First Word

It was an enormous privilege to have Adam Thompson, author of the incredible short story collection Born Into This, join me for the last episode of this season of the podcast. We caught up over Zoom to talk about creating and experiencing joy in fiction, writing in service of your community, and what happens when you stay open to opportunity. Adam mentions Nathan Maynard’s play T

The delightful Mirandi Riwoe, author of the short story collection The Burnished Sun, as well as the novels Stone Sky Gold Mountain and Sunbirds, talked with me over Zoom about her meticulous planning processes and how to mine history for the seeds of short stories. Mirandi points to Maxine Beneba Clarke’s short story collection Foreign Soil as the book that showed her she could

Multi-award-winning Queensland short story writer Laura Elvery and I caught up over Zoom to talk about her astonishing record of sweeping story prizes – as well as what it's like to write about women winning prizes of another kind. In this episode we talk about several writing awards, some of which are now defunct. The ones you can still enter (depending on your location) ar

Fiction, comedy and TV writer Jack Vening is a funny bloke. We caught up over Zoom to talk about George Saunders, writing humour, and how to elegantly devastate your readers. In the course of our conversation Jacky mentions several authors he draws inspiration from, including Garielle Lutz, Donald Barthelme, Joy Williams and Benjamin Weissman. He recommends the episode featuring Ro

Ben Walter is a Tasmanian author of fiction, essays, poetry and experimental prose, whose writing has recently appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Saturday Paper and Griffith Review. His most recent book is the short story collection What Fear Was. We caught up at his home in the Huon Valley to talk about sources of inspiration, and following your nose into your prose. The stori

Author, essayist and academic Ellena Savage and I caught up over Zoom to talk about sources of inspiration, discipline, waking up in the middle of the night/the very early morning to write, and our mutual desire to throw our devices off tall buildings. The podcast that I mention in this episode where Ellena talks about writing forms is actually not the magnificent ‘Take Home Read

Brisbane writer Yen-Rong Wong and I caught up over Zoom to talk about how and why to write about race and identity, addressing your younger self with your creative practice, and her idiosyncratic writing and editing style. I highly recommend checking out Yen-Rong’s curated selection of her writing here - it deals with growing up, race, culture, parents, and sexuality, in a really

Melbourne author Sam van Zweden and I caught up over Zoom to talk about revisiting memory, writing mental health, the importance of having a dedicated “input day”, and how to turn a mango into a memoir. The books that Sam recommends in this episode are The Writing Life by Annie Dillard and Intimations by Zadie Smith (which is a book of essays Smith wrote and published during th

Award-winning Tasmanian novelist and all-round good bloke Robbie Arnott and I sat down together in Craig Farrell’s office studio in New Norfolk to talk about knowing what you want to say before you say it, editing hacks (drink the revolting tea), writing masculinity and resisting publishing trends that you know will be bad for you. Robbie’s essays that I mention in this episode

In the first episode of First Word's first season (!) Tasmanian novelist Erin Hortle and I sat down together to get really in-depth about the practical process of writing and editing (hot tip: have a clean room!), the shifting landscape of feminist literature, surfing, Tim Winton, and the sometimes indistinct line between writing fiction and writing nonfiction. The ABC convers