Final Draft - Great Conversations

* Warning! Heavy Spoilers!!

If you haven't already read I Shot the Devil approach with caution

In this bonus episode Ruth explores her rules around cats and dangerous plotlines. There's some interesting discussion around what readers expect from male and female characters in a thriller and also way more discussion of Axl Rose than I think anyone was expecting!

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Ruth McIver discussing her new novel I Shot the Devil

Today on the show...

Reporter Erin Sloane returns to her home town of Southport. Her Dad’s sick and though they haven’t always had the best relationship, he’s her only family. This is no nostalgia trip though. Erin’s editor wanmts her to report on the notorious Southport Three, a group of teens implicated in a satanic murder in the 90s.

Erin’s going to write a story about the group and their legacy, but Erin is also a part of the story; she hasn’t told her editor she was dating one of the killers.

Will the past stay buried once Erin starts digging?!

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

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Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Max Easton discussing his new novel The Magpie Wing

Today on the show...

Walt, Helen and Duncan are growing up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Walt and Duncan are paired on the footy field. Duncan serves as Walt’s protector, while Walt explores his precocious footballing talent. Rugby League is tribal for the boys and their families and they know that they'd rather live in the legacy of the likes of Tommy Raudonikas than the silvertails in the east. Walt’s older sister Helen can’t play with the boys but she can run water and plays to the team.

As the three grow up together they each start looking for more than their suburban existence offers.

As their family life breaks down Walt and Helen gravitate towards Sydney's Inner West. There they find underground success in the punk and noise music scene, and Walt is able to explore his growing political consciousness.

Duncan stays at home, diligently completing uni and finds himself in a more conventional job.

As the three criss-cross each other's lives they find themselves with contradictory purposes and opaque goals. Always present though is where they came from and how being from the west defines them in other people’s eyes.

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

2ser.com/final-draft

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Max Easton discussing his new novel The Magpie Wing

Today on the show...

Walt, Helen and Duncan are growing up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Walt and Duncan are paired on the footy field. Duncan serves as Walt’s protector, while Walt explores his precocious footballing talent. Rugby League is tribal for the boys and their families and they know that they'd rather live in the legacy of the likes of Tommy Raudonikas than the silvertails in the east. Walt’s older sister Helen can’t play with the boys but she can run water and plays to the team.

As the three grow up together they each start looking for more than their suburban existence offers.

As their family life breaks down Walt and Helen gravitate towards Sydney's Inner West. There they find underground success in the punk and noise music scene, and Walt is able to explore his growing political consciousness.

Duncan stays at home, diligently completing uni and finds himself in a more conventional job.

As the three criss-cross each other's lives they find themselves with contradictory purposes and opaque goals. Always present though is where they came from and how being from the west defines them in other people’s eyes.

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

2ser.com/final-draft

Today I’ve got a book that’s pure Sydney.

Max Easton is a writer, musician and podcaster from Western Sydney.

His debut novel The Magpie Wing comes out this week and I’m just going to keep saying it; this is a sucky time to be an artist creating because it is so hard to get your art out there. The Magpie Wing is a sprawling narrative taking in the geography and the history or Sydney and its subcultures and if you miss walking around the streets of your town and getting out to see bands and drinks in beer gardens; well The Magpie Wing might just be the next best thing.

Starting us off in the 90s

Walt, Helen and Duncan are growing up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Walt and Duncan are paired on the footy field. Duncan serves as Walt’s protector, while Walt explores his precocious footballing talent. Rugby League is tribal for the boys and their families and they know that they’s rather live in the legacy of the likes of Tommy Raudonikas than the silvertails in the east. Walt’s older sister Helen can’t play with the boys but she can run water and plays to the team.

As the three grow up together they each start looking for more than their suburban existence offers.

As their family life breaks down Walt and Helen gravitate towards Sydney's Inner West. There they find underground success in the punk and noise music scene, and Walt is able to explore his growing political consciousness.

Duncan stays at home, diligently completing uni and finds himself in a more conventional job.

As the three criss-cross each other's lives they find themselves with contradictory purposes and opaque goals. Always present though is where they came from and how bening from the west defines them in other people’s eyes.

