
Join the discussion using hashtag #AnonymousWasAWomanPod.
The full episode will be released on Monday 27 April 2020. Subscribe today!
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Leah Kaminsky is a physician and award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her work explores illness, medicine, science and the end of life.
Her debut novel The Waiting Room won the Voss Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the Helen Asher Award. Her second novel, The Hollow Boneswon the 2019 International Book Awards in both Literary Fiction and Historical Fiction categories and the 2019 Best Book Awards for Literary Fiction.
We’re all Going to Die has been described as ‘a joyful book about death’. She also conceived and edited Writer MD, a collection of prominent physician-writers, and is co-author of Cracking the Code.
She has written for the BBC, Huffington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, Griffith Review, SBS and LitHub, amongst others.
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Ali Cobby Eckermann is one of Australia's finest poets. In this interview, she talks at length about Ruby Moonlight, her massacre verse novel exploring colonisation in Australia.
Ruby Moonlight received the black&write! kuril dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowship and the Deadly Award Outstanding Achievement in Literature in 2012, as well as the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize and Book of the Year Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary and History Awards in 2013.
In 2020 Ali is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. To listen to Ali speak about her other works, listen to this interview on The Garret, recorded in late 2019.
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Mirandi Riwoe is the author of 2020's Stone Sky Gold Mountain, as well as the novella The Fish Girl, which won Seizure’s Viva la Novella V and was shortlisted for The Stella Prize and the Queensland Literary Award’s UQ Fiction Prize.
Mirandi also publishes under the name M.J. Tjia, and she is the woman behind the Heloise Chancey historical crime series She Be Damned, A Necessary Murder and The Death of Me.
Her work features in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories.
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This interview with Anna Spargo-Ryan is the first instalment of The Garret At Home - the same podcast as always, now recorded with everyone... at home.
Anna is the Non-Fiction Editor of Island Magazine. She received the 2016 Horne Prize for her essay ‘The Suicide Gene’, and is currently writing a memoir. She has also written for TheGuardian, ELLE, Meanjin and Good Weekend.
Anna also publishes fiction, and she is the author of The Gulf and The Paper House. Her short fiction has been published inThe Big Issue, Island, Kill Your Darlings and The Lifted Brow.
She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Deakin University, where she also teaches nonfiction writing.
About The Garret
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Leah Purcell, a proud Goa, Gunggari, Wakka Wakka Murri woman, is a multi-award-winning author, playwright, screenwriter, actor, director and producer.
The Drover’s Wife was first a play written by and starring Purcell, which premiered at Belvoir St Theatre in late 2016 and swept the board during the 2017 awards season, winning the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Playwriting and Book of the Year, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama and the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Australian Writers’ Guild Award for Best Stage Work, Major Work and the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre, the Helpmann Award for Best Play and Best New Australian Work, and the Sydney–UNESCO City of Film Award.
In 2019 Leah adapted her play to the novel form in the fictional The Drover's Wife (and we can expect a sequel).
The feature film adaptation of The Drover’s Wife, written, directed and starring Leah Purcell, is slated for a 2021 release.
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Ali Alizadeh is an acclaimed writer and poet. His books include the historical novel The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc, the short story collection Transactions, and the literary memoir Iran, My Grandfather (shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s Literary Award), as well as three poetry collections Towards the End, Ashes in the Air (shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry) and Eyes in Times of War.
Ali is a senior lecturer in Literary Studies at Monash University. His poetry is set for high school study in Queensland.
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Zana Fraillon's The Bone Sparrow is an exceptional book for young adult readers, and this interview is an in-depth discussion of the themes and structure of the work.
The Bone Sparrow was awarded the Amnesty CILIP Honour Award, the ABIA Book of the Year for Older Readers, the Readings YA Book Prize, the IBBY Australian Honour Book and was listed on the the CBCA Honour Book. The Bone Sparrow was also shortlisted for the Carnegie Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Award and the INKY Awards.
