Final Draft
Monday 7:00pm - 7:30pm
Final Draft is a weekly stroll in the world of books and writing, fiction and non-fiction. It's also a space on the air where big names of arts and culture sit cheek-by-jowl with those just beginning to make their mark. Produced in the hope of inspiring generous, open-minded reading and discussion, the show features guests and writing from around Australia and the world.
Each week we serve up a mix of interviews with writers, reviews of new, classic and cult titles, readings of original work, short features and documentaries, and news about literary events, prizes and publishing opportunities.
Past guests include novelists, film-makers, journalists, historians, illustrators, activists, scientists, publishers, critics, poets and producers. A few examples: Vikram Chandra, Tom Griffiths, David Rakoff, Abbas El-Zein, Tristan Clark, Jennifer Mills, Amanda Lohrey, Shaun Tan, Ira Glass, Luke Davies, Richard J Frankland, Alice Pung, L K Holt, Max Barry, Bernadette Brennan, Ross Gibson, Don Watson, Jane Gleeson-White, Peter Goldsworthy, Gary Bryson, Alan Parkinson, Karen Knight, Arnold Zable, Maria Tumarkin, Frank Moorhouse, Susanna Lobez, Alex Miller, John Hirst, Naldo Rei, Chloe Hooper, David Stratton, Tina Matthews, Samantha Faulkner, Phillip Gourevitch, Ben Garcia, Joe Bageant, Lollie Barr, Jonathan Balcombe, Heather O'Neill, Jeanette Hoorn, Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman, etc, etc.
Click here for audio-on-demand, RSS feeds and podcasts
ANNOUNCING THE FINAL DRAFT LISTENERS' BOOK CLUB!
If you’ve got a book that’s close to your heart and you’d like to share you thoughts and feelings about it with a wider audience, then we’ve got the ticket for you. Join the book club of the air! Write us an email - finaldraft@2ser.com - telling us about the book and why it’s important to you. We’ll take a look at it and if floats our boat too we’ll invite you to come in to the studio with a couple of final drafters to have a chat about it. You can bring a friend if you like. We’ll provide the scones and tea, and when we’re done we’ll polish up the tape and broadcast the best of the conversation. The book can be anything you like – fiction, nonfiction, poems, a kids book, whatever. It can be a new release, a classic, a cult title. If you love it, we want to hear about it.
Our theme music:
'Trouble' by Price and Logan performed by Stanley Turrentine, from his
1963 album,'Never Let Me Go' (Blue Note).
Past shows, guests, books discussed, links etc:
'X' marks the spot! We're off in search of hidden treasure. Lesley Jorgensen reads a story about hidden Indian dowries and other treasures squirriled away in unassuming places. We partake of some of the latest booty from the expert excavators of hidden treasure at Going Down Swinging. And we spend time with a real gem: artist Thom Roberts.
Thom Roberts, a member of Studio ARTES and a contributor to Trunk, vol.1 ('Hair').
Don Walker and StJAM, 'Country Trains', and Teresia Teawa and Hinemoana Baker, 'Athena and the Breadfruit', Going Down Swinging, No.28
Lesley Jorgensen, 'Pure Gold', from Aviva Tuffield (ed), New Australian Stories, Scribe
Final Draft is looking for original, unpublished short fiction to record for broadcast. If you've got something you'd like to hear on the air, and it can be read in less than 12 minutes, email the text to finaldraft@2ser.com - if we like it and it's suitable for radio we'll either get you into the studio to record it, or get one of our crack team of readers to do the job. And viola! You're famous!
Click here for more information about the monthly new fiction evening, Penguin Plays Rough
Mary Ablaza's exhibition, 'Me, You and Everyone I Know' opens at Cream, 317 King St Newtown, on Wednesday 1 July, at 6.30pm. Click here for more information.
22 June: Power in Everyday Life
This week we look at the role that power plays in everyday lives. We speak to Chimamanda Adichie, whose work explores the complex power relationships which shape the lives of her characters. And Melbourne author Amy Espeseth drops by to give a reading of her story, 'On a Wire'.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck, HarperCollins
Amy Espeseth, 'On a Wire', from The Death Mook, Vignette Press
Contributors: Amy Espeseth, Paul Kildea
This week we seek some relief from the winter cold with some literary sex and rock ‘n roll. We speak to former Cold Chisel keyboardist, Don Walker, about his life in music. And we speak to some Final Draft listeners about their favourite literary sex scenes.
