The Kill Your Darlings Podcast

Editor's note: This episode contains discussion of death and grief practices. Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For June that debut is The Eulogy by Jackie Bailey (Hardie Grant), an autofiction novel about family, death and grief that was shortlisted for the 2018 KYD Unpublished Manuscript Award. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Nial Hosken. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of The Eulogy in our June Books Roundup. Read about Jackie's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. How To Be Between is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For May that debut is How To Be Between by Bastian Fox Phelan (Giramondo), a memoir about female facial hair, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and negotiating identity for those visibly between gender binaries. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Nial Hosken. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of How To Be Between in our May Books Roundup. Read about Bastian's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. How To Be Between is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is Hovering by Rhett Davis (Hachette), a powerful and kaleidoscopic story about three people struggling to find connection in a chaotic and impermanent world. Rhett discussed the novel with our First Book Club host Ellen Cregan at a live event at Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library on 7 April. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Nial Hosken. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Hovering in our April Books Roundup. Read about Rhett's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. Hovering is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is Son of Sin by Omar Sakr (Affirm Press), a multifaceted tale brimming with angels and djinn, racist kangaroos and adoring bats, examining with a poet's eye the destructive impetus of repressed desire and the complexities that make us human. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Nial Hosken. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Son of Sin in our March Books Roundup. Read about Omar's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. Son of Sin is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is The Cost of Labour by Natalie Kon-yu, out now from Affirm Press. Natalie was nine weeks pregnant when the trembling began. Two weeks later she checked herself into a mental health unit. Rather than a woman with a health concern, the doctors saw Natalie as a vessel carrying precious cargo. This loss of agency carried on through childbirth and into her early years as a mother. Natalie discovered that she was far from alone. In fact, her experience typifies the inequalities that weigh heavily on child-bearing women, as well as the devaluation of what is still perceived as ‘women's work'. With bracing clarity and verve, Kon-yu tackles the outdated institutions, expectations and ideologies that hold us hostage as parents. The pressure is building and the cost on families is stacking up. Something has to give. Drawing on personal narratives, history, social research and interviews, The Cost of Labour tackles the expectations that keep us all hostage to a dynamic unfit for contemporary society and offers hope for a way out of the trap. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read a review of The Cost of Labour in our February Books Roundup. Read about Natalie's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. The Cost of Labour is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For November that debut is Permafrost by SJ Norman, out now from UQP. This brilliant collection of short fiction explores the shifting spaces of desire, loss and longing. Inverting and queering the gothic and romantic traditions, each story represents a different take on the concept of a haunting or the haunted. Though it ranges across themes and locations—from small-town Australia to Hokkaido to rural England—Permafrost is united by the power of the narratorial voice, with its auto-fictional resonances, dark wit and swagger. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read a review of Permafrost in our November Books Roundup. Read about SJ's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. Permafrost is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Welcome to the second episode of our new interview series, Pub Talk, where we chat to some of Australia's most experienced and influential publishers, editors and agents. During these conversations you'll receive insiders' information about the industry, as well as advice from experts on the many pathways to publication for new writers. We're thrilled to have Leah Jing McIntosh as our guest this month. She is a critic, researcher, and the founding editor of Liminal magazine, an anti-racist literary platform that interrogates and celebrates the Asian-Australian experience. Alongside editing Liminal and establishing literary prizes for writers of colour, she produces literary events, often working in collaboration with major arts organisations. Tune in to hear KYD publishing director Rebecca Starford and Leah discuss the role of literary magazines, the politics of visibility and the power of community. Further reading: • Liminal's interview with Radhiah Chowdhury. • Collisions is available now from your local independent bookseller—read KYD's review! Our theme song is Johnny Ripper's ‘Typing'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For October that debut is The Psychic Tests by Gary Nunn, out now from Pantera Press. In The Psychic Tests award-winning journalist Gary Nunn investigates psychics, mediums and astrologers to understand their uncanny, under-investigated and unregulated power. Gary tries out some psychics himself, sometimes with hilarious results. He hears about their secret influence over world leaders, CEOs, news editors and the criminal justice system. Believe in them or not, psychics can impact who will date you, befriend you and even who'll hire you. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read a review of The Psychic Tests in our October Books Roundup. Read about Gary's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. The Psychic Tests is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For September that debut is Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards, out now from Hachette. The night Eva shared a smile with Pat, something started. Two weeks later, lying together in her bed, Pat said, 'You can't live your life saying you'll get around to doing something you know will make you happy. You just have to do it.' Eva didn't know how devastating those words would turn out to be. Pat dies and the aftershock leaves Eva on unsteady ground. She is pregnant. And she has to make a choice. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Allee about the book and the experience of writing it at a live online event hosted by Yarra Libraries. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read a review of Small Joys of Real Life in our September Books Roundup. Read about Allee's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. Read Allee's short story This Version of Her from New Australian Fiction 2019. Small Joys of Real Life is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Welcome to the first episode of our new interview series, Pub Talk, where we chat to some of Australia's most experienced and influential publishers, editors and agents. During these conversations you'll receive insiders' information about the industry, as well as advice from experts on the many pathways to publication for new writers. We're thrilled to have Brigid Mullane as our first guest. She is the commissioning editor at Ultimo Press. Previously, she worked at Hachette Australia as both a managing editor and a senior editor. Tune in to hear KYD publishing director Rebecca Starford and Brigid discuss the role of a commissioning editor, Ultimo Press's plans for finding and publishing new writers, some of the press's publication initiatives over the coming months, and how Australian publishers need to do better on diversity in their organisations. Do you have a manuscript you'd like published? Check out KYD's many writing courses that help writers get their work into the hands of editors. Our theme song is Johnny Ripper's ‘Typing'. (more…)

We're thrilled to bring you this special podcast episode celebrating the publication of our third print anthology, New Australian Fiction 2021. New Australian Fiction 2021 collects a number of brilliant short stories from authors from around the country, and in this episode you'll hear excerpts from some of them. Tune in to hear Mykaela Saunders, Scott Limbrick, Emily O'Grady, Daley Rangi and Alice Bishop read from their work, and don't forget to pick up a copy of the anthology to read these brilliant stories in their entirety. You can purchase a copy from our online shop. Want to be a part of New Australian Fiction 2022? Story submissions for the anthology will open in January next year. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. (more…)

'When you don't understand something that important about yourself, [diagnosis is] almost a kind of cheat code to go back and understand things that you've been through.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For August that debut is Late Bloomer: How an Autism Diagnosis Changed My Life by Clem Bastow, out now from Hardie Grant. Clem Bastow grew up feeling like she'd missed a key memo on human behaviour. She found the unspoken rules of social engagement confusing, arbitrary and often stressful. It wasn't until Clem was diagnosed as autistic, at age 36, that things clicked into focus. With wit and warmth, Clem reflects as an Autistic adult on her formative experiences as an undiagnosed young person, deconstructing the misconceptions and celebrating the realities of Autistic experience. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Clem about the book and the experience of writing it at a live online event hosted by Yarra Libraries. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read CB Mako's review of Late Bloomer in our August Books Roundup. Read about Clem's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. Clem wrote for KYD in 2015 about women screenwriters and 'the obligation to represent'. Late Bloomer is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Editor's Note: This conversation includes discussion of family violence. 'We've got an ongoing conversation happening about violence against women in Australia, and I felt that it was important to contribute what I had learnt from my perspective as a Muslim woman, as an Arab woman, as a daughter of someone who was murdered, and as someone who had a legal background, to that conversation.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For July that debut is The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar, out now from Pan Macmillan. Amani suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder. Writing with grace and beauty, Amani has drawn from this a story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. In The Mother Wound, she uses her own strength to help other survivors find their voices. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Amani about the book and the experience of writing it. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) offers confidential information, counselling and support services and is open 24 hours to support people impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence and abuse. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of The Mother Wound in our July Books Roundup. Read about Amani's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. The Mother Wound is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For June that debut is The Covered Wife by Lisa Emanuel, out now from Pantera Press. Sarah is a smart, young lawyer working endless office hours when she falls head over heels for Daniel – handsome, passionate and part of the kind of large, chaotically loving family Sarah longed for as the only child of a single mother. When Daniel introduces her to a charismatic young couple, Rabbi Menachem Lev and his wife, Chani, despite herself, Sarah is drawn in by their progressive beachside synagogue. By the time the couple move to the Jamison Valley, where Menachem and Chani have established a community of believers, Sarah can't imagine life without the friendship, purpose and love she's discovered. Four years on, youthful fervour has given way to something darker. A series of terrifying truths emerges that tear Sarah's world apart, and cause her to question everything – her faith, her marriage, and her future. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Lisa about the book and her journey to publication. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Sound production by Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of The Covered Wife in our June Books Roundup. Read about Lisa's favourite books and reading habits in this month's Shelf Reflection. Read an extract from an early version of the novel when it was shortlisted for the KYD Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2019. Lisa will be speaking about her book at an author event on Tuesday 13 July at Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore in Sydney. Tickets available here, and include a drink, nibbles and a copy of the novel.  The Covered Wife is available now from your local independent bookseller. (more…)

'I wanted to dig into the complexity of an event like that, and allow people to see not just the humanity of the people involved, but also the negative aspects of how these events play out.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For May that debut is Car Crash: A Memoir by Lech Blaine, out now from Black Inc. At seventeen, Lech Blaine walked away unharmed from a car crash that killed three of his friends and left two in comas. In the aftermath, rumours about speed and drink driving erupted. There was intense scrutiny from media and police. Lech used alcohol to numb his grief and social media to show stoicism, while secretly spiralling towards depression and disgrace. This is a riveting account of family, friendship, grief and love after tragedy. Heartbreaking and darkly hilarious, Car Crash is a story for our times. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Lech about the book, revisiting past trauma and the power of brutally honest feedback. Editor's Note: This conversation touches on difficult topics such as death, grief and trauma. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Production assistance from Lloyd Pratt. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Car Crash in our May Books Roundup. Lech spoke to Bri Lee in 2017 about the process of writing a memoir in your twenties. Lech recommends Rick Morton's My Year of Living Vulnerably: Rick shares his workspace and writing practice for Show Your Working. Buy a copy of the book from Brunswick Bound. (more…)

'Conversations can be really dull compared to our inner lives, and I find that fascinating. The book was, for me, a real exploration of that difference.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan, out now from Scribe Publications. A Room Called Earth is a brilliant debut novel from a neurodiverse author that explores a young woman's magical, sensitive, and passionate inner world. A young woman gets ready to go to a party. She arrives, feels overwhelmed, leaves, and then returns. Minutely attuned to the people who come into her view, and alternating between alienation and profound connection, she is hilarious, self-aware, sometimes acerbic, and always honest. And by the end of the night, she's shown us something radical about love, loss, and the need to belong. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Madeleine about the book. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of A Room Called Earth in our April books Roundup. Read Madeleine's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. Buy a copy of the book from Brunswick Bound. (more…)