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Mandy Beaumont's writing is powerful, brutal, magnificent and complex. Her debut short story collection Wild, Fearless Chests was shortlisted for the 2018 Hachette Richell Prize and the 2019 UWAP Dorothy Hewett Award.
Her work has been published in Griffith Review, Cordite, Black Inc. Best Poems and The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Journal, and she has produced large-scale interactive text work for Brisbane Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, The State Library of Queensland and the Brisbane Writers Festival.
Mandy is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT's School of Media and Communication.
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Charlotte Wood is one of Australia's most provocative writers. This interview is an in-depth exploration of her most famous work, The Natural Way of Things, which is on its way to becoming an international classic. Be warned, there are spoilers.
The Natural Way of Things received the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction and was the University of Canberra Book of the Year for 2019.
In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.
You can also listen to this interview with Charlotte, recorded in late 2019 about her other works.
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Ilka Tampke is one of Australia's finest writers of historical fiction. Her first novel, Skin, was nominated for the Voss Literary Prize and the Aurealis Awards in 2016, and went on to be published in eight countries. The follow up, Songwoman, received the Most Underrated Book Award in 2019, and there is a third novel on the way. Ilka teaches fiction at RMIT University.
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Melissa Lucashenko is a multi-award winning Goorie writer. Her novel Too Much Lip received the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award. It was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Australian Book Industry Association Awards.
Her 2013 novel Mullumbimby was awarded the Deloitte Queensland Literary Award for Fiction, won the Victorian Premiers Prize for Indigenous Writing, and was longlisted for both the Stella and Miles Franklin awards as well as the Dublin IMPAC Literary Prize 2015.
Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, as well as a founding member of the prisoner’s human rights group, Sisters Inside.
You can also listen to this interview with Melissa, recorded in 2019 the day after Too Much Lip was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
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Favel Parrett has an extraordinary command of the literary form. Her first novel, Past the Shallows, received the Dobbie Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin. She herself was awarded Newcomer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Her second novel, When the Night Comes, overcame all the challenges a second novel often faces and was shortlisted for a host of prizes and longlisted for the Miles Franklin. There Was Still Love is Favel’s third novel, and in 2020 it was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards and longlisted for The Stella Prize.
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Carly Findlay is an award winning writer, speaker and appearance activist. She is the author of the memoir Say Hello, and has been published in The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Life, SBS and Frankie. In 2020 Carly is editing the anthology Growing Up Disabled in Australia.
In 2020 Carly was awarded an Order of Australia (OAM) for services to people with a disability, and in 2014 she was named as one of Australia's most influential women in the Australian Financial Review and Westpac 100 Women of Influence Awards. She has appeared on ABC's You Can't Ask That and Cyber Hate with Tara Moss, and has been a regular on various ABC radio programs. She organised history making Access to Fashion - a Melbourne Fashion Week event featuring disabled models. Carly identifies as a proud disabled woman - she lives with a rare severe skin condition - Ichthyosis.
Growing Up Disabled in Australia is part of a series. You can listen to previous episodes on The Garret about the series, including Ben Law discussing Growing Up Queer in Australia and Maxine Beneba Clarke, Magan Magan and Shantell Wetherall discussing Growing Up African in Australia.
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Hilary McPhee is a legendary writer and editor. She founded McPhee Gribble Publishers with Diane Gribble in 1975, was Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts from 1994 to 1997, and was the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University until 2004.
Hilary's books include Other People’s Words (2001), Wordlines (2010), Memoirs of a Young Bastard: the Diaries of Tim Burstall (2012) and Other People's Houses (2019).
About The Garret
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Bri Lee is a writer and editor with a career to watch.
Her first book, Eggshell Skull, was published in 2018. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in non-fiction, winning the 2019 People's Choice Award, and also won the 2018 People's Choice at the Nib Awards for research in writing, and the 2019 ABIA for Biography of the Year. Eggshell Skull was also shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and longlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize.
Her second work, Beauty, is a meditation on beauty and body image. It was published in 2019, and will be followed by Brains in 2020.
Bri was the Founding Editor of the quarterly print periodical Hot Chicks with Big Brains, commissioning and publishing diverse non-fiction about women and their work from 2015 to 2018.
