Byron WF Digital | Byron Writers Festival

Sarah Armstrong interviews Kathryn Heyman about her memoir Fury. They unpack questions around the writing process: What stories do we choose to tell and why? When is the right time to write about personal or traumatic events? Kathryn also talks about her early writing life, the books that inspired her, gender politics and the reverberations of the #metoo movement.

About Fury
At the age of twenty, after a traumatic sexual assault trial, Kathryn Heyman ran away from her life and became a deckhand on a fishing trawler in the Timor Sea.

After one wild season on board the Ocean Thief, the only girl among tough working men, facing storms, treachery and harder physical labour than she had ever known, Heyman was transformed.

A roadmap of recovery and transformation, this is the story of becoming heroic in a culture which doesn’t see heroism in the shape of a girl.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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Fury is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Kathryn Heyman

Dr Kathryn Heyman is an award-winning writer. She was awarded the prestigious CAL Author Fellowship for Fury, a memoir of recovery and transformation.

Sarah Armstrong

Sarah Armstrong was a journalist at the ABC. She has written three novels for adults and her first novel for readers aged 8 – 12 will be published next year.

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The exchange of stories and ideas sustains us in challenging times. Now more than ever we are relying on your support to help us continue celebrating Australian stories and literature, enhancing the skills of local writers, and nurturing the next generation of readers and writers. As a not-for-profit organisation run with a small team of staff and volunteers, contributions of any size go a long way in enriching the creative culture of our community. Amounts over $2 are tax deductible. Thank you.

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Produced in collaboration with Griffith Review, Sarah Sentilles talks with Ashley Hay about her latest works. They discuss her essay, ‘Creation Stories’, from Griffith Review 73: Hey, Utopia! as well as Sarah’s new memoir Stranger Care.

In this insightful discussion, Ashley and Sarah discuss many topics, including the collision between bureaucracy and love, the nature of creativity and the ability of art to change the way we see the world.

Stranger Care is the moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn — about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love and protect people beyond our immediate kin. Stranger Care is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

‘Creation Stories’ is an essay about the world-making power of art. Published in Griffith Review 73: Hey Utopia!, available to purchase online here.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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About the authors

Sarah Sentilles

Sarah Sentilles is the author of five books, including Draw Your Weapons and Stranger Care. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Divinity School, she lives in Idaho’s Wood River Valley.

Ashley Hay

Ashley Hay is an award-winning novelist and essayist and the editor of Griffith Review.

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Nicole Abadee talks with Kavita Bedford about her book Friends and Dark Shapes. They discuss the contours of contemporary life in the city, from insecure employment and housing, to second-generation identity, waves of migration, online dating and social alienation.

About the book

A group of friends moves into a share house in Redfern. They are all on the cusp of thirty and big life changes. Friends & Dark Shapes is a novel of love and loss, of constancy and change. Most of all, it is about looking for connection in an estranged world.

Friends & Dark Shapes is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Kavita Bedford

Kavita Bedford is an Australian-Indian writer with a background in journalism, anthropology and literature. Friends & Dark Shapes is Kavita’s debut novel.

Nicole Abadee

Nicole Abadee writes about books for Good Weekend, has a literary podcast, Books, Books, Books, and appears regularly as a moderator at writers’ festivals.

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In this Byron Writers Festival X BooksBooksBooks podcast collaboration, Pip Williams talks with Nicole Abadee about her novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words. They discuss the history of the Oxford English Dictionary, and how the exclusion of particular words inspired Williams’ sweeping story of Esme as she sets about collecting the discarded vernacular of the English lexicon.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape our experience of the world.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

Purchase the Book

The Dictionary of Lost Words is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Pip Williams

Pip was born in London, grew up in Sydney and now calls the Adelaide Hills home. She is co-author of the book Time Bomb: Work Rest and Play in Australia Today (New South Press, 2012) and in 2017 she wrote One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life, which was published by Affirm Press to wide acclaim. Pip has also published travel articles, book reviews, flash fiction and poetry. In her debut novel The Dictionary of Lost Words she combines her talent for historical research with beautiful storytelling. Pip has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary and found a tale of missing words and the lives of women lived between the lines.

Nicole Abadee

Nicole Abadee writes about books for Good Weekend, has a literary podcast, Books, Books, Books, and appears regularly as a moderator at writers’ festivals.

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Chris Raja talks with Sunil Badami about his insightful and moving memoir, Into The Suburbs. They discuss the roles of truth and fiction in memoir, as well as family, migration, homelands and identity.

Exploring topical issues of race, class and migration, Into the Suburbs is an affecting portrait of one family’s search for home.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

Purchase the Book

Into the Suburbs is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Chris Raja

Chris Raja is a writer and the 2021 UTS Copyright Agency New Writer’s Fellow. His most recent work is a memoir –Into the Suburbs: A Migrant’s Story.

Sunil Badami

Sunil Badami is a writer and broadcaster, who’s written for most major Australian publications and appears regularly on ABC radio and TV.

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Fiona Murphy kept her deafness a secret for over twenty-five years. After an accident to her hand, she discovered that sign language could change her life, and that Deaf culture could be part of her identity. In this podcast she talks with Caroline Baum about her memoir The Shape of Sound, and her journey from a position of shame to one of pride as she navigated the world of d/Deafness and disability.

Blending memoir with observations on the healthcare industry, The Shape of Sound is a story about the corrosive power of secrets, stigma and shame, and how deaf experiences and disability are shaped by economics, social policy, medicine and societal expectations.