"Particularly after the hellish year we've just had, poetry makes the burden of existence a lot nicer." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For March that debut is Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen, out now from the University of Queensland Press. Dropbear is an innovative mix of poetry and prose that confronts the tropes and iconography of an unreconciled nation, and interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history. With an alternately playful, tender and mournful voice, Dropbear is a witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Evelyn for an online event in partnership with Yarra Libraries. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Dropbear in our March books Roundup. Read Evelyn's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. Buy a copy of the book from Brunswick Bound. (more…)

KYD's Hayley May Bracken, Alan Vaarwerk and Suzy Garcia discuss Fiona Murphy's new memoir The Shape of Sound (available 30 March from Text Publishing) and its exploration of how her deaf experience has been shaped by the social and structural stigma of disability. We then discuss transgressive comedy and Zoomer humour in the new ABC iview series Why Are You Like This, co-created and written by Naomi Higgins, Mark Samual Bonanno, and Humyara Mahbub. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. This episode was produced by Hayley May Bracken. Further Reading and Culture Picks: Fiona Murphy on noise, architecture and navigating the world as a deaf person, and how disability 'fixes' like hearing aids aren't always a solution. Rebecca Shaw on politically correct comedy. Suzy recommends: Ethos (Netflix) and Friends & Dark Shapes (Kavita Bedford, Text) Alan recommends: Eating With My Mouth Open (Sam van Zweden, NewSouth) and Minari (in cinemas now). (more…)

"I started to interrogate my own relationship with food and realise that it wasn't so simple." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is Eating With My Mouth Open by Sam van Zweden, out now from NewSouth Books. Eating With My Mouth Open is a personal and cultural exploration of food, memory, and hunger that dissects wellness culture and all its flaws, and considers the true meaning of nourishment within the broken food system we live in. Not holding back from difficult conversations about mental illness, weight, and wellbeing, Sam van Zweden advocates for body politics that are empowering, productive, and meaningful. Thank you to Yarra Libraries for partnering with us for this live event. Our March First Book Club title will be Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen (UQP). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Editor's Note: This conversation touches on mental illness and disordered eating. If you need help, support is available from the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673, or Lifeline on 13 11 14. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Eating With My Mouth Open in our February books Roundup. Read Sam's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. Buy a copy of the book from Brunswick Bound. Buy a copy of KYD's short fiction anthology New Australian Fiction 2020. (more…)

In this special episode we're talking to KYD publishing director Rebecca Starford about her new historical fiction novel, The Imitator, out now from Allen & Unwin. The Imitator is a page-turning World War II spy thriller set among London's aristocracy, the MI5 intelligence agency, and a secret society aligned with the enemy. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read an extract from The Imitator. Read about Rebecca's writing routine and habits in Show Your Working. Rebecca will be launching her novel at Avid Reader in Brisbane on Monday, 15 February at 6.30pm. This is a free event in-person and via Zoom, though bookings are required. (more…)

The KYD team get together once again to discuss acclaimed Japanese author Sayaka Murata's experimental, compelling and disturbing new novel Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and published by Granta. We also compare notes on Voxdocs, a series of eight short films created by Australian performing artists during lockdown funded by Shark Island Institute and the Documentary Australia Foundation, in association with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. Content warning: This episode contains frank descriptions and discussions of a sexual nature, as well as strong language and adult themes, so it might not be suitable for all listeners. This episode also contains spoilers for Earthlings. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. This episode was produced by Hayley May Bracken. Further Reading and Culture Picks: Sayaka Murata's short story 'A Clean Marriage' Sayaka Murata and Ginny Tapley Takemori in conversation for Japan Society NYC. Lauren Carroll Harris on the arts crisis and 'internalised funding agency speak' The 40-Year-Old Version  Kylie Minogue, Disco  Róisín Murphy, Róisín Machine Samanta Schweblin, Little Eyes (more…)

