First-time author Foz Meadows talks to us about her new Young Adult book

Solace and Grief

,

why vampires are just so hot right now and why she will never forget her 16-year-old self.

So, tell us what your book is about.

Solace & Grief is about Solace Morgan, a teenage girl raised in foster care doing her level best to conceal the fact that she’s a vampire. After encountering a faceless man, Solace runs away and finds herself in…

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This is shaping up to be another big year for short stories – and the pre-publication hype around Andrew Porter’s silkily elegant, delicately barbed short stories in

The Theory of Light and Matter

recalls that around Wells Tower’s

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

in 2009. Jo Case – one of the many new fans of this award-winning writer – interviewed him for Readings.

In your title story, the narrator concludes that: ‘guilt, like any self-inflicted injury, becomes a permanent thing, as…

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Patrick Ness won the 2008 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize with his first book for teenagers The Knife Of Never Letting Go - the first in the Chaos Walking trilogy. The sequel The Ask and the Answer came out last year and won the 2009 Costa Children’s Book Award. The third and final book in the series Monsters of Men is out in May 2010.

Andrew McDonald spoke to Patrick Ness with ‘Asks and Answers’ about the Chaos Walking trilogy…

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Closets Are For Clothes: A History Of Gay Australia

The publisher Black Dog Books approached me. I think they had been trying to get this idea off the ground for a couple of years. It was of definite interest to me as I had worked in queer media for a long time and I had also studied gay and lesbian history as part of my cultural studies degree. It was also of interest as while there has been a number…

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Tom Rachman’s debut novel The Imperfectionists is a sharply observed, beautifully characterised look at the employees of an international newspaper based in Rome.

You have worked at various newspapers, including as a foreign correspondent in Rome and as an editor at the

Using what I’d observed during my years in journalism, I sought to invent a realistic paper and to offer a peek into the workings of the international media – the flavour of a newsroom, the ambitions of reporters…

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Garry Disher is one of Australia’s most popular crime writers, most notably over the past several years with his Challis and Destry series, set on the Mornington Peninsula. In Wyatt he returns to ‘old-style hold-up man’ Wyatt, last revisited 13 years ago, in response to popular demand – and it’s a beauty.

The Wyatt series is told from the point of view of a criminal who the reader can’t help but root for. This type of book seems to be…

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David Carlin’s extraordinary memoir,

Sensitivity towards your family’s feelings – particularly your mother’s – was obviously a factor in writing this investigation into the life and death of your father, who killed himself when you were six months old. How did you deal with this?

The idea that this was something that shouldn’t be talked about was obviously seared very deeply in my mind, and, I believe, in that of my siblings too. This is discussed in the book. It…

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Kirsten Tranter’s first novel, The Legacy, a genre-mixing post-9/11 mystery, is among the most eagerly anticipated debuts of 2009.

The structure, characters and situations in

I’ve always been drawn to literature that responds to other works of art, other literature; that reshapes stories or tells them from different perspectives. I have been fascinated by Portrait ever since I read it as an undergraduate at Sydney Uni. It was presented to me by my eccentric and brilliant tutor at the…

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Jo Case interviews Charlotte Wood about her cracking new anthology

Brothers and Sisters

.

The stories in

It was initially my publisher’s idea – Jane Palfreyman’s – to commission entirely new stories, and as soon as she said it, the whole project became much more exciting. Somehow, the writers agreeing to write to a theme injected the anthology with an element of risk, and therefore of energy, that I don’t think it would have had otherwise. There was always the…

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Jo Case interviews Rachel Cusk, the acclaimed author of

Arlington Park

,

about her follow-up novel

,

The Bradshaw Variations

.

Your previous novel,

Arlington Park was conceived as a political novel: I always felt that the suburb was merely one of several possible representations of these politics. But it was a world I knew well at the time, a world built around the early phases of family life, in which there are strong - perhaps irresistible - urges to…

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Alex Miller is one of Australia’s most respected – and widely read – literary writers. He has won multiple awards, attracted critical acclaim, and many of his novels have been bestsellers. Crikey literary blogger Angela Meyer is well known for her passionate fandom when it comes to Miller’s work. When it came time for Readings to find an interviewer to highlight Alex’s ninth novel, Lovesong, as part of our New Australian Writing feature series, we thought it would be…

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Jo Case interviews Tony Birch about his new short story collection, Father’s Day.

