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 features Yassmin Abdel-Magied discussing her new YA novel Listen, Layla

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Layla is an inventor. After winning a scholarship to an exclusive school she is now preparing for the Grand Designs Tourismo which will take her to Germany and working her hardest to win a place on the Special International Invention Tour. But Layla’s plans for conquering the world with her inventions hit a hurdle when her family must travel to Sudan to be at her grandmother’s bedside. This trip challenges Layla to discover who she is beyond the world of her inventors workshop...

Join me as we discover Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen, Layla...

Today I have a novel of Sydney that has become a favourite already of my reading this year.

Kavita Bedford is an Australian-Indian author and freelance journalist. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian and Griffith Review. But it is Kavita’s debut novel Friends & Dark Shapes that I want to talk about today.

In Friends & Dark Shapes four friends move into a share-house in Redfern. Over the course of four seasons the group must navigate communal living as both a necessity of their late twenties existence and a reality of the increasing inaccessibility of the gentrifying city.

From toilet rolls and the dishwashing roster, share-house living is opened up and the reader is invited to navigate space in a city that is always shifting and seemingly forever out of reach.

The narrative of Friends & Dark Shapes is comprised of vignettes taking us around Sydney and into small moments of life. The narrator welcomes the reader into her world and juxtaposes people and places with their parallels in her past.

Negotiating between the contemporary and a kind of nostalgia is a necessary battle as it is in these past moments that the narrator vividly recollects her father. Their bond and the ways they traversed the city through exploration and ritual make the seeming patchwork of streets and suburbs a comfortable terrain.

As we move around Sydney, in space and in time, we are confronted with the ways people live their lives, often siloed from neighbours in nearby suburbs. Within the share-house there is a sense of permanent impermanence. The group knows this is not their forever home but cannot perhaps conceive of what such a place might look like.

The uncertainty of place and belonging is explored the various communities we visit. While working on a story the narrator takes us to Villawood and the home of migrants who have settled in a house overlooking the temporary home they occupied when they first arrived. The detention centre is now a space shut off and barricaded to serve as a deterrent.

In some ways it seems that the novel is posing a question of who can belong. Whether through barbed wire fences or sky rocketing house prices home and belonging are strictly controlled and for many Sydney is a liminal space.

Ultimately though Friends & Dark Shapes is a gorgeous meditation on movement. The novel had me reflecting on the ways I move through life, through relationships and yes through this city.

As I record this just outside of Sydney in the Blue Mountains, I find Friends & Dark Shapes takes me back to the streets and the people that I have loved.

When I spoke with Kavita for Final Draft she compared our conversation to a virtual walk through Sydney. I think that’s a good metaphor for the experience of reading Friends & Dark Shapes

This is a soulful novel that I would highly recommend

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

Today's episode features Sydney Writers Festival Artistic Director Michael Williams discussing the 2021 program

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Michael Williams has joined the Sydney Writers Festival as its artistic director for 2021 following Michaela McGuire leaving to take the helm at Melbourne Writers Festival. It’s like the two passed each other somewhere around Albury as Michael was the director of Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre for more than a decade. He’s also been a presenter on Radio National and RRR down in Melbourne. And Michael has joined the festival in the wake of the cancellation of last year's festival due to Covid.

We’re all excited to see a return to the stages and talks and Michael has put together a program worth anticipating

Join me as Michael Williams takes us through the 2021 Sydney Writers Festival...

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

Today's episode features Pip Drysdale discussing her new novel The Paris Affair

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Harper Brown has arrived in Paris to live her dream. She’s leaving her romantic baggage behind and starting a job at an online magazine as its new art & culture writer.

This is Paris and a small borrowed apartment and rude co-workers are just part of the charm. Except Harper’s nourishing dreams of becoming a hard-hitting reporter and the arrogant git currently doing that job is ignoring her warnings that a serial killer may be stalking women on the streets of Paris.

Laura Jean McKay is the winner of the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

The Animals in That Country takes us north. Jean is a guide in a wildlife preserve. Irascibly anti-social, Jean drinks too much, smokes too much and picks fights online. Except for Thursdays when she cleans herself up and looks after her granddaughter. Jeans son Lee may have done a runner, but he did leave behind Kimberly and Jean is fiercely protective of Kim, even if Kim’s mum Ange has little time for Jean.