Transcript available here.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

Purchase the Book

The Shape of Sound is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Fiona Murphy

Fiona Murphy is a Deaf poet and essayist. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Griffith Review and the Big Issue, among other publications. Her memoir is The Shape of Sound.

Caroline Baum

Journalist Caroline Baum is the author of Only: A Singular Memoir, and presents Life Sentences, a podcast about contemporary biography. She is also ambassador for the Older Women’s Network (OWN) in NSW.

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Tristan Bancks, longtime Byron Writers Festival supporter and Room to Read ambassador, chairs a discussion with Sisonke Msimang, Jennie Orchard and Alice Pung about their contributions to the anthology The Gifts of Reading, including the books they all love to give.

The Gifts of Reading is an anthology of essays about the joys of reading and of giving books, from some of the world’s most beloved writers, inspired by Robert Macfarlane, curated by Jennie Orchard, and published on the 20th anniversary of the global literacy non-profit Room to Read.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

Purchase the Book

The Gifts of Reading is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Tristan Bancks

Tristan Bancks is a children’s and teens author. His books include Two Wolves, The Fall, Detention, Tom Weekly and Nit Boy. His latest book is Ginger Meggs.

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer living in Perth. She is the author of a memoir, Always Another Country, and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela.

Jennie Orchard

Jennie Orchard has worked in publishing and the non-profit sector. Her latest book The Gifts of Reading celebrates the 20th anniversary of global literacy non-profit, Room to Read.

Alice Pung

Alice Pung is an Australian writer whose award-winning books include Unpolished Gem, Laurinda and Her Father’s Daughter. Her latest book is One Hundred Days.

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Sophie Hardcastle talks with Emily Brugman about their novel Below Deck. They discuss writing techniques and processes, as well as the characters and themes of the book, including sexual violence, trauma, nature and renewal.

Below Deck is a heartbreakingly poetic and haunting story about the vagaries of consent, about who has the space to speak and who is believed.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

Purchase the Book

Below Deck is available to purchase online via The Book Room Collective.

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About the authors

Sophie Hardcastle

Sophie Hardcastle is an author, artist, screenwriter and former Provost’s Scholar at the University of Oxford. Below Deck is their latest book.

Emily Brugman

Emily Brugman is a writer from the New South Wales south coast. She currently lives in Mullumbimby and works at Byron Writers Festival. Her novel, The Islands, was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, and will be published by Allen & Unwin in 2022.

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Described as a spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark and tender book, full of pathos, fury and wit, Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss has received wide critical acclaim. In this podcast, Sarah Kanowski from Radio National’s Conversations talks with Meg about her unforgettable characters, the interplay between humour and suffering, and about her gentle rendering of mental illness.

Thanks to Delta Kay, Arakwal Bundjalung woman, for the Welcome to Country on this podcast.

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About the authors

Meg Mason

Meg Mason began her career at the Financial Times and The Times of London. Her work has since appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sunday Telegraph. She has written humour for Sunday STYLE, The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts and a monthly column for GQ and been a regular contributor to Vogue, ELLE and marie claire.

Her first novel You Be Mother (HarperCollins) was published in 2017. Her second, Sorrow and Bliss (HarperCollins) was first published in Australia in 2020, and the US and UK in 2021. The actress Emilia Fox narrated the audiobook. Now a bestseller in Australia, it has now sold in more than 20 countries and will be published in 16 languages. It has been longlisted for the ABIA Literary Fiction book of the year, chosen as the GOOP book club read in March 2021, and been optioned for screen by the US studio, New Regency, producer of Oscar-winning films including Little Women, 12 Years a Slave and Birdman.

She lives in Sydney, with her husband and two daughters. sea.

Sarah Kanowski

Sarah Kanowski Sarah co-presents Conversations on ABC Radio and podcast. She previously presented Books and Arts on ABC RN and joined the ABC as a producer on Late Night Live.

Sarah won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study English at the University of Oxford, where she wrote a thesis on the Mosley family. She then spent a year in South America before settling back in Australia. In Hobart she edited the literary magazine Island, until sun and family beckoned her back to Brisbane where she now lives with her husband, three children, and three chooks.

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Join celebrated Australian storyteller Jock Serong and acclaimed writer Mirandi Riwoe for a lively discussion about Jock’s new novel The Burning Island, recorded live at Lennox Head Cultural Centre, in collaboration with Lennox Arts Board (LAB).

Irresistible prose, unforgettable characters and magnificent, epic storytelling: The Burning Island delivers everything readers have come to expect from Jock Serong. It may be his most moving, compelling novel yet.

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About the authors

Jock Serong

Jock Serong was once a criminal lawyer. He’s since been the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly, and a regular writer in the surfing media and more generally in publications such as The Monthly, The Guardian, the SMH and the Australian Financial Review. His first novel, Quota, appeared in 2014, and since then his work has been awarded the Colin Roderick Prize, the Staunch Prize and an ACWA Ned Kelly. His current book, The Burning Island, is the second novel of a trilogy about the early history of Bass Strait’s Furneaux Islands. He’s in the late stages of a Creative Writing PhD based around his first historical novel, Preservation. More than anything, he likes to write about the sea.

Mirandi Riwoe

Mirandi Riwoe is the author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which won the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction and the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize. Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella V and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies (QUT).

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