New Zealand writer Emily Perkins got her start with the short story collection

Not Her Real Name,

but has since turned to the novel. Her third, much praised novel,

Novel About My Wife,

is a psychological thriller about a husband trying to piece together the shadowy identity of his mysterious wife, Ann, in the aftermath of her death. He reconstructs the last year of her life: a year in which Tom lost his job, their first mortgage loomed large, and…

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Award-winning author/illustrator Terry Denton had been successfully working in children’s books for over a decade already when he was first teamed with Andy Griffiths, to illustrate an educational textbook Andy had written. It was the beginning of a beautiful partnership. Terry is a prolific writer and illustrator, creator of the

Splash!

and

Wombat and Fox

series, illustrator of the

Maxx Rumble

series, and much more. Jo Case spoke to him about his creative partnership with Andy Griffiths (the

Just

series,

…

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Melbourne GP Jacinta Halloran was shortlisted for the 2007 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for an earlier version of her first novel,

Dissection,

which is being launched this month by Helen Garner. That’s two pretty auspicious ways to kick off a writing career. Georgia Blain spoke to Jacinta for the latest in Readings series of Australian Features showcasing new and emerging writers, sponsored by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL).

Each of us has a carefully constructed sense of…

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Claire Thomas has published short stories in various journals, including

Meanjin

and

Overland.

She has worked at a variety of jobs, including acting and bookselling, and is currently doing a PhD at the University of Melbourne. This month, she publishes her first novel,

Fugitive Blue.

She spoke to Jo Case for Readings.

What was the inspiration for this book?

The idea for Fugitive Blue came to me many years ago during an art history lecture about Renaissance artist materials when…

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Richard Moore is the Director of the Melbourne Film Festival, which begins its 2008 season on 25 July. Jo Case spoke to him on the eve of the festival’s opening about the new programming strands, this year’s focus on Australian film, the best of the political documentaries and films with a literary connection.

What are some of the main drawcards of this year’s Melbourne Film Festival?

Well, when you ask a festival director that you’re always going to open a…

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Melbourne-based writer and editor Dmetri Kakmi revisits the Turkish island of his birth and the events that drove his Greek family to migrate to Australia in his haunting first book, the memoir Mother Land. In the latest in Readings’ series spotlighting new and emerging writers (sponsored by the Copyright Agency Limited), renowned writer Arnold Zable reflects on the book and talks to Dmetri Kakmi.

Dmetri Kakmi’s Mother Land is a haunting account of the author’s childhood on an Aegean island…

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Chloe Hooper won a Walkley (2006) for her writing on Palm Island – and in particular, the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee and its charged aftermath. Her first non-fiction book,

The Tall Man

is an extended meditation on the case – and a stunning work of reportage, reminiscent of Helen Garner and Truman Capote.

You describe feeling ‘incandescently white’ when you first arrive on Palm Island. Did that feeling recede with time, or was it always with you? How…

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Australian writer Debra Adelaide landed a whopping $1 million advance for her much-anticipated novel,

The Household Guide to Dying.

Jo Case spoke to her for Readings on the eve of its publication.

This has been touted as your ‘breakthrough novel’. With ten books behind you, including two novels, does this feel strange?

Not really. I wrote this novel for myself, so while on the one hand it’s a great surprise to see so much fuss, on the other I feel…

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Canadian journalist Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, is in Melbourne for the 2008 Alfred Deakin Lecture Series, ‘From DNA to Deep Space’. He will give a lecture based on his innovative new book – a positive look at solving the problems of climate change – on Wednesday 4 June at 6pm. Jo Case spoke to him in Melbourne for Readings.

How can the power of the market be harnessed to…

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Arnold Zable is one of Australia’s most accomplished storytellers. His lyrical novels explore the experience of migration, and his latest,

Sea of Many Returns,

is set between the island of Ithaca and his home city of Melbourne. Mark Rubbo spoke to him for Readings.

