The First Time

In our fourth episode of our Summer Series we revisit our most popular ep ever! Kate speaks to Literary Queen, Helen Garner.

Helen Garner’s first book, Monkey Grip, was published in 1977. She is well known for her novels, short stories, journalism and essays, and for several influential works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. The first volume of her diaries, Yellow Notebook was published by Text in 2019, followed by One Day I’ll Remember This in 2020 and most recently How to End a Story in 2021. Helen lives in Melbourne.

Check out this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you brand new episodes from March 2023!

In our third episode of our Summer Series, we revisit Kate's conversation with Madeleine Dore which was a hugely popular ep to kick off 2022. We hope you can apply her energy to your 2023 new year!

Madeleine Dore is a freelance writer, interviewer and founder of Extraordinary Routines. Since 2014, Dore has been asking creative thinkers how they navigate their days on her popular blog Extraordinary Routines and podcast Routines & Ruts. Her interviews, life-experiments, and articles have appeared in Sunday Life, Womankind, BBC, and more and her latest offering is her first book, I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: On letting go of productivity guilt, published in Australia and the in the US in January 2022.

Check out this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you brand new episodes from March 2023!

In our second episode of our Summer Series, we revisit Katherine's conversation with Benjamin Law.

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law, Gaysia, the Quarterly Essay: Moral Panic 101 and editor of Growing up Queer in Australia. He created and co-wrote three seasons of the award winning SBS TV series The Family Law and wrote the sold-out MTC play Torch the Place. He co-hosts Stop Everything! on the ABC’s Radio National and interviews public figures for Good Weekend.

Benjamin and Katherine discuss his rules for writing about family, why writing letters to the editor can be misleadingly lucrative and what he thinks about when he writes humour.

Check out this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you brand new episodes from March 2023!

Welcome to our Summer Series! First off we take you back to our very first ever episode in 2018 where we discuss just what The First Time Podcast is all about (or at least what we planned back then!).

Then we chat to Claire G Coleman. Claire G Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family belong to the south coast of Western Australia. She writes fiction, essays, poetry and art criticism while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. Born in Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar (Perth), away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Naarm (Melbourne). During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, influenced by certain experiences gained on the road. She has won a Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship for that novel, Terra Nullius. Terra Nullius was published in Australia by Hachette Australia and in North America by Small Beer Press. And was shortlisted for numerous awards including The Stella Prize 2018, ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writers 2018, the Aurealis Award for a Science Fiction Novel 2017 and was Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2017

Since we first spoke to Claire, she has been incredibly busy. Her second novel,
The Old Lie, was written in response to what she learned when traveling and was published in 2019 by Hachette Australia. Lies, Damned Lies, Claire's first non-fiction book, unpacking the effects of the history of Australia's colonisation, was released on the 1st of September 2021. In 2022, Claire’s third novel Enclave was published by Hachette.

Check out this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you brand new episodes from March 2023!

We are thrilled to bring you this special episode with Kurdish-Iranian journalist, writer, filmmaker and refugee advocate Behrouz Boochani.

The episode includes conversations Kate had with Behrouz in Aotearoa at Verb Wellington and in Naarm, Melbourne ahead of his sold out event at The Wheeler Centre. At Behrouz's request, Kate also spoke to his translators and collaborators Omid Tofighian & Moones Mansoubi about how they work together, the making of the new book Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani and the current situation in Iran. 

We feel very lucky to have had this opportunity to speak to Boochani, Tofighian & Mansoubi about their work to bring the stories of Manus Prison to the global community. 

Associate Professor Behrouz Boochani graduated from Tarbiat Moallem University and Tarbiat Modares University, both in Tehran; he holds a Masters degree in political science, political geography and geopolitics.

Moones Mansoubi is a translator and Community Arts and Cultural Development worker based in Sydney. Her work is dedicated mainly to supporting and collaborating with migrants and people seeking asylum in Australia.

Omid Tofighian is an award winning lecturer, researcher and community advocate. His publications include the translation of Boochani’s award winning No Friend But the Mountains: Writings from Manus Prison.

Boochani was a writer for the Kurdish language magazine Werya; is Associate Professor in Social Sciences at UNSW; non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre (SAPMiC), University of Sydney; Honorary Member of PEN International; and winner of an Amnesty International Australia 2017 Media Award, the Diaspora Symposium Social Justice Award, the Liberty Victoria 2018 Empty Chair Award, and the Anna Politkovskaya award for journalism.