Don Walker, Shots, Penguin
Bruce Williams, 'More Sex', Love at Cumbersome Corner, episode 20
Contributors: Shamin Fernando, Rochelle Fernandez, Bruce Williams, Paul Kildea
This week we're talking with two artists and a writer about space, places, and the buildings that affect our lives everyday. The towers that look over us, the pubs where we spend our evenings. Zanny Begg and Keg de Souza talk about their ten-year project archiving the history of Sydney's iconic Redfern neighbourhood and we speak with Jennifer Mills about her debut novel, The Diamond Anchor.
Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg, 'There Goes the Neighbourhood'
Jennifer Mills, The Diamond Anchor, UQP - check out Jennifer's blog here
Contributors: Nija Dilal, Benedict Taylor
We all understand the awful toll war takes on the battlefield. This week, we take a look at some of the less obvious effects of warfare. With journalist and editor, Philip Gourevitch we discuss the abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004. And with academic and memoirist Mira Crouch we talk about life for civilians in occupied cities. Along the way we find out about the chilling effects of war on language, and the way in which food and eating are transformed by war.
Philip Gourevitch, Standard Operating Proceedure: A War Story, Picador
Mira Crouch, War Fare: Sustenance in Time of Fear and Want, Gavemer Publishing
Contributors: Benedict Taylor
Franz Kafka pulled a massive swifty. He was no lonely Nostradamus of middle Europe, scribbling away in unrecognised, solitary genius, as we have been lead to believe. He was connected, calculating careerist, a gung-ho imperialist, and a well-heeled ladies man. He was also a frickin funny bastard. Join us as we spend time with James Hawes, the author of an iconoclastic biography of Mr Metamorphosis. And find out what happens when Kafka collides with Suess! (Repeat episode).
Jonathan Goldstein and David Rakoff, 'The Gregor Samsa/Dr Suess Letters', from the CBC's show, 'Wiretap'
Contributors: Benedict Taylor
18 May: Communicating With Kids
Tonight we're looking at ways of speaking with children about difficult truths, and at the surprising and confronting lessons children have to teach the grown ups. The prolific and much-loved writer Christobel Mattingley joins us to talk about her latest book. It's a children's illustrated history of Maralinga, produced in collaboration with the traditional owners of the land. Playwright and author Peta Murray has a story to tell us about learning to see oneself through the eyes of a child. And Bruce Williams reports from the frontiers of parenthood, somewhere deep in Cumbersome.
Christobel Mattingley, Maralinga: the Anangu Story, Allen and Unwin
Peta Murray, 'Cameraman', from Louise Swinn and Zoe Dattner (eds), The Sleepers Almanac No. 5, Sleepers Publishing
Bruce Williams, 'Split', Love at Cumbersome Corner, part 19
Contributors: Benedict Taylor, Bruce Williams, Peta Murray
11 May: The Book That Changed Your Life
This week on the show, we're talking about the transformative power of literature and we're wheeling out the big guns: Fyodor Doestoevsky, Phillip K Dick and J R R Tolkein. And we're spending time with some of people they changed, from the good citizens of Marrickville to the 'butcher of the Balkans', Slobodan Milosovic.
Andrew Keefe and Gabriel Mordy on The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein
Benjamen Walker, 'Remedial Theory'; click here for more of Benjamen's work
Emma Miszalski and Jay Fracaro on the books on their shelves
Contributors: Katherine Keefe, Benedict Taylor, Benjamen Walker
This week we’ve got more moral ambiguity than you can poke a question mark at: flawed heroes, beautiful trauma, glimmers in the darkness - you name it, we'll equivocate. We meet Sofie Laguna and talk about her disturbing and strangely uplifting new novel, and we'll try to pin down some shades of grey slipperiness in a graphic novel and a film about neurotic superheroes with mid-life crises. More from Cumbersome too.
