Final Draft - Great Conversations

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

Today's episode is part one of a panel discussion on the new collection from Sweatshop Racism - Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry

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

The Other Half of You is situated firmly within Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s body of work. Beginning with The Tribe and following through The Lebs we discover unfolding the story of Bani Adam. Bani is a young Lebanese Australian man. He is an Alawite Muslim; a member of a family, a tribe, but also a young man trying to figure out where he belongs in a contradictory society that does not seem to make room for men like him

The Other Half of You is a continuation of this quest for identity both as an individual and within his family and his religion. It’s also a beautiful love letter written by a man to his young son.

The story opens with a kind of invocation. Bani tells his son Khalil “You brought me here, now let me take you back” and so begins a story at times serious, at times hilarious, moving through Bani’s exploration of the world where he lives.

A place situated in time; young Lebanese men felt the stigma of being branded rapists following the conviction of the Skaf brothers in the early 2000’s.

A place defined by family; working to respect, to honour, to please those who raised him and the extended clan who would forever be his life.

And

A place scarred by politics, as Muslims were victimised in the wake of the September 11 attacks in America and closer to home in the riots unleashed by white supremacists at Cronulla.

The Other Half of You describes Bani’s attempts to reconcile his life, his love, his education in the search for someone he can spend his life with.

The book is immediately fascinating for its dialogue between BAni and his young son. It’s easy to forget as we progress that this open, honest and candid narrative is a confession and design for life from father to son.

I don’t want to overlook this. Because we live in a world where men talk to men in terms, harsh and combative. To be a man is to be defined more by violence than love.

The Other Half of You opens up the history of an individual. It’s a history, as I’ve mentioned, Mohammed carefully chronicles in his writing, and he welcomes a new generation to this story.

Opening up this book I found parts of Sydney that I no longer get to visit. Areas in lockdown and areas that too often are only part of the food tourist trail for other suburbs.

In his story Bani covers these grounds in an epic love story and an honest desire to communicate how that love came to be.

I’ve found myself gravitating to incredible contemporary stories of Sydney lately. Partly because I’m now part of ‘Greater Sydney’ living in the Blue Mountains. And partly because whatever your relationship to the streets of this city we are now separated in reality where we were previously separated by apathy.

If you want to travel and find love though, check out Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The OTher HAlf of You

I’m a big fan of Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s writing; both for his eloquent prose, his biting sense of humour and his sense that we as a city and as a country are not hearing the stories of so many people. If you want to hear more of Michael Mohammed Ahmad he and I have had many a conversation on the Final Draft podcast. Wherever you listen in...

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 is part two of J.P. Pomare discussing his latest Thriller The Last Guests

If you missed part one be sure to go back and check out in your podcast app

Today on the show...

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?

In Part Two of the conversation Josh delves into the ways he uses psychology in his stories, as well as the ways our own psychology influences our behaviour. We also get a little tongue in cheek, exploring Josh's back catalogue and the possibility of a J.P. Pomare extended universe

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 J.P. Pomare discussing his latest Thriller The Last Guests

Today on the show...

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?

In Part One of the conversation Josh shares a story that goes to the heart of the Last Guests. Thrillers so often reflect our own societal concerns and existential crises and we discover some real world concerns about how we are benign surveilled...

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 Tilly Lawless discussing her debut novel Nothing But My Body

Today on the show...

Nothing But My Body is a journey through eight days in the life of a young, queer sex worker.

The narrator explores her world and confronts the versions of herself seen through the eyes of clients, friends and lovers, at all times challenging and railing against the strictures of labels and reductive stereotypes.

Nothing But My Body confronts the lows we can feel navigating the world while celebrating the constancy of friendships and the steady community they offer against a tide of cruelty and

Join me as we discover Tilly Lawless’s Nothing But My Body...

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

Today I wanted to highlight some incredible writing from Western Sydney.

And there is a wealth of incredible writing that comes out of western Sydney. Just recently I’ve received the collection Second City - Essays from Western Sydney published by Sydney Review of Books, The Magpie Wing Max Easton’s debut novel about football culture and growing up in the west and now that I mention it I realise I haven’t yet brought in one of my favourite releases of 2021; The Other Half of You by Michael Mohammad Ahmad. I will absolutely get back to that, it’s an incredible novel. But today I want to talk about a collection from the literary collective that Michael Mohammad Ahmad founded. The collection is entitled Racism - Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry, it’s out now from Sweatshop Literacy Movement and brings together more than forty writers detailing through their art what racism is in Australia.

To tell you about Sweatshop I can’t really go past their own description of their work and mission…

“Sweatshop is a literacy movement based in Western Sydney which is devoted to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse communities through reading, writing and critical thinking.”

Sweatshop have an wide and growing range of titles that broach the stories we so seldom hear coming from individuals and communities that are too often talked about but not to. They recognise that it is not enough to simply empower communities to tell their stories, those stories have to be out there for people to access, to read and reflect on.

I want to try and tread a very fine line here, because I don’t want to just be another person talking about these stories; I want you to read them and hear these voices for yourself.

The works in Racism pose a simple but volatile question; “Are we a nation of racists?” I can already hear the angry tweets being penned; of course we’re not, a few bad apples, we might have been but now equality. Sentiments that make us feel better, but in the middle of a lockdown that has seen a huge disparity in response and restrictions between East and South West, well I want to hear more than just the dominant narrative.

