Backstory

Helen Garner has a well established reputation as one of Australia’s best writers. A novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, Helen’s work spans fiction, non-fiction and reportage. Her latest book, Yellow Notebook Volume 1, is an edited selection drawn from her personal diaries spanning 1978 to 1987.

In this extended interview, Helen joins Backstory host Mel Cranenburgh to reflect on her practice, the craft of writing both fiction and non-fiction and the pleasure of ‘filleting the junk off the muscle that holds a good story together’.

Jane Sullivan, author of Storytime, joins Mel Cranenburgh to discuss her latest book where she takes readers from Wonderland to Narnia; is enchanted by Winnie-the-Pooh and the Magic Pudding, amazed by Enid Blyton and frightened by the Tales of Terror. And then there are those stories made tricky by often posthumous revelations about the author’s lives….

Mel is then joined by Associate Professor Leonie Rutherford to discuss how digital platforms might inspire a new generation of young readers who aren’t getting what they want from the printed word.

Mel is joined by Curtis Sittenfeld, the acclaimed New York based author of Eligible, Sisterland and American Wife. Her latest publication, You Think It, I’ll Say It, is a collection of short stories that demonstrates, in the words of one Washington Post critic, Curtis' 'astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers’ heads'. Curtis is in Melbourne to appear at the inaugural Broadside feminist festival at the Wheelers Centre on the 8 - 9 November.

Jade Walsh from Toot Artspace also joins host Mel Cranenburgh to talk about Low Fi High, an exhibition of the 'art, zines and publications of artists that explore high and low culture'. The show is on at the St Kilda gallery from 31 October to 16 November, 2019. Jade talks to Mel about the role of the zine in the digital age and some of the artists that are featured in this exhibition.

Word for Word is Australia’s only non-fiction writing festival. It’s a unique annual literary event showcasing non-fiction writing in all its many facets and forms with world-renowned writers, dynamic panel discussions and “in conversation” sessions.

The theme for this year is Nyaal, a Wadawurrung word that means ‘open your eyes’. As Festival Director Rochelle Smith tells Backstory’s Mel Cranenburgh, this year’s event aims to showcase the many hidden and unheard histories of this country.

Acclaimed author Elliot Pearlman joins Mel Cranenburgh to discuss his latest novel, Maybe The Horse Will Talk, a searing but darkly funny look at the vicissitudes of life inside corporate capitalism in the era of the MeToo and Time’s Up movements. In this extended interview, he tells Mel about how his own experiences as a lawyer helped him to get inside the head of his main protagonist, Stephen Maserov, a former teacher and second-year lawyer whose life is spirally slowly out of control until he hatches a daring plan to keep both his career and his ethics on track.

Elliot’s previous novel, Three Dollars, won The Age Book of the Year Award, the Betty Trask Award (UK), the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn-Rhys/Mail On Sunday Book of the Year Award (UK) as well as for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Elliot also co-wrote the screenplay for the film of Three Dollars, which received the Australian Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as well as the A.F.I. Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Author, editor and publisher, Hilary McPhee, joins Mel Cranenburgh to discuss her new memoir Other People’s Houses. Fleeing the aftermath of a failed marriage, Hilary began the project in the Middle East where she had travelled to write about a member of the Hashemite royal family. The book that emerged from this was not the book she had anticipated but instead became a welcome exploration of the changes that she underwent at this time in her life. The result is, as one reviewer notes, ‘inspiring’.

Mel is then joined by Lucy Treloar, author of Salt Creek (2015), winner of the Indie Award for Best Debut, the ABIA Matt Richell Award and the Dobbie Award, and shortlisted for prizes including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UK's Walter Scott Prize. Her latest book, Wolfe Island, has been met with similar acclaim with The Age describing it as ‘deeply moving’. Set on a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, the main protagonist, Kitty Hawke, confronts a fraught world - one that threatens all of us - with flight, exile and bewilderment.

Mel Cranenburgh chats to author Anna Krien. Anna's latest release, Act of Grace, is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation passes on to the next, and the potential for transformation. Anna is also the author of the award-winning Night Games and Into the Woods, as well as two Quarterly Essays, Us and Them and The Long Goodbye.

Sonja Dechian was recently announced as the overall winner of the 2019 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for her story ‘The Point-Blank Murder’. Sonja’s short story collection, An Astronaut’s Life, won the 2016 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award the same year. She joins Mel Cranenburgh to discuss the award and her writing process.

Francesca Rendle-Short, Michele Lee and Rajith Savanadasa join Mel Cranenburgh to talk about The Near and The Far, Volume II: more stories from the Asia-Pacific region.

Spanning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the Asia-Pacific’s finest writers — including Christos Tsiolkas, Alice Pung, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Han Yujoo, Ellen van Neerven, and Ali Cobby Eckermann — the collection, edited by David Carlin and Francesca Rendle-Short, invites readers on a unique and unforgettable journey.

https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-near-and-the-far-vol-ii

Dr Alexandra Dane then joins Mel to discuss the ramifications of the decision of the judges of this year’s Vogel Literary Award to withhold the $20,000 prize and coveted book deal with publishing giant Allen & Unwin. Australia's most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript, the award has helped kickstart the careers of many great authors. It is only the third time in the Vogel's almost 40-year history that a winner hasn't been chosen.

Josephine Rowe’s, Here Until August, is a selection of superbly crafted stories follow the fates of characters who, by choice or by force, are travelling beyond the boundaries of their known worlds. Josephine joins Mel to discuss this new work. Josephine’s novel, A Loving, Faithful Animal, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice and led to her being named a 2017 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist.

Lisa Dempster is the Executive Manager Public Participation at Yarra Plenty Regional Library. She was formerly the Artistic Director/CEO of Melbourne Writers Festival and she joins Mel to talk about the Yarra Plenty Regional Library 11th Annual Booklovers Festival. Chock a block with great activities across nine libraries, it truly is three weeks of book loving goodness for anyone living in the Yarra Plenty area (and anyone who isn’t!).

Meg Mundell is a New Zealand-born writer and academic based in Melbourne. Her first novel, Black Glass, was shortlisted for two Aurealis Awards, the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Norma K. Hemming Award. She joins host Mel Cranenburgh to discuss her new book, The Trespassers.

Joanne Ramos’ novel The Farm is described by The New York Post as ‘brilliant’ and by NPR as ‘heady [and] chilling’. She joins Mel to discuss her work which pushes to the extremes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.