The Secret Life of Writers by Tablo

Latest Episodes:

Penny Hueston on the art of translation, her life in publishing and making a book sing. Nov 11, 2020

Show notes

Penny Hueston is the co-owner with Michael Heyward of Text Publishing, one of Australia’s great independent houses. Text publishes some of the world’s most loved writers including Helen Garner, Graeme Simsion, Elena Ferrante and J.M. Coetzee. They’ve done a lot for Australian writing in general, championing books internationally and their Text Classics series has brought back many important Australian books into print, including those by Elizabeth Harrower. Penny herself is an incredibly skilled editor and translator. Her translations are by authors such as Nobel prize-winning Patrick Modiano, Sarah Cohen-Scali, Emmanuelle Pagano and Marie Darrieussecq. She’s translated six books of Marie’s including Being Here: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker for which she just received the 2020 Medal for Excellence in Translation.

Jane Harper on becoming a bestselling novelist, how to get readers hooked and the stories behind her novels and new book The Survivors. Oct 28, 2020

Show notes

Jane Harper is one of the rare authors whose books are so successful that they’ve carved out a whole new genre – it’s called Outback or Rural Noir, and it has taken the world by storm. Jane is the author of international bestsellers The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man and the new book that’s recently come out called The Survivors which sold an extraordinary 20,000 copies in the first week it was released in Australia, immediately going to no. #1 on the bestseller lists. Jane does many things to weave her particular magic. She captures the hostility as well as the beauty of the Australian landscape, and she writes characters you’re invested in, with pacey stories you can’t put down. Her books have been published in over 40 territories and have won numerous awards including the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, The Sunday Times Crime book of the year, Amazon’s Best Mystery and Thriller Novel - the list goes on. The film adaptation of The Dry, made by Reese Witherspoon and her production company, will be released next year.

Emily St John Mandel on the writing life, imagining a flu pandemic in Station Eleven vs the reality, The Glass Hotel and finding moral grey areas Oct 14, 2020

Show notes

Emily St John Mandel grew up in Canada and now lives in New York. She has written various prize-winning books including The Singer’s Gun that won the 2014 Prix Mystère de la Critique in France and Station Eleven, which one reviewer likened to ‘Cormac McCarthy seesawing with Joan Didion’. It’s a story that moves between the night a particular strain of flu starts spreading like wildfire and the future 20 years later following a band of itinerant musicians and Shakespearean actors. It won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award and The Toronto Book Award and is of course even more prescient now than when it came out in 2014. Emily’s brilliant new novel, The Glass Hotel, is as The Guardian said ‘a portrait of everyday obliviousness … a tale of Ponzi schemes, not pestilence’. The thing about this novel and all of Emily’s books really is that they’re not just absorbing stories that are beautifully written – there’s also so many big hearty ideas within them, and musings about humanity, about who we are in the dark and about our dreams and the ghosts that haunt us. And all of this makes her books resonate long after you’ve put them down.

Alison Bell on writing and acting for TV, the joys of collaborating, her Netflix hit ‘The Letdown’ and what’s coming next Sep 30, 2020

Show notes

Alison Bell is the co-creator, co-writer, producer and star of the award-winning ABC and Netflix series 'The Letdown'. It explores the early years of motherhood in a way that’s honest and moving as well as very funny - there’s the mothers’ group, the sleep training, the non-existent sex life and much more. Like the best writing, there’s something universal, in which we can recognise our own experience. Alison and her co-writer Sarah Scheller won an AACTA Award for Best Television Screenplay, and for Best Comedy Program for both seasons one and two, and Alison herself won the AACTA award for best comedy performer for season two. Before 'The Letdown' Alison performed in various stage productions and television shows. You might have seen her in the series 'Laid', 'The Leftovers', 'No Activity' and Steven Spielberg’s 'Amazing Stories'. Alison has also worked as a script editor and screenwriter for production companies such as Revolver and Madman. And she’s got lots of exciting projects coming up which you’ll hear about here.

Inua Ellams on poetry as freedom, theatre for the human spirit, the oral storytelling tradition in Nigeria and themes of immigration, displacement and destiny Sep 16, 2020

Show notes

Inua Ellams is many things – he’s a poet, playwright, a creator of community, graphic artist and designer. He’s moved, entertained and challenged audiences around the world, on stages from Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Sydney Opera House to the Glastonbury Festival. Inua is an ambassador for the Ministry of Stories, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has published various prize-winning books of poetry. His most recent book is ‘The Half-God of Rainfall’ that ‘The Guardian’ described as ‘a playful, epic contemporary retooling of Greek mythology…a story of feuding gods and journeys to the edge of the universe’. As with his poetry, his plays have been critically acclaimed. ‘The Barber Shop Chronicles’ for example, sold out two runs at The National Theatre and was recently one of the special selection of works live streamed and made accessible for a period during the pandemic. Inua is also the founder of Midnight Run, a nocturnal urban excursion. He’s undertaken several commissions, for places like the Tate Modern, Soho Theatre and the BBC and he also runs a R.A.P. Party for poets to read work inspired by hip-hop.