Jean and Kimberly love to plan for the day when they will have their own wildlife preserve. They carefully scrapbook their ideas, even as the news warns them of an illness spreading in the south.

Zooflu has hit the southern states hard, bringing flu-like symptoms, pink eyes and the ability to talk to animals!

Soon the park must close their gates and quarantine themselves against the pandemic, because who knows what the rescued animals will have to say about their captivity?

The Animals in That Country is part domestic drama, part road trip and part post apocalyptic dystopia.

Zooflu is greeted by many as an awakening of consciousness (who doesn’t want to hear how much their pets love them) but soon turns sour as humans find they cannot tolerate what they are being told.

McKay very quickly helps us understand that we are not the center of the universe anymore. That is if we ever were. The narrative shows us that whether we like it or not we are super-apex predators and all our illusions of benevolence fall away in the face of terrified creatures who only recognises humans as the gatekeeper of their freedom.

As the narrative progresses we see the gradual unravelling of society as people are faced with the wholesale changes Zooflu forces onto the world. There’s no way McKay could have foreseen what 2020 would confront us with and yet she’s given us a dramatic depiction of a society in flux.

The Animals in That Country poses a particularly sticky linguistic dilemma that seemed to me to resonate with all the shouty internet goings on that plague our lives. Because sure humans with Zooflu can decode what the animals around them are saying but often hearing does not equal understanding. And so we get some really strange and surrealistic communiques...

I mean why would you assume that a wallaby or a croc is going to talk to you like your best friend? Communication is about sharing something and taking the time to listen, even try to empathise with the other person.

And so it is Kimberly who teaches Jean; it’s not enough to just listen, she has to face up to the animals. Look at their bodies, their actions, their scents. Jean learns that she has to consider the animals perspectives to make sense of what they want to say.

Maybe I’m wrong, but how often do we do that day to day - actually try to take another’s perspective into consideration before we just keep talking??

The Animals in That Country represents a dystopia for some, a utopia for others. It’s a book of ideas wrapped in a page turning, breakneck narrative.

Check out my interview with Laura...

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

Today's episode features Kavita Bedford discussing her debut novel Friends & Dark Shapes

Today on the show...

Four friends move into a share-house in Redfern. Over the course of four seasons the friends navigate communal living and try to get a handle on whether this is in fact their lives or just another stepping stone towards a place everyone else seems to have reached.

From toilet rolls and the dishwashing roster, to navigating space in a city that is always shifting and seemingly forever out of reach; Friends & Dark Shapes explores love, longing and loss in Sydney.

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

Today's episode features A B Endacott discussing storytelling in her essay Mirror Mirror.

Mirror Mirror explores our propensity as storytellers. Every day our world is filled with stories; stories we consume and especially those we tell.

These stories help us shape our world, but how do we influence those stories and how in turn do those stories reflect our culture?

Join me as we discover A.B. Endacott’s Mirror Mirror.

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

Today's episode features Loraine Peck discussing her debut thriller The Second Son

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Johnny Novak’s a family man; beautiful wife, young son, his mum & dad live two blocks away, his brother Ivan lives two blocks in the other direction.

Johnny even works in the family business, although as the second son he’s always let his older brother do the heavy lifting.

Then one evening around dusk Ivan is gunned down in his driveway. A killing that threatens to erupt Sydney into all out warfare!

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 Tell Me Lies

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Margot is a successful psychologist; thriving practice, beautiful family and an academic interest in antisocial personality disorder. On an otherwise uneventful night Margot is woken by the sound of broken glass. The family escapes through their open front door to see flames blooming from Margot’s office window. Someone has firebombed their house!

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

Today's episode features part two of Kirsty Everett discussing her compelling memoir Honey Blood.

At age nine Kirsty Everett defied the odds and beat a cancer diagnosis. Kirsty was a successful gymnast and embraced life every way she could. Despite this tough battle, nothing could prepare Kirsty for when her cancer returned in her teens.

Honey Blood is the inspirational true story of Kirsty's survival and thriving.

Kirsty Everett's Honey Blood is produced and presented by Briannah Devlin