The Garret: Writers on writing

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.   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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Greater City Shadows, his short story collection, was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.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 our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 and the publishing industry Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our back catalogue (and transcripts) at thegarretpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. This episode comes with a trigger warning for suicide and mental ill-health. You can read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Follow The Garret on Instagram, and perhaps follow our host Astrid Edwards there too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 in Overland, 'Tears for Peers: the hidden costs of Arts funding'. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.