"I wanted to write about how someone changes over the course of a life, and how a culture changes." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For November that debut is Lucky's by Andrew Pippos, out now from Picador Australia. Lucky's is an exuberant, magical Australian saga about migration, mystery, tragedy and love spanning over 80 years. It is also about a man called Lucky. His restaurant chain. A fire that changed everything. A New Yorker article which might save a career. The mystery of a missing father. An impostor who got the girl. An unthinkable tragedy. A roll of the dice. And a story of love—lost, sought and won again. Thanks for joining us for the KYD First Book Club this year. We'll be back in 2021 with more fabulous debut books! Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Lucky's in our November Books Roundup. Read Andrew's Shelf Reflection on his reading habits and the writing that inspires him. Stream or subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Soundcloud / Google Podcasts / Spotify / Other (RSS) Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice! TRANSCRIPT (Music) Alice Cottrell: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. I'm KYD publisher Alice Cottrell and today. I'll be bringing you our November First Book Club interview. Our pick this month is Lucky's by Andrew Pippos, out now from Pan Macmillan. Lucky's is an exuberant, magical Australian saga. A story of migration, mystery, tragedy and love. First Book Club host Ellen Cregan spoke with Andrew to ask him about the book. Ellen Cregan: Hi Andrew, thanks for joining me today. Andrew Pippos: Thank you for having me. EC: We're just going to start with a reading from the book. AP: He still had time to make changes. Not to his nickname, which he could never shake, and not to his appearance, and there was little prospect of changing the flaws in his character, since the time had passed for great internal transformations, but Vasilis ‘Lucky' Mallios supposed he could fix his own story—to be specific, how it ended. Lucky sat tucked at his kitchen table, newspaper spread across the surface, stripping rigani from the stalks. The herbs had hung inside a cupboard for a week-not long enough to properly dry, but he couldn't wait; this old ritual was necessary. It offered a moment's accord with the past. He placed the stalks to one side and picked through the heap of flower-heads, plucking out grey twigs, as the smell drifted up like the spirit of someone dead. The apartment now otherworldly, dense with human life. He told himself we all have missing people: Our dead parents, or the spouse who left too soon, or the lover who betrayed us, the sibling who deserted the family, the friend we never found, the friend who walked away, the child we didn't have, the person we couldn't become the life we should have led. Or the missing person might yet arrive: The child we still could have, the family we were about to find, the lover or destroyer coming to the door. Lucky could briefly accept that his world was incomplete, and he waited for this moment to end before he switched on his television. That afternoon he had rushed home from the bank appointment and straightaway cut down the rigani from the cupboard near the kitchen window. The expansive new apartment complex opposite looked like a tower with its pockets turned out. Lucky's own building reminded him of a motor inn. The Suncorp Bank loan officer had been kind when rejecting his application. The officer cited Lucky's lack of income in the past twenty-four months, without stating that he was too old anyway to take on substantial debt. He possessed no assets; there was no loan guarantor. The officer said she liked the idea of a person starting over. She couldn't be more sympathetic. Her parents, on special occasions, used to take the family to Lucky's former restaurant in Stanmore. She remembered the jukebox, the fat chips, the decor like the set of a TV show. And she acknowledged Lucky's later history, referring to the tragedy in your life'. If only Suncorp loaned on those grounds. At the end of their interview, Lucky admitted to the loan officer that her bank was the last in a list of lenders he'd approached. ‘What does that tell me?' he said as he thanked her for the appointment, feigning concession, not wanting to come across sore, but what the final stop on his unsuccessful circuit of loan applications told him was this: The banks in Sydney were too conservative. The light from his muted television faded and flared in the lounge room. An advertisement for a sports betting company ended and the middle segment of Wheel of Fortune began. They'd finished with the pointless speed rounds. The three contestants today all looked startled. They appeared miscast, thrown together behind the scoreboard. Lucky solved two puzzles before one of them even touched the wheel. Food: Bacon bits. Phrase: To go in pursuit. Lucky Mallios scooped the rigani into a spiral jar and balled up the newspapers, sending green dust into the air. He got up when the phone rang, his eyes not moving from the television screen. Five beeps and a delay: An international call. ‘Lucky's! He sang down the line. EC: Thanks Andrew, that was really great. AP: Thank you. EC: So, very first question would have to be for those listening who haven't yet read the book, could you give a brief summary of Lucky's and what happens and what it's about? AP: Okay, well, it's a novel that spans about 80-odd years, and there are several strands of narrative, but the main storyline focuses on a man called Lucky, or nicknamed Lucky, and we begin in his late teens and follow him through to his 70s. And in his 70s he has one last thing to accomplish. And the novel is also about the people whose lives he touches, and who in turn shape him.  The main milieu of the novel, I suppose, of course there are different storylines, there are different settings, but really the book centres around what might be called the Greek Australian cafe, a sort of obsolete institution that was once… you know, a, um… a sort of, kind of business that you would find on many suburban and city streets and in country towns. But no longer. EC: This is a lovely revival of that, though, because I personally have never heard of the Greek Australian diner, and I'm, I now feel quite versed in it, and I'm really glad that I am. Do you have a connection to that former institution? AP: Ah, yes. So the Pippos family, that was what we did, and my grandparents and my uncles and aunts, they were in, they were all in the cafe business, and you know, I used to visit those cafes as a child and, and it was a world that fascinated me from a very young age, and I always knew that my first novel would have something to do with the cafe. EC: So this has been an idea that's been in your head for quite a while in that sense. AP: Yeah, I think, I think it's been, it's really been there from the very start. I mean, from the time that I wanted to be a writer, I think that the cafes were, my grandparents' and uncle's cafe, that was a place that I would visit very, very frequently, and it was a place where I would hear stories about the world, and stories about migration, and it was the place where I would, my relatives would talk to me about the Greek myths and literature, you know—it was the place where my imagination was formed. And everybody has a place like that, and so for me, it just seem natural that I would write about that world in my first book. But of course it's not, Lucky's is not just about the Greek cafes. It's about all sorts of worlds and settings that intersect with the cafe. EC: Absolutely. Something I quite like to ask on this podcast is sort of about the journey of the book from, from that first idea to the beautiful product that I have in front of me right now, and I think you do too, ‘cause you just read. So from, from the kind of first spark of an idea to to now, how did that play out for you? AP: Well, it's a long, long story… EC: (Laughs) It's always a long story, and I always love them. AP: They're always long stories full of, full of mistakes and, um, yeah, but it it's always interesting, first novels are interesting and lots of, lots of reasons—just the struggle to, you know, this is someone who likes hearing about first novels, just the struggle to do it, and this, you know, the question ‘am I a writer, am I not a writer, will I ever be published, is this all for nothing…' And then first novels are often, you know, not the most refined piece of work that a writer produces in our lives, but they often have a certain energy and a heat that later novels don't have, that's, that's, I mean that's, that's a big generalisation to make, but I often notice that about debuts. Okay, so, it is true that a lot changed in this novel, and, like, I can talk about that, but some things did not change at all—certainly this desire to write about the Greek Australian cafe, this world that I knew as a child, that was my first experience of community, that was… like, it had a profound effect on me, and it was really the frame through which I saw the wider world. Um, and I also wanted to write a book about people… striving, how they responded to failure and success, that was very important to me. And I wanted to touch on, in certain chapters, the assimilation era in Australia, and I wanted to write about… like, how someone changes over the course of a life, and how a culture changes, and that would be strong along the whole trajectory of the Greek Australian cafe. Which, I dunno, I mean, there's so many ways to date it, but let's just say… from the late 20s to the 90s is really when they were, they were big, but they were disappearing by the early 90s at a rapid rate. And the heyday was probably the 50s and 60s, but I'm sure some historians would disagree with that. So look, that's basically in the book, all of that stuff. But there was so many different stages of the book, there was so many drafts, and the characters changed a lot—there are many characters in this book, and I think they all went through radical changes through the process. Certainly Lucky was a very different person in those early drafts, and probably the second most important character in the book, someone called Emily, did not appear until halfway through the writing process, so I knew that there was a sort of a point where I realised that someone was missing, and it was Emily. And then the other thing was narrative time, of course the early drafts finished in the 60s, and then forward to the early 70s, so this is all like before I was born, and there was probably missing, you know, my own feeling for an era, and I realised that the story wasn't quite long enough. So I, you know, I brought it, just expanded it by 30 odd years. So there were lots of drafts that involved… you know, just exactly how big this story is, and moving it around—the first draft was chronological, if you've read the book you know that the plot is scattered and not arranged chronologically. And it took a long time to get to know the characters. So I just persisted, and when there were times when I thought, this is not working, this is going to take months and months of work, or a year of work, you know, there was a point where I was just, you know, do I continue with this? You know, maybe I should just go write a novel about someone in their thirties living in the inner city of Sydney and you know, doing whatever I was doing in life at the time. But, you know, I always wanted to write about the cafe world. I always wanted to write a big book that had twists and turns and that covered a lot of time, and whenever I was at a sort of fork in the road, I just thought, ‘is there heat in this novel, is there something that's dear to me, even though it's a bit of a mess at the moment?' And the answer was always just yes, you know. Yes, this is the, this is a, this is a milieu that was really important to me as a child, and, and it's still important to me as a writer, so I'm going to just keep going. And well—the whole thing took about, the writing process took about 8 years. Now in that time I changed jobs, my father died, all sorts of family convulsions—I had a child, I did a doctorate, you know, lots of things happened. That list could, I could keep adding items to that list. Yeah, I mean. It was a, it was a long road, full of wrong turns, but also full of joy and these wonderful moments when you, you know, you sit down to write at 7 o'clock at night and the next thing you know, it's 4 in the morning, you know, those moments when you make connections between storylines or between characters, or when you realise this problem that you've had, this problem with the narrative that you've been thinking about and thinking about, you finally figure out what it is, you know, how to put the solution in it. These moments are just, it's just so blissful, like, writing is—writing is hard, but you have to love it's difficulty. But I think writers also need to remember, just also need to remind themselves sometimes, there are so many moments of joy in the process, and yeah. EC: That's really good advice, and this is a very joyful book. Even though bad things do happen in the plot, but I just wanted to to say as well, you know, when I finished reading this book. I was almost kind of shocked that it wasn't like a huge 800-page volume, because I felt like I read this massive, massive, really long book and I'd been immersed in this world for so long, and I was like, you know, I read that in three sittings, and it's a pretty standard length book. So it does have this incredible feeling of like world building and authenticity in that world, and I just loved that so much about it. AP: I think… Well, I had some good models for that. I also didn't want to write, like, an 800-page book—I mean, I've read a lot of those, and I like, I like some of them too, but…the, um… I also really love novels like Commonwealth by Ann Patchett and above all, the Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, which are similar kind of…stories, novels that take place over many decades, but they're only, you know, 300 pages, 350 pages. EC: Mmm. AP: And, so that was, you know, one of the things that I wanted to do about, I realised about halfway through was that I wanted to keep it as a certain size. And, you know, it's for other people to judge how well I did that, but often when I read Joseph Roth, the Radetzky March, I see that these chapters are like, they're just gems, like, his, his…even though he might move from one decade to another between chapters, you know, he's gone into the world so deeply that you understand what's happened, where a character