The Magpie Wing is a compelling story told in a matter of fact, almost deadpan tone. Spanning three decades and taking in much more of Sydney’s history and east west divide the storytelling avoids nostalgia as assiduously as it avoids taking sides despite its characters strongly held beliefs.

Exploring classicism, gentrification, punk ethos and the ever present danger of selling out The Magpie Wing cuts its politics with humour and is not afraid to pull the rug out from under itself.

I think there’s plenty for any Sydneysider to recognise in The Magpie Wing and plenty more to learn, because in our so-called City of Villages people are rarely from more than one place and by virtue a tourist everywhere else they go.

Max Easton’s The Magpie Wing is brand new. It’s out this week from Giramondo who are a fabulous independent publisher of poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

If you want to hear more about The Magpie Wing, Max Easton is joining me on the show this Saturday morning. He’s a terrific guy to chat to so tune in and he’s also a great muso so I might even get some tunes up on the show...

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Mette Jakobsen discussing her new novel The Wingmaker

Today on the show...

As the novel begins Vega arrives at the dilapidated Seafarers Hotel. Isolated, surrounded by farms and ocean, the hotel promises to be the perfect location to restore the angel with broken wings, her most ambitious project yet. It is not long though before a naked man wearing a crown, dive bombing canaries and a local tango party threaten to ruin the solitude Vega is craving.

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft

This week on Final Draft I had the great pleasure and privilege of speaking with Tony Birch. Tony is an author, an activist, an academic, a poet and essayist. Tony’s 2019 novel The White Girl about a grandmother striving to protect her granddaughter from the racist policy of removing children from their families, is still widely discussed.

Tony and I were speaking because he has two new books out. A collection of poetry entitled Whisper Songs, and a short story collection Dark as Last Night. This is an incredible feat and one that is incredibly difficult in the current climate of lockdown where none of us can wander the shelves of our favourite booksellers and happen upon new works that we might like to explore.

Tony’s work moved me to tear with its heart, its willingness to go into the dark places of our society and the zest and verve of its language. So I want to keep championing these incredible new Australian releases because these books need to be discovered…

Just remember if you’re loving any of the books we talk about on Book Club - get in touch with your local independent bookseller and order a copy. They are your best resource for discovering new books and need our support at this time...

In the eponymous story that opens the collection, Dark As Last Night Birch details a dark tale of domestic abuse. A young girl flees her home as her father becomes violent and is taken in by the strange lady next door.

There she learns that this woman is not so strange, so much as she is independent of those minds who would stay silent. A refugee from Europe she has learned that “People say nothing and others die. It is that simple.”

Operating almost as a type of fairy tale we are opened up to a world where this girl has a choice in her own fate.

Tony Birch’s stories have a way of giving voice to things that we are too often not talking about.

In the story Bobby Moses, a small town cop watches an old aboriginal man walking into the town he patrols. Knowing the predominantly white population will disapprove of this incursion the cop questions what to do.

While giving the man a ride he learns that Bobby Moses has returned to a town he has no memory of. Taken from a mother he can now only visit in the town’s cemetery Bobby is seeking to reconnect with his land.

Each of the stories in Dark as Last Night offer up stitches in a fabric of our social connectedness. These are who we are from the dispossessed and the victimised, to the violent and the racist.

Tony Birch tells us these stories in an engaging way that leaves the reader to judge where they stand. I loved the stories in Dark as Last Night as I did the poetry of Whisper Songs.

If you’re looking for a stellar read, check out these collections and support local artists!

Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Tony Birch discussing his latest a collection of poetry entitled Whisper Songs, and a short story collection Dark as Last Night.

Today on the show...

The works in Whisper Songs & Dark as Last Night explore themes both personal and universal. Tony writes around the death of his brother, moving into memory to understand loss and carrying on.

The poetry of Whisper Songs explore language; the ways we use it to express and to hide our inner world. Tony explores through archival excerpts and reworkings how language is harnessed as a weapon against indigenous people; to strip them of their humanity and place them within the society that has stolen so much from them.