He publishes regularly with The Guardian, and his writing also features in The Saturday Paper, Huffington Post, New Matilda, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. Boochani is also co-director (with Arash Kamali Sarvestani) of the 2017 feature-length film Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time; and collaborator on Nazanin Sahamizadeh's play Manus.

Boochani's book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature in addition to the Nonfiction category. He has also won the Special Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the Australian Book Industry Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, and the National Biography Prize. It has been published in 18 languages in 23 countries and is currently being adapted for both stage and screen.

Behrouz has been appointed adjunct associate professor in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW and visiting professor at Birkbeck Law School at the University of London.

He was a political prisoner incarcerated by the Australian government in Papua New Guinea for almost seven years. In November 2019 Behrouz escaped to New Zealand. He now resides in Wellington, New Zealand.

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us!

It's the last episode of a pretty epic season! Kate and Katherine talk the year that was for both of them, plus what they've been reading, watching and listening to. It's not a 'best of' list but it's a great list. Things that get mentioned include:

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmun 

This is Dating (podcast) 

If Books Could Kill (podcast) 

The Mel Robbins Podcast 

Crafting with Ursula from Between the Covers Podcast - particularly episodes with Lidia Yuknavitch (Kate's fave 'new to me' writer of the year!) and adrienne maree brown

Babel by RF Kuang

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma. Kate's been impressed with short story collections this year including Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls by Anne Casey Hardy (who we spoke to here), You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead and Here be Leviathans by Chris Flynn

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us!

A very special, final Master Series episode for Season 5! Kate was THRILLED to have the opportunity to speak to literary legend George Saunders. They discuss his early writing life, his model for revising, advice to writers, why he loves teaching and his Story Club community and his latest collection Liberation Day.

George Saunders is the author of eleven books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English, and was a finalist for the Golden Man Booker. His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2013 (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short story collection). 

He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. 

Saunders has taught, since 1997, in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University. His book based on the fiction course he teaches -  A Swim in the Pond in the Rain is MUCH discussed on this podcast, and combined with his very popular Story Club newsletter and community has made him one of THE most lauded writers on writing. His latest book is the short story collection Liberation Day.

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us!

This episode Katherine speaks to poet and writer Allen C. Jones about basketball, poetry, metaphor mapping and his debut novel, Her Death Was Also Water. 

Allen C. Jones is an award-winning writer from California. He has lived and taught in Spain, Mexico, Korea, China, and presently serves as associate professor of literature in Norway. He earned an MFA in poetry from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. His work appears widely online and in print (links at allencjones.com). Allen’s novel, Her Death Was Also Water, was published by Midnight Sun Publishing in November 2022.

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Five via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us!

Our final Master Series of S5! And it's a LIVE one! Recorded at Readings Hawthorn with the fabulous Australian novelist and nature writer, Inga Simpson. We discuss her writing career, how to fall back in love with your craft, love of trees and Inga's latest book - 'the great Australian cricket novel - Willowman (Hachette Australia).

Inga Simpson is also the author of The Last Woman in the World (Hachette 2021), which was shortlisted for the Margaret and Colin Roderick literary Award and the Fiction Indie Book Award. Her first novel, Mr Wigg (Hachette 2013), was shortlisted for the Debut Fiction Indie Award. Nest (Hachette 2014) was longlisted for the Miles Franklin, the Stella Prize, and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. And Where the Trees Were (Hachette 2016) was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, an ABIA Award, The Green Carnation Prize, and shortlisted for an Indie award. Understory: a life with trees (Hachette 2017), Inga's first book-length work of nature writing, was shortlisted for the Adelaide Writers Week prize for nonfiction. The Book of Australian Trees (Lothian 2021) illustrated by Alicia Rogerson is Inga's first book for children.

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Six via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us!

Kate is home and insufferably glowy after her residency, handing in her MS and the fabulous Verb Wellington festival. Katherine is 'very happy for her.' Lots of mentions this ep, including: 

Verb Wellington

This episode our featured book segment is brought to you by Harlequin and we are delighted to be talking to Anna Snoekstra about her new novel OUT OF BREATH. 

Anna Snoekstra is an award-winning author and screenwriter who lives in Naarm/Melbourne. She is the author of Only Daughter, Little Secrets and The Spite Game. Her novels have been published in over twenty countries and sixteen languages. She has written for The Guardian, Meanjin and LitHub and had short fiction published in The Saturday Paper and The Griffith Review. Her new novel Out of Breath is out now. Her first audio drama, This Isn’t Happening, is out with Audible early 2023.

Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter (@thefirsttimepod) or Instagram (@thefirsttimepod).

Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Five via our Patreon page. Thanks for joining us!