The stories in this collection relate experiences and narratives that open up the range of individual experiences of this thing we call racism. Through short stories, poetry and micro fiction we are shown the slurs and the looks, the overt acts and the sycophantic attempts at inclusivity.

What becomes clear through these stories is that while racism is exemplified in individual acts, it is established and codified in the ways we both see and choose to remain blind and silent when people are treated as other, whatever the supposed reason.

That’s enough from me. I want to leave the last word on this collection to its collectors. Winnie Dunn, Stephen Pham and Phoebe Granger are the editors of Racism and in their introduction they lay out that they “seek to provide a personal and intimate record from first nations people and people of colour across all ages, that demonstrates the pain, despair, confusion, complexity and rejection that comes from being the ‘other’.”

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

Today's episode features Anne Marie Te Whiu & David Stavanger discussing Red Room Poetry's inaugural Poetry Month

Today on the show...

Poetry Month is a showcase of the incredible wealth of poetic talent in this country and will be Featuring:

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 I wanted to do something a little different for our book club. Usually I’m bringing you some kind of long form narrative (typically a novel) and opening up on my thoughts about how the particular story engages with issues or questions that get to the heart of our lives.

I love these stories, they’re immensely satisfying and I’ll definitely be back with more soon.

This week though I wanted to bring you a little poetry. Specifically I wanted to let everyone out there know about Poetry Month an initiative from Red Room Poetry.

This is the inaugural poetry month and it really is a festival of poetic art spanning styles from the traditional, through hip hop and an array of voices from throughout the community.

Poetry Month is organised and run by Red Room Poetry and it’s designed to increase the profile of Australian Poets, Poetry and Publishers.

I don’t know about you but I’ve always loved poetry. Having said that, I haven’t always made time for it in my life.

Poetry has a way of demanding your attention, slapping you in the face with a line that makes you look at the world like you’ve been wearing blinkers (spoiler alert - you have).

A collection I’ve been loving recently, though by no means underestimating as it sneaks up on me in strange ways, is Evelyn Araluen’s Drop Bear. Throughout the collection Araluen chews up ideas and visions, cliches and tropes to show us this country in ways we never thought to look…

In Index Australis, Araluen writes:

No law against that, no laws for nothing

In the age of entitlement

In the decolonial Dundee

And well may we say , we will decide

Who and how

Well may we not be lectured and well

May we do it slowly

Just there in that stanza, Araluen skewers our political class and us for our reliance on either side for their moral high ground while they leave so many languishing.

Evelyn Araluen joins poetry month as part of Fair Trade - First Nations poetic conversations, a series of conversations bringing together some of the world’s leading first nations poets.

Poetry Month will also be Featuring:

Another poet who’ll be featuring as part of poetry month is Omar Sakr. His collection The Lost Arabs won amongst other accolades The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Poetry Prize. I often wonder if the PM reads the works that get his award. I feel like if he had read The Lost Arabs we might get a little more humility, more understanding and less bluster.

One thing that scares me when I read poetry is that I might misunderstand, but then the poet always seems to leave room. Omar is an Arab Australian poet whose work addresses identities that are not my own, and yet when I read in his poem How to Destroy The Body Slowly:

You. Every day for a hundred years

If you’re so lucky

Live with this ordinary

Divinity, live with this death as long as you can

& waste not a single day on a rose.

I hear something of the insecurity and the beauty that I struggle to find in life sometimes and that we can all discover when we read Omar’s poems.

If you’re looking for more, well Poetry Month starts soon and the best part of all is it’s online, so join in wherever you are.

For more details check out https://redroompoetry.org/ and discover all the poetry events across the month....

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 Elodie Cheesman discussing her debut novel Love, in Theory

In this second part of the conversation we dive deeper into the mathematics of relationships and explore the ways all our relationships have a little bit of love in them

...

Romy is a graduate lawyer. Her work sees her taking a deep dive into the relationships corporations have with their employees and she’s finding that often these look more like intimate, romantic partnerships than anything she’s got on her personal calendar.

Romy’s parents worry she’s not dating. Her mates think she’s got a type and is being picky. Even Romy wonders if the guys she’s interested in set up the relationships to fail.

When she’s introduced to optimal stopping point theory she wonders if maybe there’s another way to go about finding the one. Romy has to apply ruthless legal logic to relationships in her work, why not try a little algorithmic thinking to her non-existent dating life?

Join me as we discover Elodie Cheesman’s Love, in Theory...

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

Today's episode features Elodie Cheesman discussing her debut novel Love, in Theory

Today on the show...

Romy is a graduate lawyer. Her work sees her taking a deep dive into the relationships corporations have with their employees and she’s finding that often these look more like intimate, romantic partnerships than anything she’s got on her personal calendar.

Romy’s parents worry she’s not dating. Her mates think she’s got a type and is being picky. Even Romy wonders if the guys she’s interested in set up the relationships to fail.

When she’s introduced to optimal stopping point theory she wonders if maybe there’s another way to go about finding the one. Romy has to apply ruthless legal logic to relationships in her work, why not try a little algorithmic thinking to her non-existent dating life?

Join me as we discover Elodie Cheesman’s Love, in Theory...