The stories in your first (interlinked) collection,

The stories in Father’s Day are not autobiographical, in the sense of drawing on my own experience and memories too strongly, although the story ‘The Chocolate Empire’ is a notable exception. It is closely based on being stuck in the famous Melbourne flood of 1971 after having wagged school for the day. I put myself in one of the…

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Anna Goldsworthy has been a freelance writer and literary critic for years – but her passion has always been the piano, and her career as a concert pianist. In her exquisite debut memoir,

Piano Lessons

she combines her talents for writing and music, writing about her long and passionate love affair with the piano and her special relationship with her gifted and dedicated teacher. Award-winning Australian novelist Andrea Goldsmith spoke to Anna about

Piano Lessons

for Readings’ New Australian Writing…

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Andrew McGahan is one of Australia’s most respected – and diverse – writers. Each of his novels is very different from the last (with the obvious exception of

1988,

the prequel to his first novel

, Praise).

His works include ‘grunge’ novels

Praise

and

1988

;

the political crime novel

Last Drinks

,

set in post-Fitzgerald Inquiry Queensland; political satire

Underground

;

and the Miles Franklin Award-winning meditation on land, belonging and possession

,

The White Earth

.

Now, he…

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Sue Saliba is the winner of this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards Prize for Young Adult Fiction with her highly original novel Something In the World Called Love.

Something In The World Called Love

I can relate to aspects of each but as an entire character, it’sEsma I most relate to. It’s Esma who embodies and explores manyautobiographical aspects of my life; most particularly, a near-desperatesearching for a way to feel more alive in the world.As a younger person…

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Cate Kennedy is well known as one of Australia’s leading literary figures ‒ and our local master of the short story form. This month, she makes her novelistic debut. Multi-award-winning Australian novelist Gail Jones spoke to Cate about The World Beneath for Readings’ New Australian Writing Feature series.

Somewhat mischievously, the writer William Faulkner once suggested that most novelists are really failed poets: they try poetry, are miserably defeated, then stretch lazily into prose, haunted by the lost poetic of…

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I absolutely adored every page of

Beatle Meets Destiny,

a quirky and very Melbourne-ish boy-meets-girl story. So I was very happy to get the chance to speak to author Gabrielle Williams, who is just as funny in an interview, as she is in her book.

I really enjoyed reading a book set in the Melbourne I know. Did you know from the start that the book had to be set in Melbourne? And on a related note, do you think…

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The novel has a strong sense of place, particularly in evoking the natural environment and characters of East Gippsland, a part of the world that is obviously close to your heart. What does it mean to Jim Bloke? Do you have a favourite spot you’ve recreated in the novel?

Jim likes beauty. Having spent so much time in institutions he has made it a mission to be immersed in beauty and peace. Like many dreams it’s abraded by reality but…

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Kalinda Ashton’s debut novel is already attracting an impressive roll-call of accolades from writers like Christos Tsiolkas and Amanda Lohrey – and our Readings interviewer. Kalinda’s short stories have been published in various publications, including the Sleepers Almanacs. She is currently associate editor of

Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Game is a confronting and poignant novel. This quietly brutal début introduces a vigorous, assured voice into the contemporary literary sphere. With discreet pathos, The Danger Game examines the prevailing institutions of…

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The Sleepers Almanac

, in

Best Australian Storie*s three years in a row, and broadcast on ABC Radio National. This interlinked collection, *

is his debut full-length publication.

