The Garret: Writing & Publishing

Jane Harrison, a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW, is a playwright, novelist, and the Festival Director of Blak & Bright, the First Nations Literary Festival based in Melbourne.

Her novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis won the 2014 Black&Write! Prize, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minster’s Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Awards.

In terms of her works for the stage, Stolen, her first play, was the co-winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award and has been performed throughout Australia as well as the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan. She has also written The Visitors, Rainbow’s End, On A Park Bench and Blakvelvet.

About The Garret

Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com soon. The interview was recorded by Zoom, and we can't wait to start recording in person again soon.

You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bri Lee is a writer and editor with a career to watch. Her first book, Eggshell Skull, was published in 2018. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in non-fiction, winning the 2019 People's Choice Award, and also won the 2018 People's Choice at the Nib Awards for research in writing, and the 2019 ABIA for Biography of the Year. Eggshell Skull was also shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and longlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize. Her second work, Beauty, is a meditation on beauty and body image. It was published in 2019, and will be followed by Brains in 2020. Bri was the Founding Editor of the quarterly print periodical Hot Chicks with Big Brains, commissioning and publishing diverse non-fiction about women and their work from 2015 to 2018. Bri's shorter pieces have been published in The Monthly, Harper's Bazaar Australia, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The Guardian, Griffith Review, i-D, VAULT Art Magazine, and elsewhere. She regularly appears on The Drum on ABC TV, various ABC Radio National programs, and often gives talks on writing, law, feminism, fashion, pop culture, and art. In 2016 Bri was the recipient of the inaugural Kat Muscat Fellowship, and in 2017 was one of Griffith Review's Queensland writing fellows. She has received numerous other fellowships, residencies, and mentorships, most recently the 2018 Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award at the Queensland Literary Awards. About The Garret Read transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating non-fiction interviews of the year: #1 is Richard Fidler. This episode, 'Back in Time', was recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Sunday 27 October 2019. It features Richard Fidler in conversation with Astrid Edwards. Richard Fidler is taking his gift for storytelling back in time. He has traipsed through Istanbul uncovering legendary Constantinople with his son, and journeyed to the sites of the beautiful and bloody Icelandic sagas with his friend Kári Gíslason. Now he takes the UWRF stage to talk about his love of history and travel, and the stories where the two meet. Richard Fidler is a writer and radio host. He’s the author of the bestselling books Ghost Empire, a history of the legendary city of Constantinople, and Saga Land, a journey into the sagas of Iceland, co-written with Kári Gíslason. Richard is also the presenter of Conversations on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio, Australia’s most popular podcast. Richard and Astrid have since spoken again, and you can listen to their discussion recorded at during Melbourne's lockdown in 2020 here. About The Garret You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To celebrate the end of 2019, we've re-released our highest rating non-fiction interviews of the year: #3 is Kate Richards. Kate Richards is a memoirist, poet and most recently, a novelist.  Her first work, 2013's Madness: A Memoir, received the Adelaide Festival's Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards. Kate followed that stunning debut with 2014's Is There No Place For Me: Making Sense of Madness, which was shortlisted for the Human Rights Award.  In 2019 Kate moved from non-fiction to the world of fiction with her first novel, Fusion. Her work goes where few writers have ever gone. It is profound and honest, and represents not only a contribution to Australian literature, but a contribution to literature on mental health and identify. This episode comes with a content warning, as Kate's memoir and our discussion of it touches on trauma and mental illness. Related episodes: Sam Twyford-Moore, mentioned in this interview, spoke to The Garret about writing mania and chronic ill health. Fiona Wright, whose creative non-fiction works explore chronic ill health, also spoke about writing one's own story and how to represent illness on the page. About The Garret You can read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Facebook, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.