Sofie Laguna, One Foot Wrong, Allen and Unwin
Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins, Watchmen, DC Comics; also the film, Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder
Bruce Williams, 'Directions', Love at Cumbersome Corner, part 18
Click here for more information about Page Seventeen
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Rochelle Fernandez, Bruce Williams, Benedict Taylor
Humans are 'make-believe animals', British essayist William Hazlitt said. We are never so truly ourselves as when we are acting a part, he thought. This week we’re celebrating the power of make-believe. We’ll meet Glenn Fowler and Christopher Smythe, the real funnymen behind a fictitous old codger who successfully spoofed many of this country’s most reputable newspapers. And writer Chris Womersley is along to tell us a story about the bittersweet power of make-believe.
Glenn Fowler, Christopher Smythe and Gareth Malone, Dear Editor: The Collected Letters of Oscar Brittle, UNSW Press
Chris Womersley, 'The Possibility of Water', Aviva Tuffield (ed), New Australian Stories, Scribe
Contributors: Nija Dalal, Benedict Taylor, Chris Womersley
Welcome to the Final Draft menagerie! We've got birds, we've got dogs, and we've got that strange and wonderful species we call human beings. Dr Irene Pepperberg is along to talk about a prolix Parrot called Alex. And with novelist Eva Hornung, we'll revist the classic tale of the human child raised by beasts.
Irene Pepperberg, Alex and Me, Scribe
Eva Hornung, Dog Boy, Text
Contributors: Sara Peel, Benedict Taylor
It's been a decade since his last novel, but he is considered one of the finest writers working in English today. Fiction, 'in his hands', writer and critic Alberto Manguel says 'becomes the art of rendering the world coherent. For this we must be grateful.' We're talking about, and talking with David Malouf. His latest novel is a delicate re-imagining of one of the oldest tales around, and it's a real gem. Also, more from Cumbersome.
David Malouf, Ransom, Random House
Bruce Williams, 'More Heat', Love at Cumbersome Corner, part 17
Contributors: Benedict Taylor, Bruce Williams
06 April: Deviating From the Script
The way of the transgressor may be hard, but it can also be a lot of fun. Tonight, we're gleefully breaking the rules. Find out what happens when a masochist goes on holiday with a sadist. Learn about the reckless abandon with which Led Zeppelin approached the rules of music, and life. And join us in the kitchen, as we re-write the rules for making chocolate cake!
Mary Gaitskill, Bad Behaviour, Vintage, 1988
Mick Wall, Led Zeppelin: When Giants Walked the Earth, Hachette
Katherine Keefe, 'Recipe Card 32: Twice Cooked Birthday Cake'
Host Benedict Taylor referred to, and read from Meredith Hendley, 'The Voracious Pen of Thomas Carlyle' Humanities, March/April 2009 Volume 30, Number 2
Click here for more information about submitting textual or graphic work for the next volume of Going Down SwingingContributors: Sara Peel, Shamin Fernando, Katherine Keefe, Benedict Taylor
Dylan Thomas wrote of 'the mystery of having been moved by words'. And tonight, dear Watson, mystery is on the menu. Mystery writer Derek Nikitas joins us to help us figure how what happened to mystery - and whodunnit. Local writer Kristy Millard's new short story will get the hairs on the back of your enticingly exposed neck all a-quiver. And, yes it's true, we've solved the mystery of the oldest words in the English language!
For more on the oldest words in English, click here
Derek Nikitas, Pyres, St Martin's Press
Kristy Millard, 'The Artist' (read by Ross Ogden, from 2SER's On The Corner; contact Kristy at wickedwyche[at]ymail.com)
Aceyalone (with Mumbles), 'The Walls and Windows', from their album A Book of Human Language (cut from podcast for copyright reasons)
Contributors: Nija Dalal, Benedict Taylor
23 March: The Road Less Travelled
This week on the show, Abbas El-Zein tells his story, and what an astonishing tale it is. From the violence and cosmopolitanism of a childhood in civil-war Beirut, we follow Abbas to Baghdad, Paris, Palestine, and Sydney. Along the way, we learn to think about migration as a beautiful mutilation, and find out why Asterix kicks Tintin's ass. Bruce Williams is along too, to tell us about folks in Cumbersome going their separate ways.