What Came Between

I’m pleased you found that the form of What Came Between works. Discovering that form was really an organic process, driven in part by my love of short stories, but equally by the desire to revisit these characters at different points in their lives, just to check in on…

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How did the idea for

When the idea for some books hits, you just know they should exist. Lit Melbourne was one of those. When I began curating the exhibition The Independent Type I was searching for it and was really surprised that it hadn’t been put together. I found one (by John Arnold) that brought together writing about Melbourne, but there wasn’t one that brought together some of our best writers over 170+ years. With regards to what readers…

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Your inquiry into the subject of killing obviously began as a personal curiosity, spawned by the grisly discovery of a souvenired soldier’s head from Gallipoli and the questions that sparked about the nature of violence. When did you realise it would become a book?

Originally, I wanted to do a whole project about the mummified skull from Gallipoli. It was such a shocking artefact – not simply because it was a bullet-ridden body part, taken from the trenches, but because…

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M.J. Hyland was born in London, spent her early childhood in Dublin, and her adolescence and early adulthood in Australia. Hyland now lives in England, where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at Manchester University. Her literary career began in Australia, with her promising 2003 debut,

How The Light Gets In

.

It was followed by the astonishing, Booker-shortlisted

Carry Me Down

for The Age in 2006, spoke to M.J. Hyland about her latest book,

This is How

…

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Not many first-time novelists can boast a Nobel Prize winner as a mentor. But then again, Patrick Allington – who was mentored by J.M. Coetzee in the early stages of writing Figurehead – has not written your average debut novel. Instead of the fairly routine practice of drawing on life experience for his first outing, this writer has drawn on history, creating what he calls ‘an absurdist version’.

Figurehead

‘I was interested in the passage of time and the way…

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Your novel has drawn comparisons to

*

Not directly, though I have read On the Road and Lolita (when I was around Lolita’s age). It didn’t occur to me until I finished writing and starting pitching The Ice Age to publishers that I’d written a sort of reverse Lolita.

The narrator, an adolescent precariously treading the line between childhood and adulthood, offers a unique perspective on the adult world she observes, her distance alternately gifting her with knowing and…

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Brian Castro is one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed novelists – our very own ‘writer’s writer’. He was joint winner of the Australian/Vogel Award in 1983 for his first novel,

Giramondo publisher Ivor Indyk interviews his author about his latest novel,

Brian Castro was one of the reasons I started publishing books in 2002. I found it hard to believe, as a critic and a lecturer on Australian literature, that a novel like Shanghai Dancing couldn’t find a publisher in…

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Many of the stories in this collection have been previously published (in journals like

I’d always hoped that I might persuade someone to publish the stories between a single set of covers, but I can’t say that I set out to write a cohesive book. Really, these were the first nine stories I wrote (over the course of eight years or so) that didn’t give me the horrors when I reread them after the final revision. That it seems to…

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ALP true believer, playwright, screenwriter, some-time political staffer and long-time author Bob Ellis is a much-loved figure on Australia’s literary landscape. Jo Case spoke to him about his latest book

, And So It Went,

for Readings

.

In And So It Went

It’s accurate. Like most writers and many, many politicians I live in fear and dread of the day that I am ‘found out’.

You’ve been critiquing the Howard government in print for some years. At one stage…

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Leanne Hall talks to Richard Harland, author of the fantastic ‘steampunk’ fantasy novel Worldshaker which has just been sold to a major US publisher. How could you resist reading a book that Richard himself describes as ‘Charles Dickens on steroids’?

You’ve been a writer for a long time, and had many books published, mostly in the sci-fi and fantasy genre. However

I think it took so long because it was always special. I was determined to get everything absolutely, totally…

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Reunion

The ideas always come first for me. I have a very low tolerance to boredom, and a few juicy ideas will hold my interest through the long years of writing a novel. The nature of enduring friendship, obsessive love, a passion for work which is blindly irresistible, the seesaw of risk/certainty which is rarely balanced in a fully lived life, these were the ideas that fuelled Reunion. They also provided hugely fertile ground for creating characters.

As you…

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Craig Silvey started his career with a bang with his first novel, Rhubarb. Seven years later, his new nove*l, Jasper Jones, *has the literary world abuzz. Tony Birch spoke to him for Readings for our New Australian Writing Feature Series.