Sea of Many Returns

Ithaca is where my partner Dora’s family comes from, and I have been a regular visitor since 1987. I first travelled in Greece in 1973 and felt an immediate affinity with the…

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Brooklyn-based, Russian born Anya Ulinich takes a sharp, blackly comic look at post-Cold War Siberia and twenty-first century America in her first novel,

Petropolis,

exploring migration, motherhood and identity along the way. Jo Case spoke to her for Readings.

Sasha is, in some ways, an unlikely heroine: chubby, awkward, not especially good at anything. What was the inspiration for her character?

Sasha is maybe an unlikely heroine, but she is a typical human being – aren’t most of us not…

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[[Lee]]

Melbourne-born writer Nam Le is causing an international sensation with his first book, The Boat, attracting a rave review from The New York Times star reviewer Michikio Kakutani, using words like ‘astonishing’, ‘powerful and remarkable’. In the latest of Readings’ series of features spotlighting new and emerging Australian writers (sponsored by the Copyright Agency Limited), fellow short story writer Cate Kennedy talks to Nam Le.

Nam Le’s ambitious debut collection, The Boat, is made up of seven stories…

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Tim Winton is one of Australia’s best-loved writers, both in Australia and overseas. His new novel is Breath. Mark Rubbo spoke to him about the book for Readings.

This is your first novel for seven years, when did you start working on it?

It was probably about a year after The Turning was published. I was working on another novel altogether but got a little side-tracked. Breath was a bit of an accident, I suppose.

Breath

Yeah, the manner of…

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[[bob:wide]]Bob Carr is best known as a former Premier of NSW – but it’s also well known that he’s an avid reader and a bit of a history buff. In his new book, My Reading Life, he takes us on an idiosyncratic, hugely enjoyable tour of his favourite books. Jo Case spoke to him for Readings.

What was the first book you really loved?

A small novelised treatment of Peter Pan, a present when I was five or…

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[[stu:wide]]Kathleen Stewart has been writing and publishing, both novels and poetry, since she was 21. Her memoir, The After Life, has already gained rapturous accolades from fellow writers Luke Davies (Candy) and Susan Johnson (The Broken Book). Acclaimed writer Kate Holden, author of the bestselling memoir In My Skin, spoke to Kathleen Stewart for Readings’ series celebrating Australian writing (sponsored by the Copyright Agency Limited) about the process of laying herself bare – and the freedom it gives…

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The title of the book is

I guess I imagined feeling more grown up and wise somehow. I imagined being an excellent mother and a better daughter. I imagined having a career that made some kind of sense and I imagined being with a man whom I loved and who loved me back. I imagined being a good feminist. Nothing ever works out like we planned.

You write very candidly about your family and your ex-husband (also your shared parenting…

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I liked the waythat you used a novel to explore the work of a biography writer. What inspired you to do that?

Biographers have always been detectives who use their forensic skills to dissect and analyse the lives of their subjects. But these days, biographers have assumed formidable powers. The public expects revelations, a life between and under the covers, with no holds barred, and a subject with secrets is vulnerable as never before. I am interested in the potential…

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Renovating your much-neglected house works as a metaphor for rebuilding your life after you lost John – both attending to the things you weren’t able to pay attention to when he was ill and finding a way to rebuild while still holding on to your memories. What made you decide to merge these two things in the book?

The book became possible only after I noticed the metaphorical parallels between my home renovation and my grieving. Before then I kept…

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Tony Jones, the much-loved anchor of ABC TV’s

Lateline,

is at the helm of MUP’s new book,

Best Political Writing 2008

, the first in a planned series. Jo Case spoke to him about the process of selecting the year’s best political writing, and the transition from screen to print.

What was it that appealed to you about working on this book?

If I was a footy player, I’d describe it as off-season training. Instead of sitting at the beach…

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Ian McEwan, author of Atonement, Saturday and, most recently, the Booker shortlisted On Chesil Beach was one of the most popular drawcards of last month’s Adelaide Writers’ Week.

