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 o...
May 04, 2024•41 min•Season 24Ep. 274
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. About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and tr...
Apr 30, 2024•25 min•Season 24Ep. 273
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 Greater City Shadows , his short story collection, was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.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, Love 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. About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore ou...
Apr 28, 2024•31 min•Season 24Ep. 272
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 group...
Apr 25, 2024•24 min•Season 24Ep. 271
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 Yea...
Apr 14, 2024•24 min•Season 24Ep. 270
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. About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Inst...
Apr 08, 2024•26 min•Season 24Ep. 269
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. About The Garret...
Mar 17, 2024•26 min•Season 24Ep. 268
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 . About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts)...
Mar 13, 2024•30 min•Season 24Ep. 267
Sara Saleh i s 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-break...
Feb 25, 2024•37 min•Season 24Ep. 266
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. About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com . Support the show: https://linktr.ee/garret...
Feb 11, 2024•25 min•Season 24Ep. 265
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...
Feb 04, 2024•28 min•Season 24Ep. 264
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 . About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host A...
Jan 25, 2024•28 min•Season 24Ep. 263
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...
Jan 22, 2024•44 min•Season 24Ep. 262
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 industr...
Jan 14, 2024•25 min
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...
Jan 12, 2024•24 min
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 . About The Garret: Writers ...
Jan 09, 2024•26 min
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...
Jan 07, 2024•22 min
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 her...
Dec 18, 2023•24 min•Season 2023Ep. 261
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 . About Th...
Dec 13, 2023•24 min•Season 2023Ep. 260
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, inc...
Dec 10, 2023•32 min•Season 2023Ep. 259
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 internati...
Dec 05, 2023•33 min•Season 2023Ep. 258
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 . About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on...
Dec 03, 2023•34 min•Season 2023Ep. 257
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...
Oct 23, 2023•37 min•Season 2023Ep. 256
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 f...
Oct 15, 2023•26 min•Season 2023Ep. 255
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 . About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astr...
Oct 09, 2023•26 min•Season 2023Ep. 254
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 longlis...
Sep 20, 2023•25 min•Season 2023Ep. 253
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 (...
Sep 13, 2023•38 min•Season 2023Ep. 252
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 intervi...
Sep 06, 2023•31 min•Season 2023Ep. 251
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 ...
Sep 03, 2023•31 min•Season 2023Ep. 250
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 ...
Aug 31, 2023•51 min•Season 2023Ep. 249
