Final Draft - Great Conversations

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Del swore she’d never return.

But years after she left Bower and the Messiah Church Del finds herself drawn back into its orbit by a mysterious message from her ex Lars. Del also swore she’d never talk to Lars again after he left her for her friend Eve, but now Lars sounds contrite.

Before Del has the chance to call Lars back though she discovers he’s been killed. The press are calling it a tragic accident but Del knows better about Messiah and how they always protect their own.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

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Jane Harrison is a playwright & author descended from the Muruwari people. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed play Stolen and today I am going to introduce you to the novelisation of her most recent play The Visitors.

The Visitors takes us to Gadigal Land in January of 1788. On this sweltering day a strange sight appears in the harbour and immediately spurs the locals into action.

Messages are sent to the Nations of the coastal and river regions calling seven men, elders in their clans to congregate and decide what must be done now that The Visitors have returned.

My first thoughts as I started reading The Visitors was that this is a story that is both known and completely unknown to me. As I thought back to my education, sparse as it may have been on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, I realised that the landing of Arthur Phillip in what we now call Sydney is not a story that is told as much as it’s an assumption that is made and then built upon.

The genius of The Visitors is that it not only unpacks those assumptions it seeks to explore the story; the stories of the land and the people before that fateful day.

As the group congregate  to consider their options, one man, more thoughtful than his peers considers not just the sight before but its meaning. He asks…”I am wondering… how we will remember this day”. The irony of course is that these words must be put onto the lips of a fictional witness because remembering is not something we do well in this country.

In The Visitors Jane Harrison is challenging readers with the omissions in the narrative.

We awake on unceded land (as we do each since incidentally) to the surprise and interest of men and women intrigued but also put out by the interruption to their daily lives. We meet each of the emissaries as they prepare for the meeting assembling weapons and considering tactics. It’s a particular genius of the novel that it translates the story culturally, allowing the reader to understand the tension and the mundanity of such an important day; we learn of petty differences and old grudges. We come to understand that ceremonies are important but that this doesn’t mean someone’s not going to interrupt or get impatient.

When I looked back on the paucity of education I received about what really happened when British ships invaded these shores, I was struck that in all my learning I was given the impression that the people who arrived were there by right. By consequence this meant that the people they met on the shores were just in the way.

In The Visitors Harrison tells a history that shows us these men and women were custodians and lawmakers; tied to their lands and seeking to defend it. The novel asks us to take another look at what we think we know about that history and everything that has been built on it.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Kirsty Jagger is a journalist by trade. She won the debut Heyman Mentorship award and has now published her debut novel Roseghetto.

Shayla’s working on an assignment for her newspaper when she returns to Westminster Way. Her brief is exploring new integrated housing developments and how they mix social housing with private.

Shayla grew up in Westminster Way and wasn’t prepared to see the street and surrounding suburb leveled in preparation for shiny new homes. The sight throws up memories of Shayla’s early life and how it has brought her to where she is today… 

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

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sydney khoo was the recipient of the Penguin Random House Australia’s Write It fellowship. Today I’m bringing you their new novel The Spider and Her Demons.

The Spider and Her Demons

High School can be hard at the best of times but somehow Zhi juggles study, tutoring and working in her Aunt’s dumpling shop.

Zhi’s Aunt Mei has sacrificed a lot so that Zhi can attend a private school and all she asks in return is that Zhi maintain an 85 point grade average and hide the fact she has fangs, spinnerets and four prehensile limbs that emerge from her back!

This story is wild!

We dive headfirst into the world of Zhi as she navigates being a teenager with more than the regular amount of challenge to her life.

The world building here is terrific. Zhi attends a (fictional) Sydney private school, whilst working in a dumpling shop in Chinatown. Everything is laid out for local readers to orient themselves to this world, which makes it particularly effective when it all goes sideways.

On the one hand there is the regular amount of teenage angst and we ride alongside Zhi as she and her friends are just normally being normal. On the other we are treated to Zhi’s anxiety as she revels in this normalcy, even as she feels it can’t last. The aforementioned spider biology is a cause for constant stress and Zhi knows she has to be less than normal, she has to be practically invisible.

The Spider and Her Demons takes the reader into the world of Zhi’s hyper consciousness of her body. We are shown that who she is is both exceptional and terrifyingly normal. Zhi’s daily routine to style her hair so that it hides her spider eyes is not so far any teenagers styling their way into some semblance of what they hope their peers will deem acceptable. 

The difference Zhi struggles to accept in herself is only highlighted by the constant gossip surrounding the most popular girl in school, Dior Panne-Nix. While Zhi just wants to be like everyone else she must also confront that she doesn’t even exist in Dior’s orbit.

Of course all this is primed for chaos as Zhi’s secret is threatened one fateful night and she finds herself thrown into the path of Dior!

The Spider and Her Demons works both as a fantastical new world to discover and as a character driven exploration of individuals just trying to make it through their days.

sydney khoo writes her protagonist with power and doubt and so what might otherwise fall into superhero fare becomes a journey of personal discovery. 

Right now it’s probably important to note everything I’m not saying about The Spider and Her Demons. This book is brand new so I’m not going to go about blabbing all the best bits for a bit of analysis.

