The Kill Your Darlings Podcast

The Kill Your Darlings Podcast took a trip to the National Young Writers’ Festival last month – lucky for you we’ve remembered the rules about sharing, and brought back enough for everyone. In this edition, Kylie Maslen (of book–plate) explains why she loves reading and writing about food, Magda Woźniak speaks about screenwriting, scripts and soapies, while Izzy Roberts-Orr tackles working with (and being) a volunteer.

You can stream the podcast above or on Soundcloud, or subscribe on iTunes or through your favourite podcasting app.

Meaghan Dew (KYD): Hello and welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. We’ve just finished recovering from the National Young Writers’ Festival, so it seemed like a good time to reflect. If you couldn’t make it, catching up with us is the next best thing. So sit back as we chat with some of the writers and programmers involved in the festival. You’ll hear from one of the festival co-directors, Izzy Roberts-Orr, as well as from writer Kylie Maslen, who ran the session on food writing. But first off, we go to Magda Woźniak, who ran the screenwriting workshop this year. Magda has worked on a number of television programs including Neighbours and Home and Away, as well as a few short films. So I asked her, how did she first start out as a screenwriter?

Magda Woźniak: I guess I started with an interest more in film from a critical perspective, so I did like a normal Bachelor of Arts, and I did film studies and I did my Honours in film studies and communications, blah blah blah, and I was encouraged by my supervisor at the time to give screenwriting a go. And it was sort of, really a weird thing on a whim that I tried, and I found out that I really enjoyed, and I ended up applying for a Masters course in screenwriting, and that is how I really, like, got into it. At the time I wasn’t even sure if I was going to focus on screenwriting or directing, but I ended up just sort of falling into it and really enjoying it.

KYD: And what was your first screenwriting job?

MW: So I started working at Southern Star in Sydney. I got a director’s attachment, which is, again, a thing that is funded partly through ScreenWest, where they sort of pay you a little bit so that you can be attached to a production company. And I worked in the script department of the show called Rescue: Special Ops, which was on Channel Nine – it was one of those classic 1-hour rescue dramas, of people, like, rescuing people from clifftops and buildings, and all of the drama of that. And that’s where I worked as an attachment, and then you just sort of get to experience all the different process.

And then from there I ended up getting a script coordinating job on a show called Wild Boys which was also being produced by Southern Star.

KYD: And so working on Neighbours, that must be quite a hectic schedule, because it’s a very regular show, what does a day look like for you working on that?

MW: Well, there are sort of two sides to the job. So you are either going to be doing the editing side, or the story or plotting side. So if you are on the plotting side then your day is sitting in a room, planning out what is going to happen in an episode of Neighbours, and/or communicat

The Kill Your Darlings Podcast is back with a few strange tales from the Melbourne Writers Festival and beyond. In this edition we speak to one of our KYD First Book Club authors, Madelaine Dickie, about her novel Troppo and the experiences in Indonesia that informed it. We also have Julie Koh reading part of ‘Cream Reaper’, from her brilliantly bizarre collection Portable Curiosities. Finally, I restrain my inner fangirl (who is also my outer fangirl) while asking Lev Grossman about his series The Magicians, magical protagonists, and what it’s like seeing Brakebills brought to life.

Further reading:

Read an extract from Madelaine Dickie’s Troppo, KYD’s First Book Club pick for September

You can stream the podcast above or on Soundcloud, or subscribe on iTunes or your favourite podcasting app.

Lev Grossman: …Reality just doesn’t act like that. It doesn’t act like books, it’s not as satisfying. It’s not as well organised…

Meaghan Dew (KYD): Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. I’m Meaghan and I’ll be your host for the next half hour or so, as we delve into stories that are a little unusual. During the Melbourne Writers Festival, we spoke to Lev Grossman about The Magicians, so that interview’s coming up, and so is Julie Koh’s reading part of her short story ‘Cream Reaper’. But first up we have an interview with Madelaine Dickie. Her debut novel Troppo is the September KYD First Book Club pick, and is out now with Fremantle Press, official sponsors of this third of the podcast. I asked her about her first experiences in Indonesia, where the novel is set.

Madelaine Dickie: I first went to Indonesia on a study trip as a 16-year-old, so I studied Indonesian throughout high school, and had a ten-day sort of study tour in Denpasar, so I went to school in Indonesia, and in Bali, and yeah, just brushed up on the language skills. It was really different, actually, speaking Indonesian in the country as compared to learning Indonesian in the classroom. I thought I was pretty well, but as soon as I

This incredibly honest, mainly truthful edition of the KYD Podcast delves into the fact behind the fiction, the origins of inspiration and – all right, perhaps a bit of truth bending as well.

Inside Catriona Menzies-Pike speaks about her book The Long Run (and her experience as a self-designated ‘crap athlete’), Maxine Beneba Clarke discusses her profiles for The Saturday Paper (including the one she sort of made up) and Hannah Kent talks to Liam Pieper about his debut novel, The Toymaker.

That last one’s just a selection – if you’d like the full conversation between Hannah and Liam, you can find it here. On Killings you can also find Stephanie Convery’s review of The Long Run.

You can stream the podcast above or on Soundcloud, or subscribe on iTunes or your favourite podcasting app.

*

MEAGHAN DEW: Welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings podcast. Today we are looking for the truth, or at least the fact behind the fiction. We spoke to Catriona Menzies-Pike about her book The Long Run, and dipped into the origins of Liam Pieper’s departure from memoir with The Toymaker. But first, with three books released, or to be released, this year, I decided to speak with Maxine Beneba Clarke about none of them, and instead asked a few questions about her profiles for The Saturday Paper.

SoI guess the first question to start with is, do you select your subjects, or the people you are doing profiles on, or are they sort of allocated to you?

MBC: Most of them I select myself. Occasionally, I think I have done, probably, about 25 or 26 portraits now, and I think five or six of them have been allocated. So I am very lucky that I have an editor who kind of, you know, was in pursuit, I guess, people that I’m interested in talking to.

MD: And like a lot of people, I first encountered your writing through Foreign Soil. Did you have a background in non-fiction before your collection? Or did this opportunity come around, sort of, in part as a result of your other written work?

MBC: I, so, I started out as a poet, doing spoken word, and then moved on to Foreign Soil, and this did come out of Foreign S

The Kill Your Darlings Podcast is back with a Stella-r lineup to see you through the next thirty minutes of your day.

In this month’s podcast we get inside the head of crime writer Margie Orford, and listen to Jennifer Down read from her debut novel Our Magic Hour. We also hear from The Stella Prize’s Aviva Tuffield, Veronica Sullivan and Sophie Allan as they share the Stella Sparks they’ve never stopped thinking about.