Category: Behind the book

This Remembrance Day, I thought I’d share a few of the things I discovered while researching my novel Where the Line Breaks that I think deserve to be a little better remembered. My initial idea was to write about a real life Australian war poet, romanticising and fictionalising his or her life in a straightforward […]

Best known for her history of the Durack family, Kings in Grass Castles, Dame Mary Durack Miller was a friend and confidante to many celebrated writers, actors and artists, and an active and much leaned-upon president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. Drawing on a great accumulation of firsthand sources, principally her mother’s diaries and […]

Karen Herbert took to the stand on Wednesday 6 October to discuss her debut crime novel, The River Mouth, a small-town noir where long-kept secrets are bubbling up to the surface as part of this year’s A Shot in the Dark series. Karen was quizzed by Jane Seaton of Beaufort Street Books in Perth, with […]

In which, via a series of plot twists and non sequiturs, a prose editor gets around to asking a poetry editor about how and why she does what she does. Metaphors abound.

It’s been ten years since Detective Philip ‘Cato’ Kwong was introduced to the world. He was in his thirties then; the classical piano playing, cryptic crossword solving, stubborn obsessive was badly in need of redemption in both his career and his marriage. We first met him in Prime Cut, persona non grata, exiled to Stock […]

Fans of camembert and crime were treated to a criminally good talk when Sally Scott shared her cheese recommendations and talked about her debut cosy crime novel, Fromage, with Fiona Hardy from Readings Books in Melbourne on Wednesday 8 September.

Lawyer and debut author, Lisa Ellery, was taken to the witness stand on Wednesday 18 August to be questioned about her crime novel, Private Prosecution, by Fiona Stager from Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane in the second A Shot in the Dark event of the year.

In his new memoir Second Innings: On Men, Mental Health and Cricket Barry Nicholls says, ‘Life is like facing an opening bowler: the pitch is unknown, the ball is new and you don’t know what will be delivered.’ He describes the book as a story about his passion for cricket and how the friendships formed […]

In early 2018, I decided to shake up my travel writing career by setting out on a huge journey by rail around Australia, from Far North Queensland to south-west Western Australia. It was a vast undertaking, involving seven long-distance trains (with an eighth as an epilogue), at various levels of comfort, along with side-trips in […]

My novel, The Night Village, begins with my shell-shocked main character, Simone, sitting in a London maternity ward holding a newborn baby and wondering exactly how she’s landed there. The next day she returns to her boyfriend Paul’s apartment and is plunged into her new life as a mother. A few weeks later, Paul’s cousin […]

Alex Forrest’s Idle Torque: stories for classic car enthusiasts is for anyone who likes their yarns to smell like hot engine oil and roll like greased lightning. We chatted to Alex about the best bits.

Debut author, Zoe Deleuil, had hearts racing as she talked about her novel, The Night Village, with Dani Vee from Words and Nerds podcast in the first A Shot in The Dark event of the year on Wednesday 28 July.

Written while travelling the globe over five years, Locust Summer was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award (2017) and was developed through a fellowship at Varuna, the National Writers’ House. In this blog post, David Allan-Petale invites you along for the journey.

Hassan Al Nawwab was born in Iraq in 1960 and came to Australia in 2003 with his wife and children. He is a poet and journalist who has published three volumes of poetry and two plays in Arabic, and has received numerous awards for his poems.

Vociferate | 詠 is Western Australian writer Emily Sun’s debut poetry collection. Alice Pung has described the book as ‘polemical, personal and political’ – in it, Emily meditates upon a range of issues that have shaped her world. Emily was born in British colonial Hong Kong to stateless diasporic-Chinese parents, who are descendants of Chinese […]

David Price says when we hold strong views about a subject, we often do not like to listen to contrary ones. He says, ‘In fact, we live in a time when we are able to exclusively access – mainly online – only the information and opinions that suit our own view of the world. In […]

Described as ‘thoughtful’, ‘delightfully subversive’ and ‘tenderly insightful’, The Little Boat on Trusting Lane by Mel Hall is a novel about how human connection, community and friendship have the potential to heal. In this piece, she describes how the Perth writing community helped her bring her debut novel into being.

One of the questions I get asked about my picture books is ‘Why are they about animals?’ The automatic response for me would be ‘Because I love animals’, but the truth is a little more complex.

Michael Burrows, author of Where the Line Breaks, sends a letter home from the muddy trenches of writing and editing a debut novel, in the style of the extraordinary letters sent home by the first Anzacs.

A Year of Loving Kindness and Other Essays by Brigid Lowry is a beautifully presented and uplifting book of contemplative, wry, sometimes funny essays about living thoughtfully and with care amid life’s challenges. In this article, Brigid shares her winding path to becoming the warm, wise and witty writer she is today.

Young-adult writer Mark Smith says Lines to the Horizon: Australian Surf Writing will appeal as much to non-surfers as surfers. Mark is one of six writers featured in Fremantle Press’s new collection of narrative non-fiction pieces, a book that covers thousands of kilometres of coastline and delves into the deep, reverential relationship many Australians have […]

Michael Burrows, author of Where the Line Breaks, sends a letter home from the muddy trenches of writing and editing a debut novel, in the style of the extraordinary letters sent home by the first Anzacs.

A few short weeks after the release of her first novel, Eye of a Rook, Josephine Taylor paused to reflect on her path to publication.

Susan Midalia is an author, freelance editor, mentor and workshop facilitator with a new novel, Everyday Madness, out this month. In this article she shares what she’s learned from her publication experiences. If you’re a writer yourself, make sure you read her tips at the end of the article.