Abbas El-Zein, Leave to Remain, University of Queensland Press
Bruce Williams, 'Separate Ways', Love at Cumbersome Corner, part 16
James Arvanitakis' book, Contemporary Society, will be launched at Gleebooks on Friday 27 March at 6pm; click here for more information
Host, Benedict Taylor read extracts from the 15 March edition of The New York Times, and Robert Frost's poem, 'The Road Not Taken'
Contributors: Bruce Williams, Benedict Taylor
16 March: Last Night, an Author Saved My Life...
'If I read a book that impresses me,' Anne Frank said, 'I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind quite queer.' This week we're celebrating the effects books can have on our thoughts and lives. We'll find out how a couple of fictional anti-heroes were there at just the right time for a couple of their readers. In the second installment of the bookclub of the air, we'll learn about the pretty damn profound effect Tom Robbins had on 2ser listener, Peter Shields. And we'll let you in on a plan in which books quite literally help save lives.
Anthony Oakley on The Catcher in the Rye, by J D Salinger, and Stephanie Dickson on Praise, by Andrew McGahan
Bookclub of the Air: listener Peter Shields recommended Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins
Click here for more information about the Write-a-Book in a Day competition
09 March: Where's the Tenderness?
This week, we’re talking about tenderness - the surprising and complicated forms it can take when it’s present, and the bleakness of life without it. We’ll spend some time with the cloudspotters and other gentle souls in Delia Falconer’s first novel. Bruce Williams will be along to trace the many kinds of tenderness in his neighbourhood. And activist Kathleen Maltzahn joins us to shed some light on the lives of women who have been trafficked into a world without tenderness.
Bruce Williams, 'Tenderness', Love at Cumbersome Corner, part 15
Kathleen Maltzahn, Trafficked, UNSW Press
Delia Falconer, The Service of Clouds, Picador (and Gavin Pretor Pinney, The Cloudspotter's Guide, Sceptre)
Contributors: Bruce Williams, Paul Kildea, Katherine Keefe, Benedict Taylor
This week we've got (surprisingly nourishing) stories of catastrophe, apocalypse, darkness, pain and confusion for you. Woo hoo! We'll meet Melbourne writer, Steven Amsterdam, and talk about his debut novel, a delightful catalogue of calamity. And we'll also find out just how dismal, twisted and interesting it gets inside Paul Auster's head.
Steven Amsterdam, Things We Didn't See Coming, Sleepers Publishing
Paul Auster, Man in the Dark, Allen and Unwin
Contributors: Lesley Branagan, Benedict Taylor
We're celebrating the quirky, unconventional and downright bizarre. We talk about Steve Toltz's unusual tilt at the Booker, we spend some time with the loving misfits in Cumbersome, and we talk to Colin Bowles about the premier misfits of the musical world. Also, in memory of John Updike, we listen to some of Updike's poetry, read by the guide for middle-class misfits himself. In this episode host, Benedict Taylor, asked for help choosing a poem to read at his sister's wedding. Please email suggestions to finaldraft@2ser.com.
Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole, Penguin
Bruce Williams, 'Heat', Love at Cumbersome Corner, part 14
John Updike, 'An Oddly Lovely Day Alone', Poetry on Record, vol.3 (excluded from podcast for copyright reasons)
Colin Bowles, I've Been Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart: The 100 Worst Songs Ever, Allen and Unwin
Click here for more information about Critical Animals, the creative research symposium held as part of This Is Not Art in Melbourne.
Contributors: Sara Peel, Bruce Williams, Shamin Fernando, Benedict Taylor
16 February: Dangerous Liaisons
Illicit romances and reckless trysts are on the menu this week. We meet Peter Goldsworthy and talk about his latest novel, a real Mrs Robinson tale. We taste the forbidden fruit in Manil Suri's second novel, and we listen to a story of a misguided love affair by Canadian literary vagabond, Jim Cristy.
