Category: Behind the book

Children’s publisher Cate Sutherland says she loves the way Cristy Burne’s Into the Blue combines a snorkelling adventure with real-life conundrums that kids face every day. We asked Cristy to share more about the book’s themes and her writing process. Tell us about your latest book and why you wrote it. My latest book is Into the Blue […]

How to Avoid a Happy Life is Julia Lawrinson’s story of a messy family legacy and a lifetime of extraordinary events that have to be read to be believed. Publisher Georgia Richter says, ‘Julia’s writerly superpowers of observation and analysis, along with a robust sense of humour, allow her to survive and then write about […]

Anatomy of a Secret by Gerard McCann was shortlisted for the 2022 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award. Publisher Georgia Richter says, ‘Gerard McCann’s memoir documents the experiences of a Catholic boy who was just one of scores of young boys sexually assaulted by convicted paedophile Leo Leunig in Perth in the 1960s. Despite the confronting […]

Back when If I should lose you was first published, Natasha said, ‘My mother will assure you that I am in no way artistic – although my children very kindly tell me that I do beautiful drawings! I love art though and there is nothing better than a quiet walk through a gallery looking at pieces […]

In Death Leaves the Station we were introduced to a nameless mendicant monk who helped solve a baffling crime in Western Australia’s Outback. Now the monk’s road leads him to the wheatbelt where despised landholder Fred O’Donnell is discovered with a fatal bullet wound, all by himself in a locked room. It’s a classic plot handled […]

Tim Minchin has called The Players ambitious and moving, Bem Le Hunte says it is enticing, and Melinda Harvey says it is funny and wise. But long before she found herself garnering praise, Deborah Pike was dreaming of a cast of characters whose passion and rivalry would bind them across time and continents. In this interview […]

With her prize money, Fogarty Literary Award winner Brooke Dunnell travelled to Eastern Europe to research her second novel, Last Best Chance. Just as her debut, The Glass House, was a work of exquisite tension and ambiguity, Brooke says she wanted Last Best Chance to embrace uncertainty, with characters dealing with multiple moral complexities and who struggle […]

Ever wondered what makes an idea good or bad? Sally Tinker, the world’s foremost inventor under the age of twelve, asks author and illustrator James Foley just what is the big idea?

Wayne Bergmann has spent decades fighting for the rights of Traditional Owners – a job that often puts him in the firing line. So what was it like to reflect back on the entirety of his life – from his childhood to today? To write his story, Wayne called on award-winning novelist and longtime colleague […]

Crow Baby is a story that will capture the imagination of both young and older readers, inspiring them to embrace their unique gifts. Here’s Helen Milroy to tell you more about it.

Author Karen Herbert is here to ‘bang the drum about the bigger issues’. In her acerbic new crime novel, Vertigo, she confronts the issue of homelessness, a topic she talks about with great passion.

Karen Herbert’s latest crime novel Vertigo is part political thriller, part social commentary and wholly entertaining. In this interview she takes us into the themes of her work. The themes in this book are social and political ones. Why did you choose to focus on homelessness and disadvantage? Homelessness is one of the major factors […]

David Whish-Wilson’s I Am Already Dead is a gripping and high-paced noir novel, and book two in the Lee Southern crime series, that will keep fans of True West on the edge of their seat. In this interview he describes the inspiration behind his work. Where did the idea for this this novel come from?  […]

You can listen to Molly Schmidt discuss her debut coming-of-age novel, Salt River Road, with fellow Australian author Nilima Rao, on her book A Disappearance in Fiji, and British literary darling, Zadie Smith, on her latest novel The Fraud. Listen to Molly on ABC Listen: The Book Show.

An article by Brooke Dunnell, author of The Glass House. Before my trip, everyone who hears that I’m going to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands is thrilled and mildly jealous. They google the overseas territory and gasp at images of clean white sand, a tranquil blue-green lagoon and dense queues of coconut palms. In July and […]

An article by Dave Warner, author of Summer Of Blood. In Summer Of Blood, I tried to make each chapter heading a classic 1967 song that might be reflective of what was happening in the text. This wasn’t always possible, but some tracks dovetailed neatly.

An article by Emma Young I am not a moral authority. But I am trying to do something moral, something better.   That is: give fifty percent of my royalties from my new novel, The Disorganisation of Celia Stone, to Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE).  This is an Australian think tank that provides large-scale solutions for switching […]

Chemutai Glasheen is a teacher and a sessional academic at Curtin University. She writes fiction for young people and her work is influenced by her upbringing in Africa and the duality of growing up between two different cultures. In this piece Chemutai shares the behind-the-scenes of her first book I am the Mau and Other […]

In The Brothers Wolfe, Elliot is the ambitious brother living for the best deals. Athol is the younger brother looking for his independence. Both have a foot in the family menswear business and their eye on a sexy French woman. It’s the perfect formula for financial ruin and a great read. We asked Steve Hawke […]

In her latest memoir, Unheard Voices, Dawn Mauldon set out to challenge how voices of displacement, diversity and personal histories influence expectations and outcomes. The author shares her unique and deeply personal perspective on being the child of Deaf parents and what it means to see and communicate in a rich and diverse language world. […]

The Map of William was the unintended outcome of a general curiosity about my own family history. As I became embroiled in the past lives of my forebears, my curiosity soon turned to something else. Not quite an obsession, but close. It became a search for details and evidence—the gathering of little snippets of information […]

Laurie Steed is a writer living and working in the Wadjak region on the traditional lands of the Noongar people. He is the author of You Belong Here and recipient of the 2021 Henry Handel Richardson flagship fellowship. His short story anthology Greater City Shadows was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an […]

Meet Emma Young, a former bookseller turned journalist and novelist, and her novel The Disorganisation of Celia Stone. The Disorganisation of Celia Stone is an engaging snapshot of the contemporary experience familiar to many women managing anxiety and unrealistic expectations. It follows Celia Stone, the ultimate hyper-organised, journal-obsessed thirty-something with a life that is perfectly […]

I’ve long been a fan of a series of articles called ‘How I Get It Done’, where impressive people with seemingly unlimited abilities (and resources) detail how they go about their day-to-day lives. Often this involves waking up at times that, until I had a baby, I thought were hypothetical numbers, pure maths proofs. Since […]