Really Interesting Women

Podcast - Episode 110

Nikki Gemmell

Nikki Gemmell is an international best-selling author of over 20 books and a Walkley Award winning commentator and opinion writer for The Australian newspaper. 

Her subject matter and distinctive writing style led to the French literary magazine Lire in 2007 including her in a list of what it called the fifty most important writers in the world – those it believed would have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century. In fact, in France she has been described as a "female Jack Kerouac ".

Four of her books (Shiver, Cleave, The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book of Rapture) made the longlist of "Favourite Australian Novels" as chosen by readers of the Australian Book Review. 

But it was her best-known work in 2003, The Bride Stripped Bare, which became a world-wide publishing sensation...and then upended her universe. To protect herself she initially published the book anonymously. Then the media outed her and, according to Nikki herself, all hell broke loose. The consequences are still being felt today.

With Nikki Gemmell there's always a lot to discuss. And we try and cover as much as we can...her loving yet fractious relationship with her mother, how to deal with the inevitable withering criticisms that come from being a public figure and her liberating time as a writer in London....and then retraining, as she calls them, her pommy children to become Australian when she returned to these shores. 

But all the while, it was her love of writing that kept her moving through life's rollercoaster. And still does. 

 Her books display the qualities she most admires in other authors...brutal, eviscerating honesty. But there’s an overriding sense of fun, wit and wisdom which makes her a brilliant writer, a great guest and, it goes without saying, a really interesting woman. 

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