Peter Goldsworthy, Everything I Knew, Penguin
Jim Cristy, 'Forever Maria', Going Down Swinging No.27 (excluded from podcast for copyright reasons)
Manil Suri, The Age of Shiva, Bloomsbury
Click here for more information about Mark Mordue's New Journalism workshop or call the NSW Writers Centre on 02 9555 9757
John August's spoken word performance, 'A Tourist on the Road to Human Experience' is on Sunday 15 March, 10.30am, at the Unitarian Church on Frances St, near Hyde Park
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Lesley Branagan, Benedict Taylor
09 February: Home Fires Burning
We're keeping the home fires burning tonight. But we're not stoically waiting for boys to return home from their adventures. Instead, we're unearthing the surprising and the exciting in the seemingly mundane - in our own backyards, and in what we do everyday. Yasmine Musharbash joins us to tell us about the the anthropology of everyday life in remote Aboriginal Australia. And with Shaun Tan we'll explore outer suburbia, that much maligned landscape, and discover that it's not such a barren place after all.
Yasmine Musharbash, Yuendumu Everyday: Contemporary Life in Remote Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press
Shaun Tan, Tales From Outer Suburbia, Allen and Unwin (interview originally broadcast in August 2008)
Contributors: Benedict Taylor
'Summer afternoon, summer afternoon - to me, those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.' So said Henry James, and tonight, we're chasing summer through the language. Ross Gibson drops by to tell us The Summer Exercises, his account of the temptations of young chaplain serving a summer locum at an inner Sydney police station in the aftermath of the Second World War. Also, bask with us in the warm light of Katherine Mansfield's prose, and catch up with what the locals down in Cumbersome did with their summer.
Ross Gibson, The Summer Exercises, University of Western Australia Press and the Historic Houses Trust of NSW; see here for more of Ross' work
Bruce Williams, 'A Cumbersome Christmas' Love at Cumbersome Corner (episode 13)
Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories
Contributors: Bruce Williams, Katherine Keefe, Benedict Taylor
It seems somehow appropriate to mark invasion day with stories about sea-changers, doesn't it? This week, in the last of our summer highlights series we bring you tales of migration and escape, from the old world to the new, as well as from the city to the coast. With story-teller extraordinaire Arnold Zable, we'll discuss the sea-changer's sea-changer, Odysseus, and some of his modern heirs and descendants. We'll also talk about the strange places our restlessness can lead us, with novelist Amanda Lohrey.
Arnold Zable, Sea of Many Returns, Text Publishing
Amanda Lohrey, Vertigo, Black Inc Books
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Benedict Taylor
This week, to mark the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, two of our favourite chats from last year about Americans, and their politics. Final Draft's in-house Obama Boy, Paul Kildea drops by to tell us about about what Barack was like before he got really popular. And, with all eyes on Washington, Don Watson takes us on a tour of some of the union's neglected corners.
Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, Text
Don Watson, American Journeys, Random House
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Benedict Taylor
12 January: Old Dogs, New Tricks
After the death of his much-loved wife, an aging historian realises he will never write the book that was to crown his life's work. Believing his life all but over, he contemplates suicide, but everything changes when he meets a young Aboriginal academic who sets him on an extraordinary journey. Meanwhile, a retired photographer meets a young woman recently estranged from her fiance and the two form a touching, unconventional bond. This week we're talking tales of old dogs learning new tricks.
Alex Miller, Landscape of Farewell, Allen and Unwin
Laurence Fearnley, Edwin + Matilda, Penguin
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Benedict Taylor
5 January: Don't Get Too Comfortable (Again)
David Sedaris says his friend David Rakoff 'successfully manages to pass himself off as the wittiest and most perceptive man in the world.' We agree, and think one of our favourite guests of 2008 deserves a second airing.
David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable, Scribe
Contributors: Benedict Taylor
29 December: Through a Boy's Eye
More goodies from the vault, tonight, as we look the world through the eyes of young men and boys. We meet Chris Abani, a remarkable novelist from Nigeria and talk about his latest novella, which gives lyrical voice to a wounded boy soldier. Dylan Peek, a ten-year old, visually impaired published author also drops by to talk about malevolent computer games. And find what Junot Diaz did before he won the Pulitzer; we get up to speed with a collection of tales that catch the turbulence of a young man's life.
