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 Debra Adelaide discussing her collection Zebra.

Debra Adelaide’s Zebra is a collection of fourteen stories; from the hilarity of an intricately catered Xmas lunch to the horror of a future Australia where the Northern Territory Intervention is taken to a hideous conclusion. The titular story in the collection is a novella exploring the rule of a very different kind of Australian Prime Minister. Overseeing a period of calm and prosperity she’s unsure of herself privately but undoubtedly a public success; the stories focuses on her creation of a unique public garden for The Lodge while attempting to manage the relationships around her. Oh, and she’s also given a Zebra as a gift…

The Stella Prize is an annual literary award celebrating Australian Women writers. Now in its seventh year, the Stella is an important and influential award marking great Australian writing.

The Stella Prize announced their long list this week sparking the discussion around what is important in Australian writing today.

Louise Swinn is the Chair of the Stella judges panel and she joined Andrew Pople on Final Draft to discuss the task of sorting through the mountain of submissions and what themes and issues have emerged in the successful twelve.

The 2019 Stella Prize longlist:

● Little Gods by Jenny Ackland (Allen & Unwin)

● Man Out of Time by Stephanie Bishop (Hachette Australia)

● Bluebottle by Belinda Castles (Allen & Unwin)

● The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo (Scribe)

● The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Random House)

● The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones (Text Publishing)

● Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau (Brow Books)

● The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Finch Publishing)

● Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin)

● Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (UQP)

● Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin (Brow Books)

● The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright (Giramondo Publishing)

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

Today's episode features Kate Richards discussing her latest novel Fusion.

Fusion takes us to a cabin in the Australian bush. Within the cabin live Sea and Serene joined by their cousin Wren. Sea and Serene are conjoined twins who have escaped to the cabin from an institutionalised life where they were treated as freaks.

When one day Wren brings home an unconscious woman, the household is thrown into turmoil. The twins are healers, but can even they revive the badly beaten woman? And how did she come to be so far out in the bush?

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

Today's episode features Graeme Simsion discussing his latest novel The Rosie Result.

The Rosie Result is the third chapter in the story of Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman. When we left them they had narrowly avoid marital breakdown in New York and were about to start a family. Now some eleven years later Don, Rosie and Hudson are returning to Australia following a quick decision after Don stabs himself in the leg with an oyster knife.

Things in Australia get tricky as Hudson has trouble settling in to school and Don must face the similarities between Hudson and himself, and find a way to give Hudson the support he never had.

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

Today's episode features Bronwyn Bancroft discussing his latest book for children, written with Nina Lawrence, Clever Crow.

Clever Crow or Wak Liya-Djambatj as it is in Djambarrpuyngu, is a story of a hungry crow searching for a meal. Djambarrpuynu is Yolngu language from East Arnhem Land and Clever Crow is told in both Djambarrpuynu and English.

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

Today's episode is a special event featuring Ninah Kopel from 2ser's History Lab podcast.

Ninah's brought in a literary mystery that explores the intersection between storytelling and reality in Frank Moorhouse's Edith Trilogy of books about the formation of The Leagure of Nations.

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

Today's episode features Toni Jordan discussing her latest novel The Fragments.

We meet Caddie Walker in mid eighties Brisbane. She’s a bookseller who has given up on academia, though not on her love of literature. Caddie waits in the line to see an exhibition of Inga Karlson’s work. The celebrated authors first novel All Has an End has inspired generations, and Caddie anticipates the thrill of viewing the few remaining fragments of Karlson’s second novel The Days, The Minutes. The book was thought lost in a fire until Caddie hears a few cryptic lines from a woman at the exhibition that set her off on a hunt to discover the novel’s fate…

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

Today's episode features Jock Serong discussing his latest novel Preservation.

Preservation explores the true story of the wreck of the merchant vessel Sydney Cove in Bass Strait in 1797. From the wreck 17 men make it to the mainland at ninety mile beach in Victoria and must walk over seven hundred kilometres to the incipient settlement at Port Jackson. Only three men survived this journey; a tale that survives to us recorded in the journal of the Scottish merchant William Clark.

Into this space Jock Serong delivers a story of survival and treachery that examines the principles on which the colony of New South Wales was founded and the impact invading attitudes had on the land’s indigenous population.

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

Today's episode features Katherine Johnson discussing her latest novel Matryoshka.

Sara Barsova has returned to her family home at the foot of Mt Wellington following the death of her Grandmother. Nina Barsova raised Sara as her own following the teenage pregnancy of Sara’s mother Helena. A chance meeting with Abdhul, an Afghani refugee, has Sara reevaluating her ties to family and she seeks to forgive her mother and finally discover the identity of her father.

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

Today's episode features John Purcell discussing his latest novel The Girl on the Page.

The Girl on the Page is a literary clash of epic proportions. Amy is an editor with the almost supernatural power to steer a book onto the bestseller lists, but when her boss hands her a special assignment Amy has no desire to help literary legend Helen Owen deliver her hotly anticipated new novel. Entering the new home of Owen and her Booker Prize listed husband Malcolm, Amy finds acrimony, recrimination and three brilliant manuscripts just awaiting a readship…