The Garret: Writing & Publishing

Waanyi writer Alexis Wright is the only author to win the Stella Prize twice - the first time for Tracker and the second time for Praiseworthy.   Alexis is also the author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria  and  The Swan Book , as well as Take Power , an oral history of the Central Land Council; and Grog War , a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory. Alexis was previously the Bois...

Sam Elkin's debut memoir is Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga . Sam’s essays have been published in the Griffith Review ,  Australian Book Review ,  Sydney Review of Books  and  Kill Your Darlings . He co-edited Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia . He hosts the 3rrr radio show  Queer View Mirror  and is a  Tilde Film Festival board member.  About The Garret Follow The...

Laurie Steed is a novelist and short story writer. Greater City Shadows , his short story collection, was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He also published a memoir, Love Dad: Confessions of an Anxious Father , in 2023. His fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in The Age, Meanjin, Overland, Island, Westerly, and elsewhere. About The G...

Kate Larsen is a writer, poet and arts and cultural consultant with more than 25 years’ experience in the non-profit, government and cultural sectors in Australia, Asia and the United Kingdom. She is one of the contributors behind The Relationship Is the Project . Kate is a thought leader in the areas of arts governance and cultural leadership, workplace culture and wellbeing, online communication...

James Bradley is a writer and critic. He has returned to non-fiction with his latest work, Deep Water: The world in the ocean . His previous books include the novels Wrack ,  The Deep Field ,  The Resurrectionist ,  Clade  and  Ghost Species , a book of poetry,  Paper Nautilus , and  The Penguin Book of the Ocean.  His essays and articles have appeared in  The Monthly ,  The Guardian ,  Sydney Rev...

Amanda Lohrey writes fiction and non-fiction. Her latest novel, The Conversion , was released in 2023. Her previous novel, The Labyrinth (2021), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, a Prime Minister’s Literary Award, a Tasmanian Literary Award and the Voss Literary Prize. Amanda is also regular contributor to the Monthly magazine and a former senior fellow of the Australia Council’s Literature B...

Nam Le is one of Australia's foremost poets. His short story collection  The Boat  has been republished as a modern classic and is widely translated, anthologised, and taught.  36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem  is his first poetry collection. Nam has received major awards in America, Europe, and Australia, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize,...

Catriona Menzies-Pike  is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, Canada. Between 2015 and 2023 she was the editor of the online journal of criticism, the  Sydney Review of Books . In this period she also edited four anthologies of Australian critical writing, most recently  Critic Swallows Book . Her newsletter on literature and the internet,  Infra Dig . About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writi...

Sara Saleh i s a writer/poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. In 2023 she published her first novel, ' Songs for the Dead and the Living', as well as her first poetry collection ' The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat' . Sara is the first and only poet to win both the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Her...

Tracey Lien was born and raised in southwestern Sydney and now lives in Brooklyn. All That’s Left Unsaid is her debut novel, and it won the Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction, the MUD Literary Prize, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Novel and the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize. About The Garret Follow The Garret: Writing and Publishing and our host Astrid Edwards on Instagram. Explore our b...

Christos Tsiolkas is one of Australia's most accomplished writers. His latest novel, In-Between, is an exploration of class, family and love in middle age. Christos is the author of eight novels, including Loaded ( which was made into the feature film Head-On)  and the international bestseller  The Slap (which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and longlisted for the Man Booker...

Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai Woman, award-winning author and multidisciplinary artist. Her books include Bindi, Kindred  and  Returning . Her play, Going Home , is in development, as is her first novel, Yaraman . In 2022 she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to the arts. You can read the transcript of this interview here . Kirli has a lso spoken on The Garret before a...

Richard Flanagan is a Tasmania writer. Question 7 , his latest work, was published in 2023 and will no doubt become that rare thing - a commercial bestseller that attracts critical acclaim. His novels Death of a River Guide ,  The Sound of One Hand Clapping ,  Gould’s Book of Fish ,  The Unknown Terrorist ,  Wanting  and  The Narrow Road to the Deep North  have received numerous honours and are pu...

Beejay Silcox is a writer and literary critic. She is the Artistic Director of the Canberra Writers Festival, and in 2023-2-24 the Chair of Judges of The Stella Prize. Her literary criticism and cultural commentary regularly appears in national arts publications, and is increasingly finding an international audience, including in the Times Literary Supplement , The Guardian and The New York Times...

Maxine Beneba Clarke  is the author of the short fiction collection  Foreign Soil,  the memoir  The Hate Race  and the poetry collections  Carrying the World  and  How Decent Folk Behave.  Her children's picture books include the CBCA Honour book  The Patchwork Bike  and the illustrated poem  When We Say Black Lives Matter,  which was longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Her latest poetry coll...

Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in the Adelaide Hills. Her debut novel was the wildly successful The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020), which was based on her original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives and became an international bestseller. The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023) is her second work of historical fiction, and exists in the same world as Th...

Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja writer and educator. Her 2023 memoir We Come With This Place - a book she never intended to publish - won the ALS Gold Medal and four NSW Premier's Awards, and was also listed for many other prizes. An educator, she has worked in teaching and learning for many years – a gift given through the hard work of her parents. She continues to experience the privilege of livi...

Lucy Treloar is a novelist. Her debut, Salt Creek , won the Dobbie Literary Award among others and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UK's Walter Scott Prize. Wolfe Island , her second novel, won the Barbara Jefferis Award and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's and NSW literary awards. Lucy's essays and short fiction have appeared in publications including Meanjin...

Brigid Mullane is a publisher at Ultimo Press, and in this interview she discusses her career and her path into publishing. She was previously Managing Editor at Hachette, Editor of Kill Your Darlings , and Communications Manager at Writers Victoria. She has also worked in a variety of roles at Melbourne Writers Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, Emerging  Writers’ Festival, the Sun Books...

Tony Birch is an activist, historian and essayist. In this interview Tony reflects on his most recent novel, Women and Children. His works include The White Girl ( winner of the 2020 NSW Premier's Award for Indigenous Writing and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Prize), Ghost River ( winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing), and Blood  (shortlis...

Charlotte Wood has won the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Award (as well as many other awards). She is the author of ten books - seven novels and three non-fiction works. Her latest novel is Stone Yard Devotional, which she describes as an 'interior' and 'austere' work, and her most personal work of fiction to date. Charlotte has appeared on The Garret several times before, includi...

Hedley Thomas is a journalist and has won eight Walkley awards, the first for his investigations into the Australian Federal Police investigations of Dr Mohamed Haneef, and the second for the podcast 'The Teacher's Pet'. In 2023 he published 'The Teacher's Pet' the book, and in this episode Hedley takes the reader behind the scenes of the global podcast. You can read the transcript for this interv...

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar and founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne. He is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (2020) and Right Story Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking (2023). His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises. You can...

Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. She writes about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead, and her latest novel is Edenglassie . Her first novel was published in 1997 and since then her work has received acclaim in many literary awards. Killing Darcy  won the Royal Blind Society Award and was shortlisted for an Aurealis award. Her sixth...

Laura Jean McKay is a fiction writer, and her latest work is the short story collection Gunflower . Her previous novel, The Animals in That Country , was awarded the international Arthur C. Clarke Award, as well as the Victorian Prize for Literature and the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year. Laura was awarded the NZSA Waitangi Day Literary Honours in 2022. You can read the transcript fo...