Chris Abani, Song for Night, Scribe Publications
Dylan Peek, X-Box Goes Crazy, Starlight Foundation
Junot Diaz, Drown, Faber
Contributors: Kim Forsyth, Ben Falkenmire, Benedict Taylor
This week: stories of running towards or away from disaster, and of negotiating passage between warzones and safehavens. We're revisiting two of our favourite interviews from 2008. We speak with Charlotte Wood about her novel, 'The Children', a tale about a war correspondent with plenty of pity for her subjects, but little for her own family. And we meet Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman who teamed up to tell the story of Najaf's flight from his wartorn home in Afghanistan.
Charlotte Wood, The Children, Allen and Unwin
Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman, The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Shariff, Insight Publications
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Benedict Taylor
15 December: The Personal Library
Ever wondered what Trees as Good Citizens and Trailer Ahoy! have common? Find out tonight as we browse in some very unusual, very personal libraries. We meet the creators of the Prelinger Library in San Fransicsco, a fascinating library designed to help you find what you don't know you need. We also meet Natascha, the next guest in our bookshelf interview series, who reminds us that when you move in with someone, you move in with their books too. Also: a strange tale of some slightly sinister shelving decisions.
Bookshelf Interview #3: Natascha (Music: 'Danse of Questionable Tuning' by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0")
Megan Shaw Prelinger and Rick Prelinger (co-principals, Prelinger Library, San Francisco)
Sean Hurley, 'Restful Shady Places' (entry in the Radio Ephemera Challenge, organised by the Prelinger Library and the Third Coast Audio Festival)
Contributors: Benedict Taylor
8 December: Making the Most of It
We're scanning the skies for silver linings and learning to cherish, or at least live with the damaged, the fallible, and the badly written. Join us as we stick the knife in yet another subcontinental epic novel about a family, celebrate Kurt Cobain's sadly abbreviated life, and listen to the latest goodies from the fine folks at Going Down Swinging.
Kim Salmon, 'Dorothy MacKellar's "My Country", Paraphrased by a Random Sample of People', Going Down Swinging #27
Charles R Cross, Cobain Unseen, Hachette
Roma Tearne, Bone China, Harper Collins
Adam Gibson and the Aerial Maps, 'On the Punt', Going Down Swinging #27 (not included in podcast for copyright reasons)
Click here for information about how to submit your spoken word, poetry, short fiction/nonfiction, or graphic/comic art to Going Down Swinging (submissions close 1 January 2009)
Contributors: Shamin Fernando, Lesley Branagan, Benedict Taylor
This week, we're reminding ourselves that good things come in small packages. We speak to Amanda Lohrey about her new short novel, 'Vertigo'; and, we look behind the Booker Prize and ask: does it have a prejudice against small stories?
Amanda Lohrey, Vertigo, Black Inc.
Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture, Faber
Linda Grant, The Clothes on their Backs, Virago
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Jennifer Robertson
This week is all about soul-searching. We're in a contemplative mood, and we'll be burrowing into our pasts and asking questions about our values and beliefs, as we walk a few more miles on that life-long journey of self-discovery.
Gary Bryson, Turtle, Allen & Unwin
Hanif Kureishi, Something to Tell You, Faber
Bruce Williams, 'Father's Day', Love at Cumbersome Corner (Part 12)
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Benedict Taylor, Lesley Branagan, Bruce Williams
17 November: How Did I End Up Here?
This week we reflect on how the events and experiences of childhood can profoundly – and sometimes cruelly – mould our destinies. We’ll look at two very different lives – one formed on the sleepy streets of Canberra, another in the slums of an Indian town – but both offering different insights into that eternal puzzle: ‘How did I end up here?'
Jenny Hocking, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History (Vol 1), The Miegunyah Press
Indra Sinha, Animal's People, Simon & Schuster
10 November: Consuming Passions
This week we're getting caught up in the consuming passions of food and sex: the way each is produced, bought and sold and what happens to people in the process.
Rebecca Huntley, Eating Between the Lines, Black Inc
Rae Frances, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution, UNSW Press
Bruce Williams, 'Renovations', Love at Cumbersome Corner (Part 11)
Contributors: Paul Kildea, Bruce Williams, Benedict Taylor
Everything you thought you knew about one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century is wrong. Sorry, but it's true. Franz Kafka was no lonely Nostradamus of middle Europe, scribbling away in unrecognised, solitary genius. He was connected, calculating careerist, a gung-ho imperialist and a well-heeled ladies man. He was also a frickin funny bastard. Join us as we spend time with James Hawes, the author of an iconoclastic biography of Mr Metamorphosis. And find out what happens when Kafka collides with Suess!
