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

Today's episode features Mirandi Riwoe discussing her latest novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain.

Stone Sky Gold Mountain transports the reader to the Queensland gold fields of the mid nineteenth century. Siblings Ying and Lai Yue have left their homes in China and travelled to Australia to seek enough money to restore their family.

Ying must disguise herself, passing as a boy, lest her gender see her taken advantage of and brutalised. As a male she discovers freedoms denied her as a woman but also sees the restrictions she lives under. When Ying & Lai Yue realise they cannot survive on mere gold dust they move to Maytown; the settlement established to furnish the goldfields.

In Maytown, Meriam and Sophie live on the outskirts. Meriam longs for her old life and bristles at the town’s treatment of her as the maid of a sex worker.