Before a weekday crowd of almost 2000 people, McEwan read from his work-in-progress, a novel about climate change. He told the audience that he figured that ‘the way to write about climate change is to write about a deeply flawed person’. The deeply flawed person at the centre of the book is…

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[[garner3:wide]]

Helen Garner is one of Australia’s best-recognised (and bestselling) writers. Though she first burst onto the scene with her debut novel Monkey Grip , in recent years she has been best known for her controversial – and undeniably fascinating – non-fiction books, The First Stone and Joe Cinque’s Consolation. The latest in Readings series celebrating Australian writers, sponsored by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), looks at Helen Garner’s return to fiction – albeit in a book that appears to…

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Don Watson is one of Readings’ best-loved (and bestselling) authors, with titles like

Recollections of a Bleeding Heart

and

Death Sentence

.

For his latest book,

American Journeys,

he spent some months travelling around America, mostly by train, recording what he saw and heard. Mark Rubbo spoke to him about the book. Jo Case occasionally butted in with a question of her own.

American Journeys

Thank you. The process was – as usual – persistence fed by fear of failure…

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American-born literary critic Kevin Rabalais moved to Australia to write his first novel,

The Landscape of Desire

,

a book that uses the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition to explore love and identity, desire and death, against the backdrop of the Australian outback. At the core of the novel, both Burke and Wills are driven by their separate passions for the same young Sydney actress, who anxiously awaits their return back on the coast.

The Landscape of Desire

has already…

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Eli Gottlieb’s new literary thriller, Now You See Him, is being touted as the next big literary success – by the publishing industry, booksellers across the US (his publishers were so confident people would love it that 7,500 advance copies were distributed) and, on the front cover, author Ann Patchett. Jo Case spoke to him about the book, writing and literary success.

What was the germ of inspiration for

I’m a character-based writer, so the characters came first. The germ…

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Brooklyn-based novelist Siri Hustvedt is best known as the author of the mega-bestselling

What I Loved

.

This month she is in Australia (with husband Paul Auster) to promote her latest novel,

The Sorrows of an American

, *her first since she moved from cult success to major literary star.

What was the genesis of

Before my father died, I was thinking about writing a novel that in some way dealt with my father’s childhood in the Norwegian American immigrant…

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Steve Toltz’s first novel,

A Fraction of the Whole,

is a rollicking Australian satire. He’s on his way to becoming Australian publishing’s Next Big Thing. Judith Loriente spoke to him for Readings as he toured the US to promote the novel.

I understand you’re a screenwriter. What made you decide to write a novel? Did you have a story you felt was more suited to that format?

The reports that I am a screenwriter have been greatly exaggerated. In my…

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Addition

. Since then, Text has sold rights into North America, the UK, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Israel and the Czech Republic. It’s not all that surprising, then, that she has a contagious I-can-hardly-believe-my-luck kind of look on her face.

But Jordan’s journey is about more than luck; she has managed to incorporate a quirky main character into a narrative like those she admires – ‘easy to read, but well written’. Addition is the story of Grace, a…

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All your novels are quite different from each other. In

I began with an American who arrives in south-east Queensland on the run. He thinks he has come to the end of the earth. He has no idea where he really is. This was the starting point. It came from real life but not even that small germ survives in the final novel. For a start, the man has become a woman and is now on the run from something…

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Catherine O’Flynn has won widespread recognition for her first novel

I love your central character of Kate Meaney, the decidedly quirky ten-year-old detective who avoids loneliness by creating her own world. How did you come up with her?

I think sometimes in literature, and certainly in the media, children are treated just as ciphers, symbols of innocence or victims. I really wanted to make Kate a three dimensional character that readers might relate to as much, if not more, than…

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[[Mungo]] Mungo MacCallum is one of Australia’s longest-serving political commentators (40 years and counting), as well as one of its wittiest and most passionate. He is one of the hardy souls to have written and published a book about the 2007 election at lightning speed: Poll Dancing (Black Inc., PB, $24.95). Readings spoke to him about the campaign, the result and the book.