is in their lives, and the sense of time passing, the effect of time is felt when you, when, when, when the chapter transitions from the one year to the next. So that was something that I thought of as a model, but, um… yeah. EC: I think that absolutely happens in the book, um, and sort of on that note, I wanted to ask you about keeping track of those shifts in time, because we do have, as you said, you know, I think the earliest that you're writing about is about 1913, and then you go all the way up to 2002, so how did you kind of manage the, the story moving through time so much? AP: Um, well, what I had at the beginning, and I sort of mentioned this, that the first draft was chronological. So what I had was actually, like a kind of a cause-and-effect relationship between all the events, that starts really in the Benny Goodman chapters and takes you through to what we might call the Wheel of Fortune chapters. And… But what I did was, so I had, I had this plot that was basically, ‘this happened, and then because of that, this happened', and so on and so forth. But because writing, ordering the novel that way would have emphasised the wrong things—like it would have been very Achilles heavy for example, Emily would not have turned up until halfway through the book, or two thirds of the way through the book. So what I did was scatter the plot, and the reader puts together the cause and effect. That's, that's something that they do as the story, the conversions between all the storylines becomes very clear, you know, some way into the book. EC: It was very satisfying to see them all come together as well. I do have to admit I was, you know, when, when you see those lines crossing in a book like this, it's just, it's such a great feeling and it's such a great reading experience as well. AP: Oh good, good. I mean, I do like books where, you know, the reader is putting it together, the reader knows more about the plot than the characters, and the, and how everything fits together, so that's what I tried to do here. EC: So there's also, as well as these multiple plots kind of running around, you've also got quite a bit of history in this book as you mentioned before as well. Did you do, as well as your recollections and the stories your family told you, did you do much formal research in the lead-up to writing this book? AP: Look, there was quite a bit of research. EC: Yeah. AP: I think that, that looking at this, you know, I mean, yeah, if you read the book you'll see that there's so much going on. There are, you know, I can, a lot of the recollections were the things that I saw and felt as a child. The most important research is what I experience as a grown-up, what I know about love and despair and grief and so on—but also, you know, the stories that my father to tell me about playing cards at, you know, illegal gaming rooms and so on and so forth, I mean, I love those stories. I'm not a gambler, but I love those stories. And then of course, you know, I used to read, I bought a stack of issues of this magazine called Yank Down Under, which was a really well-produced magazine for American servicemen stationed in Australia during World War II. I read as much as I could about the poet Bion of Smyrna, there's a, there's a subplot in this novel about a failed classicist, and he's working on the… the writing of a figure from the Hellenistic era called Bion of Smyrna, and so i read about that. I read a little bit about clarinet, and Benny Goodman, so yeah, I did, I go into these things, but who knows what I got wrong! (Laughs) EC: What I loved and that I'd never sort of thought about so much before was, you know, probably to my detriment, is the—so, there's the Achilles is the original Greek diner restaurant owner, and he's the generation above Lucky, he's Lucky's father-in-law, and he's kind of this like insane, violent person, but he's so interesting, and I'd never really read that much about that generation of migrants to Australia, and you know, for the reason that they, you know, because of assimilation, I guess—so I loved reading about that and learning about that, even through this kind of awful character. AP: Yeah, I mean they were…yeah, they were a different, they were a different type of, were a different type of person and, and, you know, in an island like Ithaca they all were, where they were, duelling was very common until quite late in the 19th century and vendettas were a thing. You know, they were, machismo was, sort of, a real curse on these men,  and they had ideas that were, ideas about masculinity that unfortunately were, in some cases disastrous for their families, and, I mean my grandfather, my Papou, he was, he's a bit like Achilles, but I mean—I can't, I shouldn't overstate that. I shouldn't overstate that. EC:  I don't think anyone could be properly like Achilles. (Both laugh) AP: No, no, no. EC: He's quite a character. AP: He was, he's the character that people have—look, the book is only 2 weeks old, which is a really strange age for a book, but he seems to be a character that people have a lot of strong opinions about, like they hate him, or they find him fascinating, or…you know, that… Yeah, he is.  I think what I wanted, I mean, what I wanted to do with that character is just examine a very old, very old form of, kind of patriarchal behaviour that I think is, you know, its time, if it hasn't come to an end already, it's coming to an end. EC: Mmm. AP: And that's what I wanted to follow with Achilles, I didn't want to kind of, you know, worry about my grandfather's so much, who was more complex, he was like, my grandfather was a more complex figure than Achilles but, you know, he did do some of the things that Achilles did. EC: Mmm. Um, and then to move to the other sort of, oh, not patriarchal, but, you know, the main event, Lucky himself—He is this amazing character who is just like larger than life, and like I don't think I will ever forget to him as a character, to be honest. When did you get the idea for Lucky? Like, where did he come from? AP: I was interested in… He, he developed a lot. I was interested in this idea that… so Lucky is not the only person who perpetrate a fraud in the book, and there is a scene earlier in the book where Lucky pretends to be someone else. And Lucky's a young man when he does it, this is not the sort of thing that a mature Lucky would do, but I definitely felt that when I was setting out to write the book, that I needed to become someone else in order to do this, that it would be that, the task seemed just enormous, and perhaps beyond me. And that was exciting, because I wanted to be someone else, you know, I wanted to be an author, I wanted to, to finally do the thing that I've been wanting to do since I was a kid. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's the sort of secret reason why that is in there. But I mean, who is he? And I mean, he's many things, and what I will say is a bit, that… Lucky was a lot quieter in the early drafts. And I realised at a point, you know, there's something missing from his character. You know, you reach these moments in the writing process where you have this problem, and it's like a problem that you might have in a friendship. You're thinking well, what's gone wrong, how do I fix it? And you can go around like this for days or weeks, months, but there was a moment when I got a phone call from my father, and my father doing the writing, during the process of writing this book, he was dying of pancreatic cancer. But he was given four months but he ended up living 6 years, and there was a—he was, even though he was being battered by chemo and he didn't know what the next scan was going to show, he had this incredible energy, and lust for life, you know, just as he was, just as he was leaving. And I remember getting this phone call from my father telling me about, like, he saw a drug deal go down at some park that he was walking through, and he was so excited to see this bizarre thing happening (Both laugh) that he'd never seen before, but he knew exactly what was going on, and he was describing all the way the people were moving and the things they were doing, and he would do this all the time, and you know, sometimes it would be something, something that he saw on sale at the shopping mall. And I remember putting down the phone and thinking Lucky needs to be a bit more like my father. He needs to have that energy. He needs to be, you know, really living—and that was the point where, that was the sort of breakthrough. There's a way of discussing, I think, this book, and perhaps many other books, is discussing it in terms of breakthroughs in the process. And that was, that was the major breakthrough within, with respect to Lucky. But a lot of writers say this about their main characters, and I think… this next thing that I want to say is, it's certainly true of this book, but it's also true of other books. And, you know, Lucky really wants to find a way to be a good person. He wants to be kind, and that's not always an easy thing to do. It's not always a simple thing to do, but that's, yeah, that is, that is one of his ambitions. And also, you know, part of that is finding family, finding the community that he never quite had in his life. That's what he wants, and this cafe that he wants to, you know, establish right at the end of his life, that's the vehicle for this… EC: I love that you've been able… AP: ..Family that he never quite had. EC: Oh, sorry. I love that you've been able to immortalise that attitude that your father had, and kind of meld it into this character, because it just works so incredibly well, and I'm really surprised to hear that that's something that got added in later, because that's just so, you know, as you say it's a breakthrough moment, but it just feels so integral to the character and to how the events play out around him. AP: Yeah, I know—it's funny when you talk about a book, and often when I listen to writers interviewed, they say ‘oh, you know, this element of the plot or this character didn't appear until, you know, I worked on, until 6 months before I handed in the book', and they'd spent ten years on the book or five years on the book or whatever. It's kind of a, it's mind-blowing in a way, and the (Laughs), it ruins the mystique around the writing process, you know, that everything is intentional, and everything is right there from the start, and it's just a matter of work to get it out. But, I mean, that's not how every book is written, and in the final product, everything is intentional, but… yeah, it's not… it would be amazing if someone, you know, had an idea for a book that was, spanned 80 years, and they knew every aspect of the plot, and they knew what every character was like, and they was pretty sure which seems that we're going to dramatise, and which they would summarise, which they would leave out. That would be amazing to have that kind of brain, but that's not the brain I have. EC: You'd need a lot of Post-it notes as well. (Both laugh) AP: Look, I love Post-it notes, I'm looking at about seven Post-it notes right now on my desk. But look, there's not enough Post-it notes in the world… EC: There's not, not in the world. (Laughs) So just to wrap up, I want to ask you about the book's reception. Because as you say, it's been out for about 2 weeks now at the time of our conversation, and it's had a huge, huge response from booksellers, and people reading already. How's that felt for your debut book to be received so lovingly? AP: Well, um… It's still, it's a funny thing, you know, every day I wake up and I don't read, I don't read anything that's written about me, unless someone, you know, someone would have to tag me on social media and then I would read it. But like, I've made this deal with my partner to read all the reviews before I read them, and only to, and then to just basically summarise the review. And if she thinks I really need to read it then I'll read it, but I don't want to! I just want to deal with this my own way and try to enjoy each day, so I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying the moment, and, and something interesting is happening, every day an interview or I'm getting an email from a reader or something like that. But when people tell me that they loved the book and it's touched them in this way, or they identify with that character or this character, or they like what I've done, you know, structurally or they like a particular passage, or… that is really, it's really moving. It really does touch me and it does… Makes me think, you know, wow, two years ago the whole idea that someone would be in this world I created and have any emotions to do with it at all, that was just a legendary concept. And so I'm still a bit shocked. I'm still a bit shocked that people are reading it, and that when someone expresses an opinion, you know, on Achilles or Sophia or Louis II, the pet snake at the end of the book, I'm just blown—I'm just, at first I'm just, what? Really? How do you know about that? But um, then it's, yeah, it's just hard to even say thank you and it's hard to say thank you enough, and it really is amazing. I wonder… I don't think I'll ever be, I'll stop being grateful and actually stop being surprised. EC: Well you should, because it's a really, really special book and I loved reading it so much, and I can't, like, I think I read it just a little bit before it was officially released, and I was reading it like oh my god, I need to be able to recommend this to people. Like it's one of those books that you can't wait to get out and start, like, shoving it into people's hands and telling them to go get it from the library or buy it or whatever, it's really wonderful. AP: Oh thank you, thank you. EC: Thank you so much for making the time to talk to me today, I really enjoyed our conversation. And also just loved this book, so thank you so much Andrew. AP: Oh, wonderful. Thanks, and look—thank you for supporting debut authors in this wild and crazy year. It's, it means a lot and and the books that you've recommended this year have just been, all been great books. So I'm really glad to be included. EC: It's been an honour to have all those books, and yours too. (Laughs) AC: That was the November First Book Club edition of the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the First Book Club this year. We'll be back with more great debut titles in 2021. If you're in a position to, please consider supporting KYD by becoming a member. If you subscribe before Christmas day, you'll automatically be entered into a draw to win one of five $100 gift vouchers for some of our favourite independent bookshops. (Music)