Bri's shorter pieces have been published in The Monthly, Harper's Bazaar Australia, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The Guardian, Griffith Review, i-D, VAULT Art Magazine, and elsewhere. She regularly appears on The Drum on ABC TV, various ABC Radio National programs, and often gives talks on writing, law, feminism, fashion, pop culture, and art.
In 2016 Bri was the recipient of the inaugural Kat Muscat Fellowship, and in 2017 was one of Griffith Review's Queensland writing fellows. She has received numerous other fellowships, residencies, and mentorships, most recently the 2018 Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award at the Queensland Literary Awards.
About The Garret
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To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating non-fiction interviews of the year: #1 is Richard Fidler.
This episode, 'Back in Time', was recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Sunday 27 October 2019. It features Richard Fidler in conversation with Astrid Edwards.
Richard Fidler is taking his gift for storytelling back in time. He has traipsed through Istanbul uncovering legendary Constantinople with his son, and journeyed to the sites of the beautiful and bloody Icelandic sagas with his friend Kári Gíslason. Now he takes the UWRF stage to talk about his love of history and travel, and the stories where the two meet.
Richard Fidler is a writer and radio host. He’s the author of the bestselling books Ghost Empire, a history of the legendary city of Constantinople, and Saga Land, a journey into the sagas of Iceland, co-written with Kári Gíslason. Richard is also the presenter of Conversations on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio, Australia’s most popular podcast.
Richard and Astrid have since spoken again, and you can listen to their discussion recorded at during Melbourne's lockdown in 2020 here.
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To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating non-fiction interviews of the year: #3 is Kate Richards.
Kate Richards is a memoirist, poet and most recently, a novelist.
Her first work, 2013's Madness: A Memoir, received the Adelaide Festival's Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards. Kate followed that stunning debut with 2014's Is There No Place For Me: Making Sense of Madness, which was shortlisted for the Human Rights Award.
In 2019 Kate moved from non-fiction to the world of fiction with her first novel, Fusion.
Her work goes where few writers have ever gone. It is profound and honest, and represents not only a contribution to Australian literature, but a contribution to literature on mental health and identify.
This episode comes with a content warning, as Kate's memoir and our discussion of it touches on trauma and mental illness.
Related episodes:
- Sam Twyford-Moore, mentioned in this interview, spoke to The Garret about writing mania and chronic ill health.
- Fiona Wright, whose creative non-fiction works explore chronic ill health, also spoke about writing one's own story and how to represent illness on the page.
About The Garret
You can read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com.
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To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating non-fiction interviews of the year: #3 is Jane Caro.
Jane Caro is an author, novelist, broadcaster, columnist and social commentator. She was awarded the Walkley for Women’s Leadership in 2018.
She has published numerous non-fiction works including The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education (2007), Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have To Change the World (2013) and Accidental Feminists (2019).
Jane has also written a YA trilogy on the life of Elizabeth I - Just A Girl (2013), Just a Queen (2015) and Just Flesh and Blood (2018).
Related episodes: Both Louise Adler and Phillipa McGuinness are mentioned in this interview, and both have appeared on The Garret before.
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You can read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com.
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To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating fiction interviews of the year: #1 is Christos Tsiolkas.
Christos is one of Australia's most courageous writers. He has published six novels, several of which have been adapted for the screen. Damascus (2019) is his latest work.
Christos is best known for Loaded (1995), which became the movie Head On, and The Slap (2008) was turned into an Australian and U.S. television miniseries after it won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.
Christos is also a playwright, essayist, screen writer and film critic. His other works include Dead Europe (2005), which won the Age Fiction Prize and the Melbourne Best Writing Award, and The Jesus Man (1999). His critical literary study On Patrick White came out in 2018.
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To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating fiction interviews of the year: #2 is Claire Coleman, Krissy Kneen, Pitchaya Sudbanthad and Michelle Tanmizi live at Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
Speculative fiction has lurked in the shadows of the literary scene for years while realism hogged the limelight. Now, as the natural and political spheres crumble around us, speculative fiction’s dystopian worlds don’t seem so different from our own. In this timely conversation, our panelists ask whether we’re now at the point where all contemporary fiction is in fact speculative fiction.
Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral Country is in South Coast Western Australia. Her novel Terra Nullius won a Black&Write! Fellowship and a Norma K Hemming Award, and has been shortlisted for The Stella Prize and an Aurealis Award. The Old Lie is her second novel.
Krissy Kneen is the award-winning author of the memoir Affection and five novels including Stella Prize shortlisted An Uncertain Grace. She is also the author of Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. She has written and directed documentaries for Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Special Broadcasting Service television.
Pitchaya Sudbanthad is the author of the novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain, published by Riverhead Books (US) and Sceptre (UK). He has received fellowships in fiction writing from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, and currently splits time between Bangkok, Thailand and Brooklyn, USA.
Michelle Tanmizi is Chinese-Indonesian and international. She is an author, leadership coach and trainer, and a motivational speaker. Michelle’s first work was a poetry book, Truth. Late Dawn is her first speculative science fiction novel inspired by the conservation crisis we face today.
About The Garret
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To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating fiction interviews of the year: #3 is Anna Krien.
Anna Krien is the author of the award-winning Night Games and Into the Woods, as well as two Quarterly Essays, Us and Them and The Long Goodbye. In 2019 she moved from non-fiction to fiction with her first novel Act of Grace.
Anna’s writing has also been published in The Monthly, The Age, Best Australian Essays, Best Australian Stories and The Big Issue.
In 2014 she won the UK William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, and 2018 she received a Sidney Myer Fellowship.
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Charlotte Wood is one of Australia's most provocative writers. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence.
Charlotte has published six novels and two books of non-fiction. She is best known for The Natural Way of Things, which received the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction and was the University of Canberra Book of the Year for 2019. In late 2019 she released The Weekend, which has already been longlisted in the 2019 Indie Book Awards.
Her non-fiction works include The Writer’s Room, a collection of interviews with authors about the creative process.
About The Garret
The transcript of this interview will be published soon at thegarretpodcast.com.
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Clare Bowditch is a storyteller - a singer, songwriter and memoirist. In 2019 she released her memoir Your Own Kind of Girl.
She is also an ARIA Award-winning musician (Best Female Artist), Rolling StoneWoman of the Year (Contribution to Culture), Logie-nominated actor (for her role as 'Rosanna' on hit TV show Offspring), and a former ABC broadcaster.
About The Garret
The transcript of this interview will be published soon at thegarretpodcast.com.
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Maxine Beneba Clarkeis a highly awarded Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. The Hate Race (2015), her memoir of growing up in Sydney in the 1980s and 1990s, immediately entered the canon of contemporary Australian literature. The Hate Race received the NSW Premier's Literary Award Multicultural NSW Award 2017 and was shortlisted for an ABIA, an Indie Award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and The Stella Prize. This interview is a close study of Maxine’s memoir.
Maxine is prolific. Her other works include The Saturday Paper Portraits (2019) and the critically acclaimed short fiction collection Foreign Soil (2015), as well as three picture books - Fashionista (2019), Wide Big World (with Isobel Knowles in 2018) and The Patchwork Bike (with Van T. Rudd in 2016).
Her poetry can be found in The Saturday Paper most weeks, and she has published three poetry collections Carrying the World, Gil Scott Heron Is on Parole and Nothing Here Needs Fixing. Maxine’s short fiction, non-fiction and poetry have also been published in numerous publications including Overland, The Age, Meanjin and The Big Issue.
About The Garret
The transcript of this interview will be published soon at thegarretpodcast.com.
You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.
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Christos Tsiolkas is one of Australia's most courageous writers. He has published six novels, several of which have been adapted for the screen. Damascus (2019) is his latest work.
Christos is best known for Loaded (1995), which became the movie Head On, and The Slap (2008) was turned into an Australian and U.S. television miniseries after it won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.