Inua’s new book of poetry is called ‘The Actual’, and as Bernardine Evaristo said 'This is what poetry looks like when you have nothing to lose, when you speak from the heart, when you have spent years honing your craft so that you can be free. This is what poetry looks like when you are a word sorcerer, a linguistic swordsman, a metaphor-dazzler, a passionate creator of poetry as fire, as lament, as beauty, as reflection, as argument, as home. I was blown away by this book'.

www.inuaellams.com

Listen to the audio documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000m5lt

Sylvia Whitman on running Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, the famous history, how books get you through testing times and the joys of matchmaking people and books. Sep 02, 2020

Show notes

Featuring: the beauty and mysticism of Paris, witnessing the fire at Notre Dame, what Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier did for France and publishing, the illustrious writers who’ve been associated with the shop, Sylvia's father George Whitman, taking in strangers and the tumbleweed tradition, the man who stayed seven years in the rare books room, buying book collections across Paris, finding an unpublished novel by Gregory Corso stuffed behind the loo, wonderful reading recommendations and a poem in the morning like a shot of espresso. Sylvia Whitman started running the iconic Parisian bookshop Shakespeare and Company in 2004 when she was 23 years old and now co-manages it with her partner David Delannet. She took up the reins from her father, George Whitman, who founded the bookshop in 1951. Sylvia breathed freshness, energy and new life into the shop while also continuing its most loved traditions such as having writers, called tumbleweeds sleeping amongst the shelves. She’s had many creative ventures over the years – she’s launched a festival, opened a café, grown the bookshop and created a contest for unpublished novellas – but the beating heart of everything is, of course, the beautiful bookshop itself. Since it first opened it has been a haven for everyone who’s walked through its doors. There’s been many descriptions of it over the years: Henry Miller called it ‘a wonderland of books’, James Baldwin described it as ‘The old curiosity shop’ and Anaïs Nin wrote it was ‘a house of gentle warmth, with walls of books and tea ceremonies’.

Daniel Morden on why ancient myths are still relevant today, 30 years as a traditional storyteller and the sleeping giants beneath Wales Aug 20, 2020

Show notes

Featuring: when stories shapeshift, separation of the beloved, the Cassandra myth in #metoo, performance as a test of character and ecstatic poetry. Daniel Morden is one of the world’s most popular tellers of traditional stories. He’s been telling stories to adults and children for over thirty years, in venues great and small from palaces to prisons, from The National Theatre, to the Barbican and Broadway. Daniel’s repertoire ranges from fairytales and myths of love and loss to classics like 'The Odyssey'. He’s written or co-written eleven books, and is also part of a longstanding storytelling and musical collaboration called 'The Devil’s Violin'. Daniel has been awarded the Hay Festival medal and a Welsh Books Council award and is currently a visiting fellow at the University of South Wales. As BBC radio has said ‘To experience Daniel Morden in full flight is an amazing thing’.

Pip Williams on The Dictionary of Lost Words, a room of one’s own and searching for a life worth living Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

Featuring: the history of language, living in Italy, getting published for the first time, the role of mentors, and the joy of writing 'The Dictionary of Lost Words'. Pip Williams was born in the UK, grew up in Sydney and now calls the Adelaide Hills home. She has written the memoir 'One Italian Summer' and 'The Dictionary of Lost Words' a novel that’s only recently come out in Australia and has already sold over 50,000 copies in just a few months. Later this year it will be released in many other territories throughout the world. The novel is a beautiful, all-engrossing tale, imagining another story behind the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s also the story of a young woman growing into herself and a story about finding and pursuing your life’s work and passion. If you haven't yet read it, order it immediately at your local independent bookshop.

Catherine Milne on the secret life of publishing, hunting out books that matter and going from reading the slush pile to head of fiction at Harper Collins. Jul 22, 2020

Show notes

Featuring: novels that make her cry, how to get through acquisitions, the joyous dance of editing and publishing books that have the rare combination of being both commercial and literary. Catherine has worked in publishing for many years, including with Penguin Books, Pan Macmillan, Allen & Unwin, and since 2012, with HarperCollins, where she is Head of Fiction. She has an eclectic list, publishing across fiction and non-fiction. Recent standouts include Julia Baird’s bestselling 'Phosphorescence'; Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s Stella Prize-winning memoir 'The Erratics'; Catherine McKinnon’s Miles Franklin-shortlisted 'Storyland'; Stan Grant’s acclaimed 'Talking to My Country'; and Trent Dalton’s phenomenal 'Boy Swallows Universe'. Her rule of thumb in publishing is that a book has got to make her feel something – she wants to feel passionately invested in everything she publishes. It’s all about heart, soul, meaning and joy.

Ali Cobby Eckermann on grief, finding family, solace in the desert and afternoon tea with Gloria Steinem Jul 08, 2020

Show notes

Featuring: the life-changing literary award, healing through mentoring, standing inside your story, where 'Ruby Moonlight' came from, Australia’s first Aboriginal writers’ retreat and poetry readings. Ali Cobby Eckermann is a poet and artist from South Australia whose work has been published and celebrated around the world. Her poetry collections include 'little bit long time', 'Kami' and the award-winning collection 'Inside My Mother'. Her verse novels are 'His Father’s Eyes' and 'Ruby Moonlight' which won the first black&write! Indigenous writing fellowship, the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, a Deadly Award and was named the New South Wales Book of the Year. She’s also written the memoir 'Too Afraid to Cry'. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Australia’s Poetry Ambassador and in 2017 she received the Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University which is only given to a select group of the world’s greatest writers. She’s described herself as ‘a dreamer, a gardener, a reader and a nomad’.

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