The Best of New Writing in Australia
EPISODE #3
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ON THE SHOW
In the May episode of the Meanjin podcast, Jonathan Green welcomes two of Australia’s most loved writers: Alexis Wright and Raimond Gaita. Reflecting on Tracker and Romulus, My Father as well as their relationships to memoir, story-telling and the concepts of truth and humanity, Wright and Gaita lose themselves discussing the power and responsibility of the writer.
Poet Broede Carmody shows us where water runs in his poem ‘Petrichor’ (Meanjin Spring 2016).
And Melbourne-based writer Emma Marie Jones reads her short piece ‘Concealer’ (published on the Meanjin blog in April 2018) before discussing the art, intimacy and experimental possibilities of the memoir form with Tess Smurthwaite.
SHOW NOTES
→ Jonathan mentions Stephanie Burt’s New Yorker Piece Literary Style and the Lessons of Memoir
→ Tess mentions Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker piece The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over
→ Raimond Gaita mentions Bringing them home: The ‘Stolen Children’ report (1997)
→ Tess mentions the documentary ‘Joan Didion: The Centre Will Not Hold’
→ Alexis Wright’s Meanjin Summer 2016 essay What Happens When You Tell Somebody Else’s Story
→ Raimond Gaita’s Meanjin Spring 2017 essay The Intelligentsia in the Age of Trump
OUR GUESTS
Alexis Wright
ALEXIS WRIGHT is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her works of fiction and non-fiction include Carpentaria, which won the 2007 Miles Franklin Award, and Tracker, which won the 2018 Stella Prize. She has been appointed as the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne.
Raimond Gaita
RAIMOND GAITA is Professorial Fellow in The Faculty of Arts and The Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne and Professor Emeritus of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London. His books include: Romulus, My Father, A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love & Truth & Justice, The Philosopher’s Dog, After Romulus and as editor and contributor with Gerry Simpson, Who’s Afraid of International Law.
Broede Carmody
BROEDE CARMODY is a writer from north-east Victoria. He now lives in Melbourne and is a journalist for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In 2017 his first book of poetry Flat Exit was published by Cordite Books.
Emma Marie Jones
EMMA MARIE JONES is the author of Something To Be Tiptoed Around, a work of experimental memoir shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers in 2015 and to be released by Grattan Street Press in 2018. She is a PhD candidate and teacher of Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne, and is currently working on her first novel.
EPISODE #2
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ON THE SHOW
In our April episode, Meanjin editor Jonathan Green chats with author Claire G. Coleman, historian Bill Gammage and anthropologist Marcia Langton about the historical and contemporary resonance of terra nullius. Each offers a different perspective on the colonial principle, discussing its devastating effects on Indigenous Australians and how the language we use reflects its influence today.
Next, Marjorie Main transports us to wintry waterways in her poem ‘The Creek’ (Meanjin Autumn 2018).
And author Jennifer Mills reads from her short story ‘Miracles’ (Meanjin Autumn 2017) before discussing the landscape of the short story form and the influence of climate change upon her current novel, Dyschronia, with Meanjin deputy editor Tess Smurthwaite.
SHOW NOTES
→ Jonathan Green and Tess Smurthwaite discuss Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby and Tim Winton’s The Shepard’s Hut
→ Claire G. Coleman’s essay is When We Encountered the Nomads (Meanjin Summer 2017)
→ Claire G. Coleman’s book is Terra Nulilus.It was shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize.
→ Bill Gammage discusses his book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aboriginals Made Australia
→ Marjorie Main reads her poem The Creek (Meanjin Autumn 2018)
→ Jennifer Mills reads from her short story Miracles (Meanjin Autumn 2017) and discusses her novel Dyschronia
OUR GUESTS
Marcia Langton
Professor MARCIA LANGTON AM PhD Macq U, BA (Hons) ANU, FASSA, has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at The University of Melbourne since February 2000. As an anthropologist and geographer, Professor Langton has made a significant contribution to government and non-government policy as well as to Indigenous studies at three universities. In 2016 Professor Langton was honoured as a University of Melbourne Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor.
Claire G. Coleman
CLAIRE G. COLEMAN is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral country is in the south coast of Western Australia. In 2016 she was awarded a Black&Write Indigenous Writing Fellowship for a manuscript she wrote while travelling around Australia. Her novel Terra Nullius was published in September 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize.
Bill Gammage
BILL GAMMAGE is an Australian academic historian, Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University. His book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia details how for over 40,000 years Indigenous people carefully shaped the land with complex systems of controlled burning.
Jennifer Mills
JENNIFER MILLS is an Australian novelist and short story writer. Her latest novel, Dyschronia, is published by Picador. She lives in South Australia.
Marjorie Main
MARJORIE MAIN is from Torbay, WA, and lives in Melbourne. In 2017 her poem ‘The Ways’ was shortlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize; others have appeared in Westerly and Rabbit.
EPISODE #1
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In the March episode of the revived Meanjin podcast, SWEATSHOP director and author Michael Mohammed Ahmad reads from his short story ‘No Toes’ (from Meanjin Spring 2017) and discusses the themes of toxic masculinity and the culture of Western Sydney’s Punchbowl High School with Meanjin editor Jonathan Green.
Poet Belinda Rule transports us to the stark and beautiful tableaus of construction which surround us in her poem ‘Industry, Melbourne‘ (from Meanjin Autumn 2018).
And a panel featuring three of Australia’s most prominent feminist thinkers—Clementine Ford, Celeste Liddle and Lauren Rosewarne—gets to the heart of the questions posed by the #MeToo movement: why now, what next, and how can we best harness this momentum for intersectional possibilities?
OUR GUESTS
Michael Mohammed Ahmad
MICHAEL MOHAMMED AHMAD is an Arab-Australian writer, editor, teacher and community arts worker. He is the founder and director of SWEATSHOP, a literacy movement in Western Sydney devoted to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse artists through creative writing. Mohammed’s essays and short stories have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, The Guardian, Heat, Seizure, The Lifted Brow, The Australian and Coming of Age: Australian Muslim Stories.
Clementine Ford
CLEMENTINE FORD is a Melbourne-based writer, speaker and author of the best-selling book Fight Like A Girl. Her follow up, Boys Will Be Boys, will be published in October 2018.
Lauren Rosewarne
LAUREN ROSEWARNE is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of nine books and co-hosts ‘Stop Everything!’ on Radio National.
Celeste Liddle
CELESTE LIDDLE is an Arrernte woman, an opinion writer, a trade unionist and public speaker. Currently serving as the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Organiser of the National Tertiary Education Union, Celeste started her blog Rantings of an Aboriginal Feministin June 2012. A mere six weeks after she started it, Celeste had a piece picked up for publication by Daily Life and since then has written for a number of publications.
Belinda Rule
BELINDA RULE is a Melbourne-based writer and poet who has published extensively in Australian journals and anthologies.