Craig Silvey’s first novel, Rhubarb, was published to critical acclaim in 2004. The excitement surrounding the book’s release quickly spread from his home state, Western Australia, to the eastern seaboard. The reception and following success of Rhubarb…

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Jo Case interviews Deborah Forster about her first novel The Book of Emmett.

Emmett, the abusive father whose shadow looms large over the book and the lives of all his family, is a wonderfully complex character. He is ‘a monster’, but his frequent rages and bouts of madness are interspersed with glimpses of humanity – moments that, viewed in isolation, make him charismatic and even loving. The juxtaposition of the two Emmetts is heartbreaking. How did you go about…

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Steven Carroll is the reigning Miles Franklin winner for

The Time We Have Taken

,

the last in his trilogy about the evolution of one family alongside that of a Melbourne suburb. In

The Lost Life

,

he heads in a new and unexpected direction – exploring an episode in the life of poet T.S. Eliot, and the ‘special friendship’ he attempted to rekindle with childhood sweetheart Emily Hale in his unhappily married middle-age. Juxtaposed with their relationship is that…

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Maggie Joel’s dark, deliciously funny novel The Past And Other Lies marks the debut of Sydney publisher Pier 9’s fiction list. It’s a page-turner with a host of hidden revelations, set over three generations of one ordinary London family. Jo Case spoke to her for Readings.

The Past and Other Lies

What came first was the opening scene – the suicide attempt. Out of this came the family and out of the family came some rather strange and mysterious stories…

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Tracy Crisp is a stand-up comedian, librarian, blogger – and now, a first-time novelist. Jo Case spoke to her for Readings about her debut novel, Black Dust Dancing.

The story at the heart of the book is the discovery that the industry that this small-town community rely on could be making its children sick, and the reaction of various town inhabitants to the idea. What interested you about that story? What kind of research did you have to do to…

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Steven Amsterdam’s first novel,

He thought it would be a brief fling. But once he got started, Steven Amsterdam couldn’t stop. He read about it in the newspaper. An elderly couple in the first stages of dementia – and on the verge of losing their drivers’ licences – had set off on one last adventure. ‘I imagined the no-win endgame for them as they tried to run,’ Amsterdam says. ‘And then I remember thinking: I hope someone bought the film…

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Eva Hornung is the award-winning author of several previous novels under the name Eva Sallis, including the Vogel-winning Hiam, The City of Sealions, Fire Fire and Marsh Birds. In her latest book, Dog Boy, she explores the notion of the child raised by beasts, in a modern setting. Jo Case spoke to her for Readings.

The story of the child raised by beasts is a recurring one in literature. What drew you to tell your own…

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Sonia Orchard’s extraordinary first novel

, The Virtuoso,

draws on the life of Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood. Jacinta Halloran, whose debut novel

Dissection

was featured by Readings (and launched by Helen Garner!) in 2008, spoke to Sonia for Readings’ series on new and emerging Australian authors.

On 5 December 1953, at the height of his fame, the virtuoso Australian pianist, Noel Mewton-Wood, wrote 43 pages of notes to his friends, then mixed himself a cocktail of gin and hydrogen cyanide…

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Jo Case interview Sonya Hartnett about her latest novel Butterfly.

Butterfly

Of course a writer, when writing about a particular phase of life, draws on aspects of their own experience of that time – it lends authenticity, and besides that I doubt it would be possible to avoid doing so to some degree. Writing the book, I thought a lot about how the worst days of my teenagehood actually felt – the loneliness and the anger and frustration. In…

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Catherine Deveny, like her Age colleague Michael Leunig, is a Melbourne icon, loved (and sometimes loathed) for consistently calling it as she sees it in her columns on television and on the opinion pages. Jo Case talked to her about her new collection of her best writing over the past year or so, Say When.

What is your favourite article in

Like all mothers, we pretend that we don’t have favourites but we do. Actually every night before my…

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The critics are already whispering excitedly about Christos Tsiolkas’s latest novel,

The Slap

,

a forensic examination of the Australian suburban family and contemporary debates about morality and raising children. Belinda Monypenny and Jo Case spoke to Christos for Readings on the eve of its release.

