Host Evelyn Araluen at the Wheeler Centre

First Nations writers are at the forefront of the most exciting writing being produced on this continent today, subverting creative forms and decolonising Australian literature.

In this event, four emerging First Nations writers from The Next Chapter writers’ scheme – Jasmin McGaughey, Racheal Oak Butler, Lorna Munro and Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi – discuss the creative process, writing for Blak and settler readerships, and how they respond to expectations of genre, character and identity, with host Evelyn Araluen.

Presented in partnership with the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

This event was originally scheduled to take place at the 2020 Sydney Writers' Festival.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work. Find it on the Wheeler Centre podcast.

In this episode we’re talking to Sean O’Beirne about his debut short story collection, A Couple of Things Before the End. 

A bitingly satirical collection, A Couple of Things Before the End employs a remarkable range of voices to explore suburban end times.  

'What happens if you give a very white, very male, very working class people sort of a whole country… you know, the idea of Australia as the working man’s paradise, or the lucky country, … [what are] the strangenesses and the distortions that can go along with that? … And if you can’t participate... you’ve gotta have a kind of argument to have with the country and what the hell you’re going to be able to do here.'

Sean was programmed to appear in our Next Big Thing: Australiana Edition, which was unfortunately cancelled as part of our preventative measures to stem the spread of coronavirus COVID-19.

A Couple of Things Before the End is out now through Back Inc.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work. Find it on the Wheeler Centre podcast.

In this episode we’re talking to Kirsten Alexander about her debut novel, Riptides. 

Set in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland during a time of tremendous social upheaval, Riptides is a gripping family drama about dreams, choices and consequences.

'In some ways I thought it's not a straight line ever from the past to the present… I think our country is still evolving, we're still coming into our own being, and I think we still have a lot to learn about how to treat one another and the space we’re in. But some of the lessons we learnt in the past we just throw away very easily. I'm not sure if other countries do that, but Australia certainly seems to struggle to learn from our past.'

Kirsten was programmed to appear in our Next Big Thing: Australiana Edition, which was unfortunately cancelled as part of our preventative measures to stem the spread of coronavirus COVID-19.

Riptides is out now through Penguin Random House.

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work. Find it on the Wheeler Centre podcast.

In this episode we’re talking to Wayne Marshall about his debut short story collection, Shirl. 

A daringly experimental collection, Shirl plays with white Australian masculinity, especially in suburban and rural contexts, in ways that are fantastical, absurd and comic.

'The collection is quite nostalgic, I guess. I started writing it... from a cancer diagnosis. But also, three months before that [happened], I’d become a father for the first time, so I was really looking back at the kind of world that I grew up in. And it was that crazy, strange, over-the-top Australiana. There’s something absurd about it that has always caught my eye.'

Wayne was programmed to appear in our Next Big Thing: Australiana Edition, which was unfortunately cancelled as part of our preventative measures to stem the spread of coronavirus COVID-19.

Shirl is out now through Affirm Press.

 

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work. Find it on the Wheeler Centre podcast.

For the first batch of episodes, we’ve partnered with our friends at the Emerging Writers’ Festival to spotlight four brilliant new voices from around Australia writing across fiction, memoir and poetry. 

In this episode we’re talking to Prithvi Varatharajan about his debut collection, Entries. Entries playfully explores form, using a combination of poetry and prose to consider memory and experience. 

'The writing … arose from states of joy, anguish, ambivalence and contemplation. The poems come from a period of ten years, while other poetic, essayistic and diaristic pieces were produced with intensity over a shorter duration.'

Entries is out now through Cordite Books.