Suffice to say that Zhi’s spider form is just the beginning of a vast world that is hurtling towards Zhi. In short measure getting a pass mark is a thing of the past and even survival looks like the wrong question as a whole world unfolds before us.

I’m a big fan of genre and the fantastic and The Spider and Her Demons gives us these in spades. It also takes the outcast hero out of the comfortable worlds of Marvel and DC and shows us how this works at the intersection of multiple identities.

I can’t talk around the spoilers any longer so let me just recommend you go and check out sydney khoo’s The Spider and Her Demons so we can all revel in it together.

Bonus - There’s a full conversation with sydney on the Final Draft podcast…

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Rachel is an award winning painter from WA 

The story of New York City Glow is deceptively simple…

An octopus named Strawberry and a snake named Ray road trip across the continental USA in the late seventies landing in New York in time to save the city from the forces of darkness and secure the future of music forever!

Discover Rachel's incredible story and award winning art today on the show!

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Angela O’Keeffe is the author of Night Blue which was nominated for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

Today I’ve brought you her latest novel The Sitter

A writer sits in a hotel room in Paris early 2020. By her side is the disembodied form of Hortense Cezanne.

The writer has traveled to France to capture the essence of Hortense for a book about the wife and muse to Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Hortense has returned to the country of her birth for reasons not yet clear to her.

Now the two are confined to their hotel room as the world descends into a strange and unknowable illness, forced to observe the quietening world outside.  

The Sitter is a strange beast of a novel. Narrated in turns by the long dead Hortense and the reminiscences of the unnamed writer the book asks the reader to ponder creativity both from the perspective of the creator and their subject.

When we meet Hortense Cezanne she is variously the wife and muse of the painter Cezanne and the freshly reincarnated spirit of the same grappling with her place in the world a century after her death.

This is no fantastical mode of the author but rather a realisation of the author’s work in creating. So often I’ve spoken with authors who talk of their characters being ‘real’ to them. O’Keeffe takes this a step further inserting Hortense into the narrative as she grapples with becoming a reality through the writer’s words.

O’Keeffe’s writer must in her turn work to discover the reality of the Hortense who sits by her side. This disembodied spirit is perhaps not enough to justify her book but how can she discover and then in her way create a fuller figure?

The books turns on an empty street near the center of Paris. As the world succumbs to the early days of the as yet unknown Coronavirus the writer witnesses a tragedy that turns her thoughts inwards. Now she can no longer simply write Hortense’s story.

Stuck in her hotel room she is drawn to a new narrative. Abandoning Hortense’s story the writer turns to her memories to write the story of her own drive and creativity.

I was fascinated by The Sitter for its exploration of the creative process and its questioning of the artists motivations.

Hortense is given voice to expose how she has been silenced and the writer must delve into her own silence to uncover the story she needs to tell.

Both of these stories ruminate on women’s bodies and the ways they are made subject and subjected to a process that renders them voiceless. A process that is rectified somewhat in the ultimate telling of the tale.

The Sitter is an intriguing work and please don’t doubt that I have oversimplified it even as I worked to understand it. I’ll be going back. This is the sort of novel that rewards rereadings and asks of its reader that they take the time to think about the voices and the characters given voice. 

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

sydney khoo (they/them) is a nonbinary and aromantic asexual writer, born on Dharawal Country in South Western Sydney, to Malaysian Chinese parents.

They are the recipient of the Penguin Random House Australia’s Write It fellowship.

sydney joins us today with their new novel The Spider and Her Demons.

High School can be hard at the best of times but somehow Zhi juggles study, tutoring and working in her Aunt’s dumpling shop.

Zhi’s Aunt Mei has sacrificed a lot so that Zhi can attend a private school and all she asks in return is that Zhi maintain an 85 point grade average and hide the fact she has fangs, spinnerets and four prehensile limbs that emerge from her back!

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Irene Diakanastasis presents a gripping interview with Mercedes Mercier on her new novel Black Lies

Only a handful of inmates in Westmead Prison have committed crimes so atrocious that they've been locked away for life, and for fifteen years, convicted murderer Tomas Kovak has refused to disclose where he hid the body of his victim, a vulnerable young woman.

When Kovak is diagnosed with terminal cancer, intense pressure is put on Dr Laura Fleming, criminal psychologist, to find the location of Kovak's victim so her grieving family can find some sort of closure.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

August is Poetry Month!

Each year Red Room Poetry celebrate Australian poets and poetry through a series of events, workshops and showcases throughout August. Red Room Poetry are now in their 20th year and are celebrating Poetry Month this August.

Gamilaraay/Gomeroi poet Lulu Houdini shares her poem 'Mangrove Girls'.

For more details check out redroompoetry.org/projects/poetry-month

You can get more books, writing and literary culture every week on the Final Draft Great Conversations podcast. Hear interviews with authors and discover your next favourite read!

Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Amy Lovat is a writer, a curator and researcher. She hosts the Secret Book Stuff podcast alongside Laura Kebby. Amy joins Andrew on the show with her debut novel Mistakes and Other Lovers.

El has some questions she’d like answers to. Like why did she implode her old life? Is this new life necessarily better, or just different? And is it Mace, or Kik, or both that she really loves?

They’re questions for herself, but that doesn’t mean the answers are necessarily forthcoming.

As El’s life careers further from her control she knows something has to give, but does that something move her forward, or take her back to where she came from?

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/