Christos is also a playwright, essayist, screen writer and film critic. His other works include Dead Europe (2005), which won the Age Fiction Prize and the Melbourne Best Writing Award, and The Jesus Man (1999). His critical literary study On Patrick Whitecame out in 2018.
About The Garret
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This episode, 'Domestic Spaces', was recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Saturday 26 October 2019. It features Fiona Wright, Megan K. Stack, Archana Pidathala and Fanny J. Poyk in conversation with Astrid Edwards.
The domestic, the interior and the personal have traditionally been relegated to the realm of women’s writing, which in recent years has been dismissed as too small to attract significant readership, critical acclaim and writing awards. Our panelists look beyond the censure and speak out in praise of the domestic.
Fiona Wright is a writer, editor and critic from Sydney, Australia. Her book of essays Small Acts of Disappearance won the 2016 Kibble Award and the Queensland Literary Award for non-fiction. Her poetry collections are Knuckled and Domestic Interior. Her new essay collection is The World Was Whole.
Megan K. Stack has traveled the world to chronicle war and political upheaval. A journalist and author, she was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize for Iraq coverage and her first book, Every Man in This Village Is A Liar, was a finalist for the National Book Award in non-fiction.
Archana Pidathala is the author of Five Morsels of Love, a cookbook based on her grandmother’s 1974 Telugu cookbook, Vanita Vanṭakālu. In 2017, Five Morsels of Love was shortlisted for the prestigious Art of Eating Prize, which recognizes excellence in food writing.
Fanny J. Poyk was born in the city of Bima in East Nusa Tenggara and has been writing short stories, novels, biographies, and motivational books and articles since the 1980s. One of her short stories was included in 20 Cerita Pendek Terbaik Kompas, and her book Narkoba Sayonara won Penerbit Erlangga’s writing competition.
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This episode, 'Back in Time', was recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Sunday 27 October 2019. It features Richard Fidler in conversation with Astrid Edwards.
Richard Fidler is taking his gift for storytelling back in time. He has traipsed through Istanbul uncovering legendary Constantinople with his son, and journeyed to the sites of the beautiful and bloody Icelandic sagas with his friend Kári Gíslason. Now he takes the UWRF stage to talk about his love of history and travel, and the stories where the two meet.
Richard Fidler is a writer and radio host. He’s the author of the bestselling books Ghost Empire, a history of the legendary city of Constantinople, and Saga Land, a journey into the sagas of Iceland, co-written with Kári Gíslason. Richard is also the presenter of Conversations on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio, Australia’s most popular podcast.
Richard and Astrid have since spoken again, and you can listen to their discussion recorded at during Melbourne's lockdown in 2020 here.
About The Garret
You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This episode was recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Friday 25 October 2019. It features Claire G. Coleman, Krissy Kneen, Pitchaya Sudbanthad and Michelle Tanmizi.
Speculative fiction has lurked in the shadows of the literary scene for years while realism hogged the limelight. Now, as the natural and political spheres crumble around us, speculative fiction’s dystopian worlds don’t seem so different from our own. In this timely conversation, our panelists ask whether we’re now at the point where all contemporary fiction is in fact speculative fiction.
Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral Country is in South Coast Western Australia. Her novel Terra Nullius won a Black&Write! Fellowship and a Norma K Hemming Award, and has been shortlisted for The Stella Prize and an Aurealis Award. The Old Lie is her second novel.
Krissy Kneenis the award-winning author of the memoir Affection and five novels including Stella Prize shortlisted An Uncertain Grace. She is also the author of Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. She has written and directed documentaries for Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Special Broadcasting Service television.
Pitchaya Sudbanthad is the author of the novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain, published by Riverhead Books (US) and Sceptre (UK). He has received fellowships in fiction writing from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, and currently splits time between Bangkok, Thailand and Brooklyn, USA.
Michelle Tanmizi is Chinese-Indonesian and international. She is an author, leadership coach and trainer, and a motivational speaker. Michelle’s first work was a poetry book, Truth. Late Dawn is her first speculative science fiction novel inspired by the conservation crisis we face today.
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