"My illness is not a metaphor. Any amount of self-reflection in the world will not make it go away." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For October that debut is Katerina Bryant's Hysteria, out now from NewSouth Books. When Katerina suddenly began experiencing chronic non-epileptic seizures, she was plunged into a foreign world of doctors and psychiatrists, who understood her condition as little as she did. Reacting the only way she knew how, she immersed herself in books, reading her way through her own complicated diagnosis and finding a community of women who shared similar experiences. In Hysteria, Bryant blends memoir with literary and historical analysis to explore women's medical treatment throughout history. Our November First Book Club title will be Lucky's by Andrew Pippos (Pan Macmillan). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Hysteria in our October Books Roundup. Read Katerina's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. (more…)

"I love to tell the story of my rejection and put it out there in the world because I know that so many emerging writers are facing the same dilemmas that I was." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For September that debut is Rawah Arja's The F Team, out now from Giramondo Publications. The F Team is a rich and funny novel that draws an intimate portrait of Western Sydney families and friendships. Our October First Book Club title will be Hysteria by Katerina Bryant (NewSouth Books). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of The F Team in our September Books Roundup. Read Rawah's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. (more…)

This month the KYD team are discussing Eula Biss's latest genre defying work ‘Having and Being Had', a series of linked essays in which Biss explores her lived experience of capitalism, along with SBS's new supernatural drama 'Hungry Ghosts', in which vengeful spirits haunt the Vietnamese-Australian community in Melbourne during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. This episode was produced by Hayley May Bracken. Further Reading and Culture Picks: ‘Avoiding the trap of the Self-Aware Writer', The Cut ContraPoints, ‘Opulence' (YouTube) Rabbit Hole podcast The Cut podcast, ‘Are We the Virus?' Stream or subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Soundcloud / Google Podcasts / Spotify / Other (RSS) Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice! TRANSCRIPT (MUSIC) Hayley May Bracken: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings podcast. I'm Hayley May Bracken, joined by Kill Your Darlings' own Alan and Alice… Alice Cottrell: Hello! Alan Vaarwerk: Hey! HMB: We're all recording from the safety of our own homes. Today will be discussing Eula Biss' latest genre-defying work, Having and Being Had, and also the four-part SBS miniseries Hungry Ghosts. Eula Biss is a New York Times bestseller, her most recent book is On Immunity: An Inoculation, which was named one of the Top 10 best books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review, and she's also written Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, which won the National Book Circle Award for criticism, and her work has appeared in Harpers, the New York Times, Believer, and elsewhere. Having and Being Had, Biss herself has said, was a record of the moves that she made within a fixed set of rules. It's also a record of her discomfort with those rules and with the game itself, the game being capitalism. AC: So I think the book came out of a diary that she kept when she bought her first house, about the experience of buying into the American dream and the feelings of discomfort that she had in moving to a particular position in the social hierarchy. HMB: And she had some rules for herself, when she constructed this work as well, to be explicit and write down figures of how much her house cost, how much her income was, rather than deal in vagaries. AV: Yeah, I think it's interesting that she sort of set up these rules for herself, but also that she told us as the reader what the rules were that she was establishing for the writing of the book. Short essays, a couple of pages at most, they all start in the first person, they all are based around a conversation that she had with a friend or a family member. Sometimes she says she bent the rules a little bit in order to talk about a book that she's reading, rather than a conversation. The fact that talking about money and actually putting dollar figures to her discussions of class and capitalism and things like that, the fact that that can be a taboo. HMB: Mmm. I also loved how she was transparent about the way that, in her private life, she was deliberately ambiguous about the cost of her house. When she spoke to her sister, and she was saying that her life is divided into time before owning a washing machine and after, and that she could say that purchase of a home was a $400,000 container for her washing machine, and then she wrote ‘it's actually closer to $500,000, but I wasn't comfortable saying that.' The little disavowals. AC: That bit struck me too, Hayley, I thought yeah, it was sort of a really interesting interrogation of the lies that we tell ourselves to make ourselves comfortable as well, and I read an interview with Eula where she was saying basically that people use other people being more rich than them as a comparison to make themselves feel better, but the reality is in a country like America there's always going to be someone who's more rich than you, and there's a section in the book where she says to her husband, ‘we're rich,' and I think he expresses that he doesn't feel rich, and she texts him saying ‘I'm compiling evidence that we're rich.' So I think it's interesting that she doesn't just interrogate her own wealth, or her relationship to money, but she also interrogates lies or obscuring details we use to talk about or acknowledge money or our own financial situations. AV: I mean the whole book is kind of as much an artistic experiment in terms of the rules that she sets for herself, It's also kind of a thought—we're sort of working out with her, she and by extension we as the reader sort of fit within these systems, and what compromises that we sort of have to make every day in order to live a quote unquote ‘comfortable' life, whether that means buying shares in order to pay for your retirement, and the fact that a lot of investments are conducted at such a remove, I think there's a section where she discusses either being able to invest in a company that treats its workers well, or looks after the planet, and sometimes it's not possible to be able to invest in either one, and so it's a decision that has to be made in order for her to do the work that she wants to do. I guess we can get into in a little bit about what work even means, but yeah, the idea of what is a luxury to have, what is an investment, what is an investment in your own craft, which is something that she sort of interrogates a lot, and what that means from a sort of ethical standpoint under capitalism, I suppose. HMB: The way that she was, as is the 2020 way, checking her own privilege, it wasn't exhausting or pedantic, it felt very in its right place in this work, it felt as though it didn't rest at stating some privileges and moving on, it was that really thorough interrogation of, as you were saying, what even is work, and what is the morality of that. How she managed to live in New York as a younger writer on $10,000 a year and made as much money as she needed to survive and then live as a writer. I was quite amazed to learn how modest her income and her livelihood really was, considering her literary-critical success. I don't know if that's comforting or discouraging to learn how little money she had while she was writing these wonderful things. AV: It really does systemically dismantle this myth of, ‘you have to starve for your art'. I think the reality of so many working writers and people involved in and around writing is that it is work and it's, and it's labour, and as Eula Biss articulates in the book, it's in some ways, you know, a lot easier labour than than other kinds of labour, but it is labour nonetheless, and so the way that she's, I guess, lays out the admin involved in building a writing life, the economics of building a writing life, the trade-offs in terms of, you have to, have to pay for time, basically, you're sort of always thinking in terms of buying yourself time in order to write, in order to do the work… HMB: Particuarly as a parent. That seems quite clear, that delineation for people to have to pay someone to have any time for their writing and whether or not they'll make that back. AV: Yeah, and the example that she uses, that she comes back to quite a lot is Virginia Woolf, who wrote A Room of One's Own, lays out that idea very much in economic terms, I think it's, what, 500 pounds… HMB: 500 guineas! AV: 500 guineas, yeah, is what it takes for a woman to be able to have the time and space to write, but then goes into detail about how Virginia Woolf also, you know, inherited a large amount of money and had a live-in servant who she treated not super well, really going into the idea of being complicit in all these economic systems, being able to square that with doing the work that you want to and are compelled to do, and not having it, not thinking in absolutes of being one or the other I guess. HMB: Did you have a favourite revelation or elucidation from the book? Mine was Monopoly, how Monopoly as a game was originally created… AV:.. As an anticapitalist, or as a critique of capitalism? Yeah! HMB: Yes! (LAUGHS) AC: Oh it was actually amazing that there used to be two different ways to play Monopoly, one where you dominated, which is the game that we know now, and another where you would play and everyone would end up equal, and that has just completely disappeared into history. Yeah, wild. HMB: For some reason that struck me as somehow poetic. AV: Yeah, there's a lot of really beautiful poetic ironies all throughout the book, the one that's stuck with me the most is the one about Virginia Woolf and how on the one hand she was very much committed to this idea of women having time and space to write, but on the other hand the trade-offs that that came with, and the fact that she didn't always practice what she preached, and yet that coming across as not being discussed in order to quote unquote ‘cancel' Virginia Woolf or to discount her thinking, but to I guess complicate the thinking around that. AC: Yeah, I think the thing I loved about the book is that though it explores morality, there is kind of no moralising, and I think that that's what makes Eula Biss interesting and clear writer, and as you say Hayley, there's the kind of acknowledgement and interrogation of her own privilege, but it doesn't feel like self-flagellation or making excuses, it feel like it's interrogated with a kind of intellectual rigour that can be missing sometimes I think, in those acknowledgements. HMB: Because she gets into the real minutiae of it, as when she was talking about how a friend of hers doesn't want to pay a woman to clean the house because that's too intimate, but she'd pay someone to wax her bikini line, wax her legs, that's not too intimate. Everything's up for analysis, everything's up for dissemination. AC: Yeah, it just feels like she's sort of, takes a magnifying glass to things that are interesting to her and then distills down what they mean, or what they might mean. Or tell us into these incredibly kind of crisp, complete yet simple sentences, I mean it's just a joy to read along with. It's the kind of writing that makes you feel like you're thinking along with the writer, I think. HMB: Yes, it reminds me of Maggie Nelson like that. You feel much smarter. AC: Yep, Maggie Nelson, Ellena Savage, it's that kind of vibe like having a drink with your much smarter friend, but you sort of come away feeling intellectually energised by it. AV: Yeah, I think there's a lot of really strong parallels with, I would say, Ellena Savage's Blueberries in terms of that idea of having, yeah, like you say Alice, having a conversation with your very smart friend. Yeah, I found this super readable—for essays on capitalism and economics and class and things like that, it's probably one of the most readable experiences on that sort of topic I've had in a good while. The pieces are so short and so diary like in a very compulsive kind of way. You can just, ‘just one more, just one more,' sort of thing. HMB: As you were saying Alan, the real triumph of this work is that it's quite intimate and shows how threaded into our whole lives all of these concepts are, and she can talk about Nobel prize winners in economics, and how two people can win in the same year with completely contradictory theories about the market, and how we've created this beast qe don't even understand or can barely control. And I think it made me realise that something like economics, which, if you've never had any appetite for the subject, seems way more vague and subjective that I formerly imagined. AC: I think my favourite part was definitely the Work section, I found the kind of questions about what is work and what is labour, and how have our conceptions of what work means changed over time, and the delineations between paid work and unpaid work. They were just yeah, those kind of really interesting questions about labour and work and what they mean in the context of creative work and physical labour, drew me in. I mean I loved all of it, I felt like it had a real kind of, yeah, cumulative feeling with those short essays, and often the end of one essay would then spark the start of the next one. So you kind of had this feeling of being drawn on and led somewhere, which I really loved. AV: And the fact that these concepts that we know so inherently, like, things like we know what work is, we know what play is, but to actually sit down and think what is the difference between work and play, and the difference between work and labour, they're actually concepts that are so nebulous and so kind of buffeted by other forces, and so wound up in money and religion and things like that, like the ‘Protestant work ethic'. The book itself is a sort of interrogation of its own creation, which I think is really interesting because it's not apologising for its own creation, it's, if there's one thing Eula Biss definitely believes it is that the work is valuable, and her writing work is valuable. HMB: Hearing some intelligent person articulate that very notion, in a culture where arts degrees are about to double in price, and the idea of producing works of art is definitely seen as less than morally good in a culture that definitely doesn't celebrate art for art's sake. AV: Yeah, definitely. I think that working writers know that writing is work, but I think it's something that, it's too easy to be discounted as leisure or as play, and this is a valuable way of showing that it's not. There's a really great essay in The Cut which talks about the sort of self-awareness, writers interrogating self-awareness and sort of apologising for their own creation, and it's talking about Having and Being Had. There's a line from that essay that really stuck out of me, the essay's by Molly Fischer and it's at the very end of the piece, and it's: ‘Why read an essay or novel whose own author seems unconvinced it exists? Biss may be exhaustively self-aware, but she writes like her writing is work worth doing.' And I think that is a powerful thing in and of itself. HMB: That is very powerful. And I think I've long known that writing is work, but to have it reaffirmed that it's work worth doing was definitely not lost on me. AV: If you want to read more about the book and about Eula Biss, we actually on Kill Your Darlings are going to be having a interview between Khalid Warsame and Eula Biss on our website, so keep an eye out for that now. HMB: Now, let's talk about four-part SBS miniseries Hungry Ghosts. The Hungry Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the 7th month in the lunar calendar. It's the time Buddhists and Taoists believe the gates to hell open and spirits wander the earth. And this is the central story of the SBS new supernatural drama Hungry Ghosts, directed by Shawn Seet. And it's the haunting of an evil spirit named Quang, played by Vico Thai, released along with other hungry ghosts during the festival, and how their presence forces four families in contemporary Melbourne to confront their buried past. AC: So what did you guys think? Were you spooked? HMB: No. AV: Yes. (ALL LAUGH) My spooky tolerance is extremely low, so I thought the series was very well made, very compelling, very visually appealing. It's nice to see Footscray, community out there, it's nice to, gosh it's nice to see parts of Melbourne more than 5 km away. (AC & HMB LAUGH) Yeah, I think it was a really visually good-looking series, I think. HMB: That was the most redeeming feature for me, the cinematography, the use of refraction and shadow and light, cerulean blue and that sort of true red, and the gold accents, that was really lovely. AV: So you say that as in, I take that to mean you didn't find the series very compelling, Hayley? HMB: My partner's a composer for film, and he was watching it with me, and he was very disappointed in the score, which I think maybe his criticism in my ear didn't help, but because score has such an important part in creating tension and scare, I think that's part of why it was diffused for me, watching it with a hater. AC: I enjoyed it! I mean I found it scary and ominous and spooky, I guess, in the ways that you want from a horror or supernatural drama or whatever you want to classify it as, but for me the series just had a lot more depth than a traditional ghost story, because it features a cast of characters who are being haunted by their pasts the ghosts of those who have been killed in war, or those who've drowned fleeing by boat, so it was a lot more meaningful, I thought, than your traditional spooky monster who's just there to freak you out. It was about people grappling with guilt and remorse. I thought Ferdinand Hoang was amazing as Anh, and the actress who plays his wife, Gabrielle Chan, was brilliant as well. That was kind of my favourite subplot. HMB: Definitely agree that the more nuanced realistic intergenerational trauma parts were so much more compelling to me than the scares. AV: Yeah, I think my favourite of the storylines as well was the Nguyen family who run the grocer, and how the ghost is used in a literal and figurative sense, in terms of coming between them in their marriage. It's interesting because it's almost like there's two different types of ghost story happening at once in this piece, on the one hand you have the supernatural thriller with May and her family tracking down Quang and trying to put a stop to him, collecting these three souls in order to keep the gates of hell open. The others are trying to figure out why these ghosts have appeared to them rather than necessarily trying to stop them, I suppose. And so there's sort of two ghost stories happening at the same time. And so sometimes I feel like the overlap, I was trying to find the connection between those two types of stories, and how the ghosts related to one another, and how the families sort of related to one another, I almost feel like sometimes that got a little bit muddled, but for the most part I actually kind of respected how the show respected the intelligence of the viewer. HMB: Which is not easy to do with only four episodes, I mean it takes me a couple of episodes to warm up to the world building of any new series. AC: I love a shorter series, I kind of think it's kind of, you know, know wat you're gonna do and do it. My big critique of all Netflix things is that everything is about 40 per cent longer than it needs to be. HMB: True. And the mark of more artistic credibility to leave people wanting rather than to milk it until there's nothing left, but I did think of you, Alan, and your criticism of Stateless in terms of how the Anglo-Australian cast members were headlined to promote this series, the Stockton family cast appear first in the end credit, and if their presence was necessarily, necessary? AV: I kind of thought that yeah, the Bryan Brown character Neil Stockton, the war photographer, I thought he was not a necessarily super fleshed-out character. With the Nguyen family with Anh and Lien they kind of dealt with flashbacks really quite well, and then to have the Neil Stockton character really only use monologues to talk about his experience in Vietnam, I think left me a little bit cold. HMB: I know what you mean, I felt like I could see the script. You know, when you're seeing someone act and you think ‘oh, here's some acting,' you're not immersed in it. AC: I do think it's worthwhile though, in a show that is about the Vietnamese community in Australia, interrogating Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. I agree he wasn't the most compelling character, but there was a reason for that storyline to be there, I thought. HMB: True, and criticisms aside, Hungry Ghosts was an achievement on many levels, a contribution to Australian storytelling in a way that I don't think any of us can fully register if you aren't a Vietnamese Australian or an Asian Australian, what that representation would mean. AC: Yeah, and wonderful I thought to see Footscray on screen, and parts of Melbourne that yeah, you've never seen on TV before, I haven't at least. AV: What you were saying about sort of Netflix shows sometimes being too long and this one being shorter and I definitely agree with the principle in terms of, if you drag things out too much then you can get a bit sort of baggy, but again without giving anything away, I felt like that the ending of this series felt a little bit rushed and I would have liked to spend a little bit more time getting to know some of the characters in their relationships to one another, rather than just in terms of how it facilitated the plot. HMB: I felt that most profoundly in the romance development. I feel like they would have had some erst and let that build a bit more… AV: Oh yeah, yeah. HMB:.. Had they had more time. AV: Yeah. I think for me I mostly found that in the the second generation Nguyen family, Gareth Yuen playing Paul, the son of Anh and Lien. HMB: When he spoke about his father dealing with post-traumatic stress from being in the Vietnam war, we got a little teaser of a much more complex and interesting aspect of that character, and how he had to be the one who held the family together and bought his mother over here, and the depth that was hinted at in a few conversations he had with his wife intimated that there was a lot more to him. AV: Yeah, definitely. Some of those characters I would have liked to spend more time with, but I mean I guess that's, as much as I frame that as a criticism, it also means that they were interesting characters that I wanted to know more about, and wanted to get more into their lives, because they were, for the limited time they they are on screen, well drawn characters and they're well acted for the most part, I think maybe Bryan Brown, yeah, he is a good actor, but I feel like maybe this wasn't the best performances of his that I've seen. Catherine Van-Davies, as May Le, who's called the protagonist of the of the series, I suppose, I think she was great, I had a really enjoyable time watching the series. AC: Yeah, it's interesting what you say about the ending feeling a bit rushed, Alan, because I just feel like that's something that's very hard to do with horror or thrillers, and I think it's, like, a really difficult thing to do because if it's too long then it sort of loses the charge that it needs, but if it's too quick, it feels rushed, I don't know, I feel like with horror or thrillers I always have a slight feeling of dissatisfaction at the end, it's a bit like, you know, when everything gets wrapped up. HMB: That is a good point Alice, it isn't easy to wrap up anything in the horror genre in a perfectly neat or satisfying way. Don't take our word for it, if you would like to check it out, it is available free to stream via SBS On Demand. Check it out. AC: If you want to get scared! (LAUGHS) HMB: Or… AC: Or not, if you're Hayley. (ALL LAUGH) HMB: I I think that might be actually good, because some people might be turned off something that's scary. If I'm not scared you'll be fine. AC: And what else have you guys been watching, or reading or listening to, and top culture picks? HMB: A good culture pick in tandem with Eula Biss' Having and Being Had is ContraPoints, her video on opulence, talking about not just wealth but the aesthetics of wealth, and visually very stunning, but also have some really interesting insight. One of her insights that I thought of while reading Having and Being Had was ‘Donald Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person', I think that's Annie Leibovitz's quote, people who are born into wealth usually exhibit taste that's more restrained, and how his Nouveau Riche aesthetic is part of what makes him seem accessible and aspirational. I recommend ContraPoints, as always. AV: And this is a YouTube channel, isn't it? HMB: YouTube channel. AC: I've actually, that's a good segue, I've been listening to a podcast called Rabbit Hole, which is about YouTube, or about the YouTube rabbit hole, and follows a young man who basically was radicalised online by right wing YouTube videos. The whole series is just like a kind of deeper dive exploration into what algorithms mean for basically like, destroying a sense of shared civic reality, because people are just drawn into these different rabbit holes. And yeah, also about like ethics in tech, what are the responsibilities that tech companies have, what's overreach? Yeah, it's a really compelling story that has a personal angle, but looks at some really big issues about what the internet is doing to us and to democracy really, so I'd recommend that. HMB: That's a good segue because that's how I learnt about Contrapoints in the first place, when listening to that. AC: Oh, cool! AV: I've started listening to The Cut's new podcast, hosted by Avery Trufelman, formerly of 99% Invisible, and a really, another really great podcast called Nice Try!, and a particular, an episode that I really enjoyed recently, it's about the meme that was going around in the early days of coronavirus talking about ‘nature is healing, we are the virus,' and the problematic, sort of eco-fascist sentiments behind that, about the idea of humans being separate from nature, and how that really, you know, erases a lot of Indigenous relationship with the land, and so, and it's, yeah, just a really well produced, snappy really informative really engaging podcast. I really recommend it. The other thing that I was going to mention is that I've been reading Kylie Maslen's new book, Show Me Where It Hurts, which is a collection of essays talking about living with an invisible illness. There's a couple of essays in there that actually began life on Kill Your Darlings back in the day, when Kylie was KYD New Critic back in 2018 and then another piece as well from 2017 called ‘Ask Me How I Am', which has been sort of expanded out in that collection, and yeah, they're really engaging, really thought provoking, really enjoyable to read collection. And that book's just out this month from Text Publishing. HMB: Also, don't forget… AC: New Australian Fiction 2020 from Kill Your Darlings, a wonderful collection of short stories. AV: Highly recommended. HMB: But where can I purchase this? AC: At killyourdarlings.com.au. AV: Or from your local independent bookstore, or you can ask for it at your local library as well. HMB: You've both given me some great things to read and listen to and think about, thank you. AV: Thanks Hayley. AC: No worries, catch you soon. HMB: Catch you soon, bye! (MUSIC)