What was your inspiration for writing such a grounded, earthy novel in a domestic, suburban setting after the globetrotting sprawl of

Dead Europe was a very difficult novel to write. It took time for…

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Vivienne Kelly’s first novel,

Cooee,

takes the reader into the world of thoroughly unreliable narrator Isobel and her fractured family. Isobel pines for her second husband, the charismatic Max, moons over her beloved granddaughter Sophie and distant son Dominic, and views the rest of her clan (placid daughter Kate, mild-mannered ex-husband Steve, bossy big sister Zoe) with withering distaste. Toni Jordan, the first author to be featured in our Readings series on new and emerging Australian authors (sponsored by CAL)…

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John Birmingham has done it all. Between his chronicle of the horrors and hilarities of share-house life in

He Died with a Felafel in His Hand,

exposing Sydney’s sordid underbelly in Leviathan, and charting the history of Australia’s relationship with Indonesia in his

Quarterly Essay,

there’s no doubting the man’s versatility. His latest venture is& Without Warning, &a return to speculative fiction in a similar vein to his

Axis of Time World War II

trilogy. On the eve of the…

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Gary Bryson’s first novel,

Turtle,

explores a dysfunctional Glasgow family and the nature of familial love, with the help of a talking turtle. Readings spoke to Gary for our series on new and emerging Australian authors, sponsored by CAL.

Gary Bryson began broadcasting radio dramas out of his Glasgow bedroom window at the age of twelve. At the same time, he was a voracious reader and prolific writer of stories, regularly publishing short fiction in his school magazine. When he…

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Kate Grenville was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for her last novel,

The Secret River,

a fictional exploration of early, fraught relations between the English colonists and the original inhabitants of Australia. In

The Lieutenant,

she revisits this territory. Mark Rubbo spoke to her for Readings on the eve of its publication.

A reviewer of

I hope there’s lots to ponder over politically in the stories I tell, but that’s not primarily why I write them. The driving passion behind…

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Robert Drewe is among Australia’s most loved writers – of novels, memoir and short stories. His iconic Australian books include

The Shark Net, The Bodysurfers

and

Our Sunshine.

He is also editor of Black Inc.’s Best Australian Stories annual series. Recently, he has revisited the short story himself, with a masterful new collection,

The Rip.

Jo Case spoke to him for Readings about storytelling.

You write across a range of forms: short stories, novels, memoir. Do you have a favourite?…

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Brooklyn-based writer and poet Sarah Manguso developed a rare neurological disease aged just 21; a disease that paralysed her for weeks at a time throughout her twenties. Annie Condon spoke to her for Readings about her memoir on this experience,

The Two Kinds of Decay.

This memoir is beautifully written. What were the main differences for you in writing a memoir as opposed to your poetry and short stories?

Thank you. Some people ask me why I stopped writing poetry…

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Melbourne University philosopher Damon Young got people talking with a recent

Age

article on children and creativity. His first book,

Distraction,

is popular philosophy at its best – vibrantly relevant to everyday lives, without being at all dumbed-down. Maria Tumarkin spoke to Damon for Readings’ series on new and emerging Australian authors, sponsored by CAL.

There they were in a noisy café – the philosopher and the publisher – throwing around possible ideas for a book. Only, the philosopher was…

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Mark Davis was the talk of the literary town with his bestselling debut

Gangland.

Now, with his much-awaited follow-up book,

The Land of Plenty,

he argues that the Australian dream has been forsaken. If we’re so prosperous, why are we working harder and longer, for so little, while important social agendas have fallen by the wayside? Jo Case spoke to him for Readings on the eve of its publication.

You were inspired to write this book by the example of…

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Phenomenally popular children’s writer Andy Griffiths is the author of the

Just

series,

The Day My Bum Went Psycho, The Bad Book,

and most recently,

The Big Fat Cow that Went Kapow!

and the

Schooling Around series.

Andy will be appearing at the 2008

I read that you got the idea for the

This was around about 1995, 1996, when I was trying to figure out how to make a really compelling book with a voice that would really speak…

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