Join me as we discover Tony Birch’s Whisper Songs & Dark as Last Night...

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

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

https://2ser.com/final-draft

There is a long tradition in times of adversity that we read mysteries to divert ourselves from the challenges of our daily lives. Back in the interwar period of the 1920’s & 30’s Agatha Christie became a legend. Taking readers into little towns and intercontinental trains to solve a variety of cunning murders.

It’s a more complicated world, so maybe we need a darker, more nuanced voice. JP Pomare has a way of delivering, and right now when we can’t go anywhere, he’s crafted a thriller that will make you terrified of staying in any type of house share.

That’s right, this week’s book club is J.P. Pomare’s new thriller The Last Guests

JP Pomare is the author of Call Me Evie, Tell Me Lies and In the Clearing. He has won the Ngaio Marsh award and is shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award this year so you don’t have to trust me that he’s good; he’s got the trophies to back it up.

As The Last Guests begins, a nondescript man enters a holiday accommodation in Auckland with bags full of electrical equipment. Hours later he leaves with empty suitcases. Another Peephole stream has gone live.

On the other side of Auckland Cain and Lina are doing it tough. Cain hasn’t had much work since he was injured in combat and he wants Lina to put her family home up on WeStay - an online accommodation app. Lina’s not too sure though. All her childhood memories are in that home and who knows what terrors a guest could inflict on that nostalgia?

Like I said, right when we can’t travel anyway, The Last Guests delivers a narrative that shows us the potential nightmare fuel our stays could become.

Building on the growing world of surveillance we already live with, The Last Guests shows us a hidden world of voyeurs who tap into cameras to watch your most intimate moments.

Our protagonist Lina has a secret and when she is caught in the web of Peephole, she is confronted with how easy it would be for her whole world to come crumbling down.

The Last Guests mixes thriller, paranoia and just the right amount of mystery. We know what Lina has to hide but we don’t know enough about who is threatening her.

The novel crafts building tension that erupts into an horrific climax… and that’s just the halfway point. We are then treated with a classic as Lina tries to repair the pieces of her life and make sense of what has happened to her.

I was genuinely terrified and perplexed as I rocketed through The Last Guests. It’s a cliché to say it kept me guessing to the last turn, but there’s a reason why we return to clichés.

What more can I say about a writer whose work hinges on the unknown? It sucks that we’re stuck between the same four walls for the foreseeable future but J.P. Pomare’s work promises to make you feel like you’ve run a mile on every page. Oh and trust me… it will also make you very thankful for the comfort and safety of your own home.

Loved this review?

You can hear the full audio for this and many more conversations from Final Draft. Just search for Final Draft 2ser on social media and wherever you get your podcasts. 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!

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Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode is part two of a panel discussion on the new collection from Sweatshop Racism - Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry. In part two of our discussion Shirley, Tyree and Amani explore public and personal responses to racism. We looking at the process of unlearning and discuss how to approach instances of racism in everyday life.

Sweatshop are a literacy movement out of Western Sydney. They work to empower culturally and linguistically diverse communities through writing.

Sweatshop have an impressive library of works and the latest is Racism - Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry.

Asking the question ‘Is Australia a Racist Country?’ Racism - Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry explores well understood as well as more covert iterations of racist behaviour as well as the ways institutions prop up dominant culture ways of thinking and being.

Tyree Barnette is an American transplant originally from North Carolina. He is a member of Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement. His writing has been published in SBS voices, and other sweatshop anthologies. He is currently developing his debut novel.

Shirley Le is a Vietnamese-Australian writer from Yagoona. She is a Creative Producer at Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement. Her short stories and essays have been published in Kill Your Darlings, The Griffith Review, Meanjin and several Sweatshop anthologies. Shirley is currently working on her debut novel with Affirm Press.

Amani Haydar is a lawyer, artist and writer. Her writing and illustrations have been featured on ABC News Online, SBS Voices, Arab Australian Other and Sweatshop Women. Amani was a finalist in the 2018 Archibald Prize. Her debut novel, The Mother Wound, is out now.

Racism - Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry is available through www.sweatshop.ws

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser... 2ser.com/final-draft