What made you decide to write a book about this particular election? Were you confident that there…

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In many of your novels you seem to have been drawn to political intrigue; where does this fascination come from?

I’m not in fact attracted to political intrigue as such. Some of my novels - including the current one - might best be described as historical novels. But with the exception of Out of Ireland, their historical periods are very recent. I do this because I like to have the personal issues confronting my characters taking place against a…

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Local footy and racing columnist John Harms of the 3RRR Breakfasters’ ‘Help Me Harmsy’ segment talks about The Footy Almanac 2007 which he put together with Paul Daffey.

1. What gave you the idea for

Paul Daffey and I were wondering why there wasn’t a book which gave an entertaining account of every AFL game, with the scores and traditional match details, written by people who know and love the game. So we published one ourselves.

2. What makes this…

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Maggie’s Harvest

Tell us about your new book.

My new book continues to surprise me. I hadn’t realised I had written such a tome and it’s a very beautiful cover; design and every single detail is more beautiful than I could have imagined. I began simply updating Maggie’s Farm and Maggie’s Orchard which in itself was fascinating given the huge changes over the past 14 or 15 years but then there was so much more to say that of course…

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Alan Hollinghurst was awarded the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty, his deliciously witty dissection of Thatcher’s Britain. Nick Guest is drawn into the glittering world of the conservative, moneyed social circuit as he boards with the family of a Thatcher government minister during the 1980s. As the 1980s reach the heights of excess, so does Nick, inevitably coming to a crashing conclusion.

Readings were fortunate enough to host Alan in conversation with Australian Book Review‘s…

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We recently caught up with renowned cultural commentator and LaTrobe University academic Dennis Altman to talk about his new book, Gore Vidal’s America.

What do you find most interesting about Gore Vidal?

His versatility: here is a man who wrote one of the more successful novels of World War II (Williwaw), and 60 years later was appearing in films like Gattaca. In-between he ran for Congress, wrote plays, film scripts and essays - and major historical…

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This month Readings spoke to author, broadcaster and leading public intellectual David Marr about his new Quarterly Essay, QE26 His Master’s Voice: The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard.

What prompted you to write this essay?

Years of worry about creeping censorship and thuggish political debate in this country.

What do you think is more disturbing about Howard’s Australia: the suppression of debate and dissent or the lack of concern displayed about this by most Australians?

Hard to disentangle…

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Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin, a searingly honest and wonderfully written account of a life on the streets, on drugs and on the skids.

What made you decide to write so frankly about your experiences as a heroin addict and a prostitute?

I was aware of the amazing opportunity I was experiencing, in terms of working in a brothel and meeting people in a uniquely intimate way; it seemed like a gold mine for a…

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Lee Stringer was surreptitiously living in the office of the street newspaper he edited when he was offered his first publishing contract. He had been homeless and addicted to crack for the past 12 years. His first book, Grand Central Winter, a memoir of life on the streets, transformed him into a literary sensation - but more importantly, it provided the final impetus for him to break his drug addiction.

Stringer visited the Sydney Writer’s Festival in May to…

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Australian success story Geraldine Brooks first hit the bestseller lists nearly 15 years ago with her first book Nine Parts of Desire, an intriguing exploration of the everyday lives and experiences of Arab women in the countries she covered as a foreign correspondent for ABC. Next came her autobiography, appropriately titled Foreign Correspondent. In 2002, Brooks caused a new literary sensation with her first novel, Year of Wonders, a historical fiction set in England during the Plague…

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It’s nothing new for Readings to host an audience with a best-selling author, but it’s rare that we have the honour of hosting a certified genius. Jared Diamond’s career was kick-started with the receipt of a ten-year ‘genius grant’ in 1985, providing him with the impetus to write his first book, The Third Chimpanzee.

Since then, he has been dubbed ‘the rock star of the science world’, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs and Steel, his groundbreaking…

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