We're thrilled to bring you this special podcast episode celebrating the publication of our second print anthology, New Australian Fiction 2020. New Australian Fiction 2020 collects a number of brilliant short stories from authors from around the country, and in this episode you'll hear excerpts from some of them. Tune in to hear Madeleine Watts, Mykaela Saunders, Jack Vening, Maame Blue and Jessie Tu read from their work, and don't forget to pick up a copy of the anthology to read these brilliant stories in their entirety. You can purchase a copy from our online shop. Want to be a part of New Australian Fiction 2021? Story submissions for the anthology will open in January next year. Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Stream or subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Soundcloud / Google Podcasts / Spotify / Other (RSS) Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice! TRANSCRIPT Alice Cottrell: Hello dear listeners, I'm KYD publisher Alice Cottrell, and I'm very excited to bring you this special edition of the KYD podcast on the publication day of New Australian Fiction 2020, our second print collection of short fiction. This anthology features some of Australia's best-loved writers alongside exciting new voices. And you're going to hear some of those voices today! This episode you'll hear Madeleline Watts, Mykaela Saunders, Jack Vening, Maame Blue and Jessie Tu reading from their brilliant short stories. Enjoy! Madeleine Watts: My name is Madeleine Watts, and this is an excerpt from my short story Floodwaters. We drive a long, straight road beneath slate-grey skies beside the flooded river. The floodwaters surge around trunks of oak and ash, a fast-moving membrane the colour of milk tea. The road is still dry, and safe enough for now. Traffic carries on. The levee isn't expected to break. But the water will soon get into the soil and rot the root systems, says the man driving me in his empty shuttle bus along the highway. The shuttle, which is really a panel van, collected me half an hour ago from the low-security airport bound by corn on all sides. I am its only patron. The interstate takes us past lonely motels looming over carparks. We pass a Kmart, Trader Joe's, Applebee's, McDonald's and then the town. It is, at first glance, like something out of a Golden Age film, a freeze-frame of small town America thatI'd absorbed as a child on the other side of the world in suburban Sydney lounge rooms. But as the shuttle slows down and the town resolves itself through the windows, I can see that it's going quietly to seed. Empty storefronts, flaking paint.The trees are turning red from the top down, and the flooded river bleeds into the land. Nobody is alarmed yet. The river floods often. The driver asks how long I'm staying. A week. And why am I here? To see a friend. He detects an accent. He can't quite place me. Where am I from? How did I end up here? August has lived in the town for two years. He has lived in big cities before, and that is where I think of him still—in a leather jacket, thumbing the screen of his phone, hunched over the bar in Greenpoint where we first met. But now he lives in this plus-size, windy pocket of the Midwest, and he is having the worst year of his life. Three times he has been hospitalised since January, in Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota. A week before I landed at the cornfield airport, he messaged to tell me he thought he might be hallucinating. He was sitting in his living room on a Tuesday night and he could hear murmuring. Hissing. Sounds issued by voices that originated from no human throat. Are you all right? I asked when I saw the messages on my phone the next morning. Yes, I'm fine, he said. It happens sometimes. It's not a big deal. The sunset is paling, settling into the colour of skin sapped of blood. I'm wearing a long dress and clogs. Back in the spring they were brand new shoes, but now the clogs are stained, the wood chipped, the suede watermarked from thunderstorms in the city. My toes are red with cold. The driver turns the heater on and the warm air comes upon me in a sudden gust, over the bare skin of my feet and up my dress.I haven't seen August in over a year, since he got this job teaching at the small liberal arts college in a red state full of cornfields and Protestant churches, and it occurs to me as we slow down in front of a house that matches the address he's given me that nothing is going to be how it used to be. August lives on the top floor of a two-storey wooden building that backs onto an alley. The front door is always open, he told me. There are bicycles on the porch, some rusty chairs, an empty bottle of sparkling wine filled to the brim with cigarette butts. I open the door, climb the flight of stairs to his apartment and knock. Why do you have such a big bag? he asks. I put it down in the hallway and look at him. His hair is unruly but he has shaved and he's wearing his boots. It seems to bode well that he's put on shoes for my arrival. He doesn't look like somebody who, a few days ago, heard murmuring and hissing that wasn't there. It's the only bag I have, I say. He stands there, watching me wander through the rooms of his apartment piled high with books and strewn with orange vials of pills and half-drunk bottles of Gatorade. He doesn't touch me for a full hour, and when at last he comes up behind me, he gently punches the small of my back, holds onto my waist, turns me, pushes me up against the doorframe and coaxes my underwear down my legs. So that's how it is. The wind picks up, and the rain begins to sound on the windowpanes and in every part of the dark cornscape that stretches away from the town. We get dinner at a bar, although he warns me that there aren't many vegetarian options. It's a perennial problem in this town, he says. We first bonded, five years ago, picking pieces of bacon out of soup during that evening in Greenpoint that at the time was not described by either of us as a date, but was. Now the waitress wants to see some ID. I hand over my green card and it takes her a moment to process what she reads. Then she smiles. Welcome to America, she shouts. I nod. I have lived in this country for five years. I order a black bean burger and whiskey. He orders grilled cheese. Do you want it deluxe? the waitress asks. Sure. The sandwich arrives with a blue cheese dipping sauce and many fatty, pink pieces of bacon. I feel rude sending it back, he says. You could take off the bacon? It's a waste. Waste is immoral. A sin. I'll just eat it. His sensitivity to sin is new to me. The very word ‘sin' sounds strange in his mouth. Once a loud representative of America's young socialists, lately August has been talking about becoming a priest. He'll need to lie on the application forms (though by his thinking that should only count as a minor sin) because one isn't supposed to enter the priesthood when diagnosed with a medical condition, especially one that might lead you to believe that the government has installed a computer chip in your brain, or that aliens are keeping tabs on you from their perch in the sky, or that one is a vessel for the voice of the Holy Ghost moving one along a river of divine purpose. To be fair, he hasn't believed in any of those things for some time. In the last year, the problem has been his quicksilver moods, the cycles of mania and wild depression, the sudden bursts of weeping. In those very bad months last winter,I would check our message thread on Instagram to see how many minutes it had been since he had last logged in. If he was still checking Instagram, I reasoned, then he was still alive. The doctors have increased his medication since those hospital visits, and he adheres to a routine of sufficient sleep, regular exercise and therapy. He's stable, he says. Mykaela Saunders: My name's Mykaela Saunders, and this is an excerpt from my short story Long Road, Becoming. Your alarm goes off, and before the old you can hit snooze the new you has sat up and hit the stop button hard to chase any soft thoughts away. If you sleep in, if you don't go for a run now, you'll set yourself back and you won't be any good all day. Do this first good thing now and the rest will be easy. Baby steps can run a marathon. You flick the lamp on, lace your running shoes up and make your single bed, tucking everything in tight. Soft beds breed soft men. The bed's out from the wall—must have been those dreams making you toss and turn again. You knee the bed flush into the corner and sniff your pillow. You strip the sweaty cover off and chuck it in the laundry on your way out. The streetlights pop off as you jog down the street. Ahead of you, a thin slice of horizon brightens, and the black sky around it silvers, bruises, then bursts into orange flames. Closer to town, you pass the big flash houses emerging in the dawning light. You wonder for the fifteenth time what nice things they've got locked up inside. And for the fifteenth time you punch the thought down, leaving it for dead on the of the road. This is easier to do each time. You pick up the pace, light-footed. Nobody's at the park except for a few fishermen on the jetty. You do your circuit, focusing on your arms today: push-ups, pull-ups, burpees. Your muscles are growing powerful and hard; soon you'll be able to lift your own weight. When you're finished your heart is pelting and every pulse point vibrates, and you feel so good that no bad thoughts can get anywhere near you. This is the time you feel safest outside, so you sit and enjoy it while it lasts. The river's skin glimmers in the early sun. The shedding bark on the eucalypts reveals satin-smooth wood glowing opal in the light. One of the fishermen catches a bream. He scales it quickly, divesting it of its armour. Hopefully they're still biting later when you comeback down with Dad. You'd like to stay here for longer but Terry's coming at nine. You run back home with tunnel vision, ignoring the flash houses, burgeoning light brightening behind you, chasing the shadow shortening in front of you. As you approach your house, a bit of the old shame claws around inside you. The dirty paint is peeling, long flakes clinging to the cheap wood. But, look, at least the place is tidy these days without all the shit in the yard for everyone to see.Everything's packed up under the house now being eaten by mould and mice. Maybe you can see if someone's got some spare paint lying around for you to spruce it up a bit for the old man. He'd like that. When you feel stronger you should put the feelers out.You know from last time that things can go wrong if you start getting big ideas too soon. Wait and see how you go for a few more weeks. Inside the house the mustiness hits you in the face. It's an old person smell, which doesn't make any sense because your dad is only forty-four. But, then again, that's nearly old age fora blackfella. Or maybe it isn't anything to do with age—maybe it's the closeness to death, the mustiness of dying. Might be the smell of cancer eating through your old man's lungs and excreting the waste, or maybe it's the residue from radiation burning through the cancer. You go check on him. He's still asleep, wheezing in and panting out. He looks so different. So fragile. You open up some windows to clear his burnt-out breath atomising through the house. Under the hot shower you scrub your fingers through your scalp and run sudsy hands over ink-stained skin. There's no cohesion to your canvas as none of this work was planned or designed. The whole thing was ad hoc—expanded on visit by visit, stint by stint, changed in small increments to what it is now. Most of them are blackwork—amateur renderings of hard-arse imagery—except for the oldest one, which is just shy of twelve years old: a bright-red heart tattooed over your chest withRIP MUM inked inside. The heart's black outline has grown fuzzy. Ink bleeds across the lines. You should ring your sister and see if she'll bring the kids up soon. You'd like to see them more, but you're not allowed over at her house these days. You know she does love you, but that didn't stop you hocking her shit the last time you were out. You missed them all inside—missed her warm hand on your shoulder, supportive, as the jarjums gurgled away in your lap, or played with your hair and traced your tatts, crawling all over you as though you were a statue. Well, you are in a way. You gotta be. Gotta be hard and still, otherwise everyone will think you're up to no good. You wipe the steam off the mirror and check yourself out from every angle. Not bad at all. You don't look like a walking skeleton anymore but you're still as hard as you were inside. Best to stay this way so as not to become soft. You've got a good day ahead of you today. You like to have your days planned out. If you control the input, you can predict the output. Makes it easier to stay on track. Jack Vening: Hi, my name is Jack Vening and this is an excerpt from my story After the Stampede. I'm alone watching cartoons when the animals come down from the mountain. There must be hundreds of them. A stampede. They churn up our flower beds and shit over the traffic islands. They void the warranty on our tyres. They break the tiny penises off the pissing cherub statuettes in our gardens. Goats stick their long tongues through the letter slots in our front doors and frighten the children inside. Chimps do unspeakable things to one another outside the corner store, all of which is captured on security camera. They seem to want to take everything we have. It is Saturday. Always disappointing when trouble arrives on a Saturday, a day reserved for selfish virtues, and it being early everyone is standing at their windows, dumbfounded and afraid. Waterbirds break against our roofs like hail. My parents have taken my little brother Kenneth to his specialist and will be gone for hours. I'm forbidden to leave the house unless in their presence. I never feel more sleepy, I have learned, than in the first few minutes of an emergency.As a little boy, I stood before the burning orchestra building, the