Podcast appearances and mentions of louise swinn

Second thoughts are not uncommon before a wedding but what do you do when you receive a note from your fiance's former girlfriend on the morning of the wedding? Sallie Muirden explores the anxiety and confusion of the bride facing such a dilemma in Wedding Puzzle."Choice Words: A Collection of Writing about Abortion" is edited by Louise Swinn, with a foreword by Tanya Plibersek, and published by Allen& Unwin.

Journalist and television presenter Jenny Brockie, and writer Sam Twyford-Moore, join Kate and Cassie to review Siri Hustvedt's Memories of the Future and Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive, and Louise Swinn from the Stella Prize for writing by Australian women comes along to discuss this year's selection

The Stella Prize is an annual literary award celebrating Australian Women writers. Now in its seventh year, the Stella is an important and influential award marking great Australian writing.The Stella Prize announced their long list this week sparking the discussion around what is important in Australian writing today.Louise Swinn is the Chair of the Stella judges panel and she joined Andrew Pople on Final Draft to discuss the task of sorting through the mountain of submissions and what themes and issues have emerged in the successful twelve. The 2019 Stella Prize longlist:● Little Gods by Jenny Ackland (Allen & Unwin) ● Man Out of Time by Stephanie Bishop (Hachette Australia) ● Bluebottle by Belinda Castles (Allen & Unwin) ● The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo (Scribe) ● The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Random House) ● The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones (Text Publishing) ● Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau (Brow Books) ● The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Finch Publishing) ● Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin) ● Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (UQP) ● Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin (Brow Books) ● The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright (Giramondo Publishing)

Set in a rural farming community, Jane Harper’s debut novel, The Dry, is a tightly-spun and suspenseful thriller. It tells the story of a Federal Police investigator who returns to his hometown after two decades of urban exile – tasked with examining the apparent murder-suicide of his childhood friend’s family. As he works his way through the drought-stricken settlement, a horrific truth begins to reveal itself. The book has met with a sensational response from readers worldwide – as well as the attention of Hollywood, with film rights snapped up by Reese Witherspoon’s Pacific Standard production company. Critics have praised its sustained tension and unsettlingly vivid evocation of the Australian landscape’s most unforgiving traits. Born in Manchester, Harper has moved back-and-forth between the UK and Australia, working as a journalist before developing her skills in fiction. A short story published in the Big Issue’s 2014 Fiction Edition provided a spark – but it was winning the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript that truly lit the fuse for Harper’s writing career. Over dinner and drinks at Montalto, Harper speaks with Louise Swinn about the genesis of the novel, her creative path through different kinds of writing, and how she’s dealt with the joy (and pressure) of The Dry’s break-out success.

Since his 2009 debut, Things We Didn’t See Coming, Steven Amsterdam has established himself as a writer who startles and surprises. His first book – an apocalyptic work fusing literary and climate-change fiction – earned him comparisons to Cormac McCarthy. His follow-up book, What the Family Needed, also frustrated conventions of form and genre, but diverged dramatically from its precursor on subject matter: from ecological disaster to family dynamics. Amsterdam is an author with an unusual combination of qualities. His writing is warm, playful … and ominous. Perhaps this is partly because Amsterdam moves between parallel lives. Aside from writing, he works in an entirely different field – as a palliative care nurse. His new novel, The Easy Way Out, draws heavily from this line of work, tackling the big subjects: death, personal morality and assisted suicide. This singular writer joins his former publisher, Louise Swinn, for a discussion about double lives, family dynamics and matters of life and death. Books and Ideas at Montalto series sound design and music: Jon Tjhia.