James Hawes, Excavating Kafka, Quercus
Jonathan Goldstein and David Rakoff, 'The Gregor Samsa/Dr Suess Letters', from the CBC's show, 'Wiretap'
We've all dreamt of making ourselves anew, haven't we? Well, sometimes sacrifice comes with fulfillment. Spend some time this week with two people who have made courageous and dramatic transformations. Joining us are librarian, activist, writer and transsexual, Kate Cummings, and the sea-changing journalist, James Woodford.
Katherine Cummings, Katherine's Diary: the story of a transsexual, Beaujon Press (for a copy of Katherine's book, write to Beanjon Press, PO Box 742, Woy Woy NSW 2256 or see Katherine's myspace page)
James Woodford, Real Dirt: how I beat my grid-life crisis, Text
Contributors: Phil Stubbs, Benedict Taylor
Wrapping up our radiothon series, we're in the mood for a little intimacy. While we seduce you into pulling out your credit card and jumping on the phone, we woo your ears with some great spoken word from the lion of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes and from the Ventriloquist Band. We'll also meet the intriguing Sara in the second of the bookshelf interviews, and discover a special shelf dedicated to a decidedly palpable kind of intimacy. Bruce Williams returns to ruminate on the original sin too. Thanks to everyone who felt compelled to get a little more intimate with 2ser on the night!
Langston Hughes, 'Dream Montage: Good Morning; Tell Me; Harlem', Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like Rivers: Black Poets Read Their Work, Rhino WordBeat
Bookshelf Interview #2: Sara (Music: 'Shades of Spring' by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0")
Ventriloquist Band, 'I Know Kung Fu', Going Down Swinging #26
Bruce Williams, 'Sex', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 10)
Contributors: Shamin Fernando, Paul Kildea, Benedict Taylor
In this, the first of our two radiothon shows, we launch the first installment of a new series, the bookshelf interviews. We meet Emma and Jay and explore their bookcases and their literary loves (and also get a glimpse into the role of books in their real-life romance). We also reminisce over some of the best-loved moments on the show over the last year. And Bruce Williams explains the similarities and differences between marriages and motorcycles. Thanks to everyone who subscribed on the night! (Note that the podcast for this show is truncated - we took out all the radiothon sales pitches and the bits from our back catalogue).
Bookshelf Interview #1: Emma and Jay
David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable, Scribe Publications
Charlotte Wood, The Children, Allen and Unwin
Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island, Penguin
Bruce Williams, 'Marriage and the Motorcycle', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 9)
6 October: Ghosts of Campaigns Past
We're getting out the ouija board and communing with the ghosts of campaigns past. From the wild rivers of southwest Tasmania to the streets of Baghdad, to the hotel in which Bobby Kennedy was shot, we're examining some of the most important and interesting environmental, political and military campaigns of the last forty years. Join us to find out what can be learned from the past, and what was irretrievably lost.
Geoff Law, The River Runs Free: Exploring and Defending Tasmania's Wilderness, Viking
Thurston Clarke, The Last Campaign: Robert Kennedy and the 82 days that inspired America, Henry Holt
Michael Hastings, I Lost My Love in Baghdad, Melbourne University Press
29 September: Troubling Childhoods
A dark, confronting book for teenagers ends up on the wrong shelf in a Brisbane bookshop with unexpected consequences, and a fictional artist returns to the scene of her painful early years. This week we're talking books about troubled childhoods, and the troubles books can cause kids. Also, the first installment of the Final Draft listeners' bookclub, the Bookclub of the Air!
Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
Susan Hetherington, Associate Lecturer in Journalism, Queensland University of Technology
22 September: The Mobile Library
Welcome aboard the mobile library! Not the invaluable book bus, but the corpus of stories that refuses to stay put, the tales that migrate from place to place and from time to time. Travelling companions include: the remarkable Nigerian writer, poet and activist, Chris Abani, and the celebrated Polish foreign correspondent, Ryszard Kapuscinski. Bruce Williams is along too, to tell us about an ancient story that's just moved into the neighbourhood.