heat like a hand closing around my face. Some horses kick my side gate off its hinge and get into the backyard to drink from my brother's wading pool. The water in the pool hasn't been changed in about two months, so I can't say if drinking it will be good for them. I take some photos through the flyscreen in case I need proof to show my parents. They don't often believe the thingsI say, even my most realistic stories, nor do they defend me when the folks from the neighbourhood take a swipe or treat me like a thing washed up in a storm. They are popular themselves. All summer they make love loudly with the windows open. They call each other disgusting names. The whole street listens to the ritual. Kenneth, too, is considered a gift despite his conditions.His body resembles a jigsaw puzzle. He is sweet-eyed and warming to speak to. Visitors beam as they watch him quietly read Bible stories to himself. Due to his illnesses—his laughable immune system, his bones which grew as if in conflict with one another—my parents allow him the pleasure of scattering his toys around the yard and leaving them thereto decompose over many thousands of years. I'm not alone in here, I call to the horses. Do you hear me? I have powerful friends and tools at my disposal. I have nothing to interest the likes of you. You can just do your business and leave, thank you. The morning is bright. I am confident the horses can't see me through the flyscreen. All the same, one of them raises its head and charges right through the nice new patio door. Outside, folks are counting the dead. They gather at the fountain, which is rank and murky with the bodies of rodents. Everyone looks wounded and sorry for themselves. A heavy man with a head gash spits on the ground as I ride past on my bike, a bloody tooth dribbling slowly down his chin. Most of what's left has been trampled—the corpse of a wolf, some woodland things. A few household pets evidently inspired by the wild violence of the stampede. A dog wearing one of those anxiety vests. Something that seems to be a mule or skinny horse and about half a dozen long-legged, mud-coloured wading birds that couldn't keep up. You'd think they'd all been run over by a tank. The street stinks like a nest. A group has formed around my neighbour Jennifer, surveying the dismal scene. Her husband Lloyd is there with their baby Margaret. Are you okay? Jennifer asks me. What are you doing outside? Where are your parents? There were some horses, I say. They kicked the shit out of my patio. I was lucky to get out. A big bobcat got into the kitchen and scratched Lloyd on the hand, says Jennifer. We scared it off with a bar stool. Lloyd's hand is hastily triaged with a towel. There doesn't seem to be any blood, and he can hold Margaret just fine.They're a fine young family. Many think they're wise because they don't own a television. When they first told me Margaret's name, I thought they were making a joke. This is it, Lloyd says gravely. This is our reckoning. We must think carefully about what we do next. Are you sure it was a bobcat? I ask. What did it look like? You don't think I'd know what a bobcat looks like? When it's right in my face, trying to kill me? You're dumber than I thought possible. I gesture for Lloyd to pass me Margaret, but he moves her further away. Where are your parents? Jennifer asks again. There are sirens somewhere off in the direction where the animals ran. Everywhere we step there are pieces of tile or splintered letterbox posts. Neighbours collect the larger debris and fortify the soft points in their hedgerows. They start fires to burn the dead animals. A team of children push together on the belly of a camel until its eyes bulge out. If not for the violence, you could mistake it for a street party. I'm on my way to meet them now, I say, wheeling my bike around. They're enjoying lunch nearby. You're going out there? I am, I have some chores to do.Nobody tells me that it's too dangerous for a child; nobody thinks of stopping me, though Jennifer does look concerned. Once, I called their home and left a message—Leave him, I said. Leave Lloyd. There's so much we both have yet to experience. Bust me out of here; it's time to start our journey—but as far as I know she never listened to it. Take it easy when you see Kenneth, she says. This might be too much for his little body. I leave the folks to comfort their families. The younger, unsupervised kids chase after me, holding the bones of something small above their heads. Everyone I pass is hugging or whispering or weeping, talking with their heads close together, looking at the dirt or at the clouds like they're waiting for rain. They stare into each other's eyes, doing the things strangers do when they're alone, things I'm usually forbidden from seeing. Maame Blue: My name is Maame Blue, and this is an excerpt from my short story Howl. You're waiting again. This time under a blue-tinted light, plants hanging about your head from the ceiling, the walls. You're inside and outside at the same time, somehow.The decor is rainforest cafe meets mimosa brunch, withConverse trainers and vaping allowed. Almost required. You look around at the other patrons, all relaxed with a soft buzz from summer beers, a contrast to you anxiously nursing an orange juice, trying not to stand out. Fat chance. Black girl, curvy, sporting a short afro that prompted an Aussie friend from work to label you Afrocentric.You've been called vibrant before, but tonight you feel invisible, lost in this woolshed bar conversion dropped in the middle of an open parking lot in Brunswick. You think about your arrival, how you rushed out the house frantically and skipped past Anstey station in a sweat, the street art along the train tracks turning into the blur of a rainbow in your haste. You were worried. I can't be late. Still, you wanted to have a moment to take it all in—this new life, the frankness of Melbourne. You pushed down how much you missed the London accent, the muddy green of Hyde Park, the chewing gum-stained streets of CamdenTown, street food and punks and yummy mummies and bad gyals. What were you really without all those things? A visitor, belonging nowhere and looking to reinvent yourself, like everyone else. You sip through your straw and look back at the bartender. Bearded in a Hawaiian shirt. They're always bearded, with soft eyes and soft accents, trying to guess your order before you've said it. Like how he knew you wanted something with zest, reached for it before you had finished speaking. You weren't looking for the hard stuff tonight.Perhaps through the layers of makeup and a dewy glow of sweat he could see you were hungover. Or maybe he just saw the words first date taking shape in your mouth, your anxiety and bubble of excitement the only true markers. You were grateful for it, for the drink and the time to catch your breath. You let in relief when you entered the bar and saw that your date hadn't arrived yet. Others were there, though—silhouettes just like his. Tall bodies with a slight heft, carrying themselves like surfboards.Something in them spoke to being outside on the weekend, enjoying the fresh air before the rapid deterioration of everything natural was complete. They climbed mountains, kayaked down rivers, hiked through forests. You often wondered what feats you could achieve if you only stepped out further than the day before. You were too used to being trapped in comfort and routine back home, until you came here. Your first act of daring was getting on that plane, dreaming about being surrounded by trees. There's a kindness to communing with nature, letting its peaceful warmth be the thing you tried to absorb. But once you arrived, you grasped desperately for the familiar again, sinking into the slow simmer of it. Now you think about the heat of your date. A friend of a friend. You had discarded the introduction apps months ago; the last time was a precursor to nothing.When you met the one black guy you had so far found online, he was only a familiar face on a stranger. He carried your shopping home after one coffee and you fucked him on the sofa where your flatmate had strummed his way through‘Yellow Submarine' the night before, the twang of the guitar keeping you awake as you lay in bed in the next room. Afterwards the man didn't want to stay, and you didn't want to be friends. It left you with a meaningless gape. You sauntered down to Sydney Road and bought a Lebanese pizza and too much baklava and ate your weekend away. What was it about being both invisible and under a spotlight at the same time? You had never wanted to hide your black skin until you came here. Where boys, the whiter ones, wanted to prove how open-minded they were by engaging you. Blond-haired bachelors pumping closed fists against their chests in a crowded bar, two times, as a greeting just for you. Brunette-moustachioed whiskey lovers sending explicit messages on Tinder that reference your dark exotic hue as reason and rhyme for seduction purposes. And the redhead sending up-to-the-minute texts, until you bumped into him with his mother on Flinders Street and watched him turn her around so she wouldn't witness your shared eye contact, or witness you. Jessie Tu: Hi, this is Jessie Tu. I'm going to be reading from the beginning of my short story called Three Iterations of Love. My brother comes to visit on a Saturday night. The weather had been hot all day, lingered around and stayed until late. The man I'm living with has an apartment on the ninth floor of an old hotel in the shady part of the city. I don't mind it. It's convenient, and a whole suburb away from my ex, so there's no possibility of awkward run-ins. I'm grateful for the distance those few kilometres provide. The man I live with is ten years older. I'm fond of him, but I'm also very lonely. Not because I don't have close and loving friends and family but because my needs are excessive. Nothing is ever good enough. I always want more. I thought it would go away someday, this relentless appetite. But no. What never went away was my constant self-judgement, while my brother never failed to impress. I'd spent the afternoon trying to work on my paper, but the light from the window was distracting, and I ended up going out onto the balcony and clipping my toenails instead.The pieces fell onto the floor and I swept them up and tossed them over the balcony. I didn't care that they'd land on the balcony of the apartment below. It was probably full of pieces of human. Dead pieces. I like to imagine that area filled with parts of us that mix in with parts of strangers we've never met. We walk the streets, my brother and me. It's cold. ‘Bitter winter,' I say. He picks dumplings. The dumpling house is a hole in the wall. The tables are street level, the kitchen is downstairs. The man and I have eaten here a handful of times. We were always given a table outside. Tonight, my brother and I sit inside because it is draughty and because all the outside tables are occupied. We are seated opposite each other on a tiny table against the wall.People have to squeeze past us down the aisle to get to the cashier to pay. My brother's phone rings. A cousin from Taipei. Our uncle is trying to reach Mother. What possibly for? we ponder aloud. Is he dying? Writing her into his will? No. He has more important people to give away his money to; he has grandchildren now. I did not know this. We order a plate of greens. Pan-fried dumplings. Steamed dumplings. My brother calls Mother. Mother says she's not been sleeping well.Experiencing dizziness. Sore muscles. Dry throat. ‘Jet-lagged?' my brother offers. ‘Maybe go out for a walk. Getsome fresh air.' The food comes, very late. We eat and talk about euthanasia and cycling and carceral feminism and Jackie Chan.I tell him how funny it is that when you do an internet search of the word ‘euthanasia' the pictures that show up are of one hand holding onto another hand. He tells me about his lover and I tell him about mine. We are both with the wrong people. If we'd not been siblings, I'd have wanted to marry him. But I'd be the kind of wife who would withhold sex when I wanted something, only relenting when I really, truly had to. Otherwise it would be a sexless marriage and he'd have to be okay with that. Because my brother is the most perfect human being who has ever existed. I have no doubt. We are both going to marry the wrong people. Next to us, a young, white couple have just finished their meals. They are waiting on dessert. The woman is blonde, pretty and round. She is wearing a leather jacket with silver studs and black jeans. She and her boyfriend are sitting side by side. She has one arm slung around his neck. His elbows are propped on the edge of the long table, fingers weaved together. She wants love. He wants space. While my brother is texting back to our cousin, I study the boyfriend's face. He is very handsome. A young Tom Cruise.He could be on the cover of GQ. He's also got the deferential gaze of someone who has been used to a life of being wanted.She wants love and he wants space. Every time I look over, the woman has rearranged her arm around his neck—a new contortion of limbs. It looks awkward, contrived. Like they are teenage drama students in a dress rehearsal for a play, faking it real bad. I pity her. Her high-pitched voice and all that effort. Their dessert arrives. Mango sago pudding. The man and woman are sweet and polite, thanking the Asian busboy (he is not a boy but a man, roughly my father's age). He clears their table and places the bowl between them. She gets out her phone and shows her boyfriend something. He gets out his phone. She looks at pictures. ‘Which one is me?' she asks him sweetly. ‘The sexy one,' he says, barely smiling. As though a smile costs him something he needs to keep in reserve. AC: Thanks for listening in! If you're keen to read more after hearing those excellent snippets, you can buy a copy of New Australian Fiction 2020 at our website killyourdarlings.com.au, or at your local independent bookshop, or you can request a copy at your local library.

