Fremantle Press author heads to NYU

Nadine Browne, co-author of The Whip Hand, has secured a two-year scholarship to attend the New York University Graduate Writing Program. Browne said she would be working on her next novel, which was about a young Western Australian man leaving a closed Christian community.

‘I’ll be doing a Master of Fine Arts in fiction and I’m really excited by the faculty I’ll be learning from,’ said Browne. ‘I’m enrolled in classes with Joyce Carol Oates and Jonathan Safran Foer: I’ve been a long-time reader and fan of both of them so that’s going to be pretty great!’

Browne said she thought living in New York City would be intense but creatively stimulating, ‘bumping up’ against so many people, cultures, languages and milieus. But with just four days between arriving and starting classes, accommodation was going to be a challenge.

‘I’m slightly panicked about this. It’s notoriously difficult to get decent, cheap accommodation in New York. I’m looking at Brooklyn and Harlem,’ said Browne.

And her first stop after the university?

‘The Strand Bookstore! It’s a block from the university. “18 Miles of Books” is their motto. Sounds overwhelming, I might end up sleeping there … could possibly solve my accommodation worries,’ said Browne.

Mihaela Nicolescu and Nadine Browne have been described as the ‘Thelma and Louise of piercing insights’. They are the co-authors of The Whip Hand, one book with two collections of short stories about people living on the edge. The Whip Hand is available in all good bookstores.