Award-Winning Josh Kemp Sheds Light on Australian Gothic at Emerging Writers Festival 2024
Award-winning Josh Kemp Sheds Light on Australian Gothic at Emerging Writers Festival 2024
Josh Kemp’s debut novel, Banjawarn, won the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award, the 2022 Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Prize for Best Emerging Writer. His sophomore novel, Jasper Cliff, was shortlisted for the Fogarty Literary Award for best WA writer under 35. Now this talented young writer is set to appear at the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne this September.
Jasper Cliff is set in the East Pilbara (a place rarely featured in Australian literature), and it leans into the realm of gothic horror to explore the effects of ongoing colonisation on the landscape and community. The setting for the book came when a research trip north went awry and Josh found himself in Marble Bar with a broken-down vehicle and nobody to fix it. Josh said, ‘The idea for Jasper Cliff came from spending a lot of time researching frontier history in the Battye Library. I would often read about the horrors of colonisation for other creative projects, and during this process discovered how history can be twisted or altered by unscrupulous writers.’
Josh has a PhD in Australian Gothic fiction. He said ‘Australian gothic is an incredibly diverse mode of fiction that emerged during the earliest days of the colony … These stories often explore the legacy and trauma of colonisation on both individuals and the landscape.’
Josh will be at The Wheeler Centre on Saturday 7 September at noon for a panel on world-building. Details for this panel can be founder here. Then join Josh at The Moat to talk about Jasper Cliff and the gothic genre on Monday 9 September at 6.30 pm. Details for this panel can be found here.
Tickets to each panel and workshop operate on a ‘pay what you wish’ model to allow low-income earners the opportunity to attend the festival for an affordable price. See the full festival lineup, and find out where to register your tickets here.