"We're living in increasingly anxious times…I think it's bubbling away in the backdrop of every contemporary novel in some way." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For August that debut is Luke Horton's The Fogging, out now from Scribe Publications. The Fogging was highly commended for the Victorian Premier's Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2019, and is a compelling tale of the slow disintegration of a relationship and the unravelling of a man. Our September First Book Club title will be The F Team by Rawah Arja (Giramondo). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of The Fogging in our August Books Roundup. Read Luke's Shelf Reflection on his reading habits and the writing that inspires him. (more…)

In this episode, the KYD team get together (remotely) to discuss Brit Bennett's expansive, multi-generational saga The Vanishing Half (Dialogue Books), and the six-part ABC drama Stateless, which explores the overlapping stories of staff and detainees at an Australian immigration detention centre. This month's recommendations:  • Alan recommends Dark (Netflix) • Alice recommends  Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland and Hunger (Stan) • Hayley recommends the poetry collection Who Loves At All by Natalie Briggs. Brit Bennett will be discussing The Vanishing Half on Sunday 15 August as part of the Melbourne Writer's Festival. Join us at MWF on 15 August to hear Alan discuss our New Australian Fiction 2020 anthology with Laura McPhee-Browne, Elizabeth Flux and Mirandi Riwoe! Produced by Hayley May Bracken. Theme music: Broke For Free, ‘Something Elated'. (more…)

"I honestly think that the root of racism is a lack of empathy. If you grew up only watching movies where the central character is a white dude you're only ever going to learn how to empathise with white dudes." Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For July that debut is Jessie Tu's A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing, out now from Allen & Unwin. Protagonist Jena Lin was once a child violin prodigy and now uses sex to fill the void left by fame. This book explores female desire and the consequences of wanting too much and never getting it. Content warning: this episode contains frank descriptions and discussions of a sexual nature, as well as strong language, so it might not be suitable for all listeners. Our August First Book Club title will be The Fogging by Luke Horton (Scribe Publications). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing in our July Books Roundup. Read Jessie's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. (more…)

'I suddenly realised that all these environmental problems—consumer culture, plastic pollution, animal welfare—they all came together inside the whale.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For June that debut is Rebecca Giggs' Fathoms: the world in the whale, out now from Scribe Publications. Rebecca Giggs joins Ellen Cregan to discuss how people feel toward animals in a time of ecological crisis and technological change, and how Fathoms blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore the lives of whales and our relationship to them. Our July First Book Club title will be A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu (Allen & Unwin). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Fathoms in our June Books Roundup. Read Rebecca's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspires her. (more…)

In this month's podcast, the KYD team get together remotely once again to discuss human–animal relationships and Erin Hortle's stunning Tasman-soaked debut novel The Octopus & I (Allen & Unwin), and what we thought about the human–human relationships in the new small screen adaptation of Sally Rooney's worldwide sensation Normal People (Stan).  Further reading: Read an extract from The Octopus and I. Read our review of Normal People (the novel). Connell's Chain on Instagram. After reading The Octopus and I we'd also recommend: The Animals in that Country (Laura Jean McKay), Only the Animals (Ceridwen Dovey), Flames (Robbie Arnott) and From the Wreck (Jane Rawson). Produced by Hayley May Bracken. Theme music: Broke For Free, ‘Something Elated'. (more…)

'I would love young autistic girls to find this book, first and foremost…there's not a lot of books out there where they would see themselves reflected back.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For May that debut is Kay Kerr's YA novel Please Don't Hug Me, out now from Text Publishing. Erin is looking forward to Schoolies, at least she thinks she is. But things are not going to plan. Life is getting messy, and for Erin, who is autistic, that's a big problem. Please Don't Hug Me is a funny-serious own-voices story about what happens when you stop trying to be the person other people expect you to be and give yourself a go. Kay Kerr is a former journalist and community newspaper editor from Brisbane, now living on the Sunshine Coast with her husband and daughter and working as a freelance writer. Kay was writing the first draft of Please Don't Hug Me when she received her own autism-spectrum diagnosis. Our June First Book Club title will be Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs (Scribe Publications). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of Please Don't Hug Me in our May Books Roundup. Read Kay's Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspired the novel. (more…)

'We've all had that feeling where the ground has shifted when you weren't quite paying attention.' Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is Ronnie Scott's novel The Adversary, out now from Penguin Random House. After a long winter in a creaky share house in Brunswick, a young man is pushed out of his comfort zone in search of friendship and love. This is a funny and exhilarating debut novel about sexuality, sociability and sticky summers at the pool. Ronnie Scott writes essays and criticism for newspapers, websites and magazines. In 2007 he founded the Lifted Brow, an independent literary magazine. He's a Lecturer in the Writing and Publishing discipline at RMIT University. The Adversary is his first novel. Our May First Book Club title will be Please Don't Hug Me by Kay Kerr (Text Publishing). Our theme song is Broke for Free's ‘Something Elated'. Further reading: Read Ellen Cregan's review of The Adversary in our April Books Roundup. Read Ronnie's Shelf Reflection on his reading habits and the writing that inspires him. (more…)