KYD Podcast: Laurie Steed’s ‘You Belong Here’

Our April First Book Club title is brought to us by Margaret River Press. You Belong Here is the first novel from Laurie Steed, which follows the Slater family through marriage, divorce and its aftermath in Perth – three decades of one family coming together and pushing each other away. On a recent trip to Melbourne we cornered him to ask a few questions about writing Perth’s suburbs, characters with debatable taste in music, and returning home.

Further reading:

Read an extract from You Belong Here.

Read Ellen Cregan’s review of the novel.

You can stream the podcast above, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, or through your favourite podcasting app. Let us know what you think by rating and reviewing in your app of choice!

TRANSCRIPT

Meaghan Dew: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. If you’ve been following along with the First Book Club, you’ll know our April title is Laurie Steed’s You Belong Here, out now from Margaret River Press. You Belong Here follows the Slater family through marriage, divorce and its aftermath – three decades of coming together and pushing apart. He’s not based in Melbourne, but on a recent trip down we cornered him to ask a few questions about the book, starting with the role the suburbs play in Australian literature and in You Belong Here in particular.

Laurie Steed: I think it’s an interesting situation in that suburban life has been a common thing within Australian novels, but there’s also been that regional discourse that’s gone on in Australian literature. And I know, growing up, I used to read a lot of novels that were set in regional or coastal settings and I’d often think, ‘These books are not talking about my people or my places.’ So for me, growing up in suburbia, I really wanted to write a suburban book, but not necessarily one that was incredibly gritty or harsh. I wanted to write one that illuminated the streets in which I grew up, where I was almost making love to the suburb I’d called home as a child. And I hoped I did that in some small way. But it was a real – it was a bit of a head trip to go back into that suburban space. And I think it’s a common topic because your childhood is so formative. So to go back into that space and think about things from a new perspective is often quite illuminating, because as a child you’ll see the suburb in one way, but then when you look back as an adult you see things that you missed the first time around.

KYD: So that specificity can be a really fantastic thing. Reading it, I don’t know Perth myself, but I could tell you had a lot of affection for the place. But did you worry that that very specificity would mean it didn’t resonate with people who weren’t familiar with that city and with those suburban spaces?

LS: My hope, I guess,