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Travels With Herodotus, Allen Lane
Chris Abani, Song for Night, Scribe Publications
Bruce Williams, 'Tristan', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 8)
It may be the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn't mean we all need to jump on the bandwagon. Tonight we're blowing the whistle on plagiarists and tipping the copycats out of the bag. With Alastair Penny Cook we discuss allegation recently made against Lynda La Plante and ask: what constitutes copying anyway? And we hear a few compelling arguments in favour of a little less mimicry in the way we handle the big questions. Anita Heiss asks us to break the mould when it comes to romance and having kids. And Robert Larkins urges us to think for ourselves when it comes to how we leave this world.
Professor Alastair Penny Cook, Faculty of Education, University of Technology Sydney
Anita Heiss, Avoiding Mr Right, Random House
Robert Larkins, Funeral Rights: What the Australian "Death-Care" Industry Doesn't Want You to Know, Penguin
The way of the transgressor is proverbially hard. Karen Knight is now an acclaimed poet, but as a young woman she was marked as a deviant and thrown into a psychiatric hospital. Only now, four decades later, has she found the voice to write of the experience. Phillip Gourevitch also knows a thing or two about the things that happen in dark places. His latest book is account of what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and shows that those in the infamous photographs were far from being the only culprits, or even the most culpable. Join us to hear these, and other stories of broken rules, this week.
Phillip Gourevitch, Standard Operating Proceedure: A War Story, Picador
Bruce Williams, 'Cheating', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 7)
Karen Knight, Postcards from the Asylum, Pardalote Press
1 September: Don't Get Too Comfortable
David Sedaris says his friend David Rakoff 'successfully manages to pass himself off as the wittiest and most perceptive man in the world.' We concur, and, have accordingly, given over the whole show to Mr Rakoff. His latest book is a grand tour of our contemporary culture of excess. On this tour we are taken to cryonics conferences and plastic surgeries, high fashion cat walks and soft-core porn sets. Through David we meet gay, modern-day Uncle Toms, and epicures who simply must get just the ice cubes for their favourite single malt overnighted from just the right frozen Scottish river. We hear how, post 9-11, New York rose from its ashes 'like a drunken, horny phoenix', and, we come away knowing we have been in the presence of a fascinating man.
David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable, Scribe Publications
For more information about Indigenous Literacy Day on 3 September, click here
Contributors: Benedict Taylor
25 August: Lost and Found Department
Tonight we’re rummaging through the lost and found box. We’re talking about different ways of getting lost, being lost, and losing things. And we’re pricking up the antennae, looking for different ways of finding things. We’ll meet Caren Florance, who designed the cover for Michelle de Kretser’s award-winning novel, The Lost Dog, and find out about the fascinating art of book design. We’ll also get up to speed on the latest book from David Sedaris, a man who knows more than most about being lost and getting found. With Bruce Williams, we’ll search high and low in Cumbersome for some tricky-to-find amenities. And we’ll also talk about the relationship between gender and genre in life writing and find what can be lost in the writing of a life.
Caren Florance, designer of The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser, Allen and Unwin; for more on Caren's work see her website
David Sedaris, When You are Engulfed in Flames, Little, Brown
Bruce Williams, 'Children', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 6)
Mary Spongberg, Associate Professor of Modern History, Macquarie University
18 August: Goodies and Baddies
Goodies and baddies, cops and robbers, heroes and villains. They're
everywhere, signalling our deep-seated need to divide the world into
implaccably opposed camps. This week we grapple with these archetypes,
and celebrate the grey space, the in-between spaces in which it
becomes hard to tell the good guys from the dastardly crooks. Muddying
the water with us are angry, not-so-young British writer Alan
Sillitoe, the impressive debut Australian novelist Chris Womersley,
and the doyen of chick-lit, Wendy Harmer.
Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Chris Womersley, The Low Road, Scribe
Wendy Harmer, Love and Punishment, Allen and Unwin
Passions, the great Greek storyteller, Aesop said, are like fire and water. They make great servants, but lousy masters. Join us as we indulge in a few of our abiding passions, and find out what happens when the servants get all uppity. We meet one of Jane Austen's most passionate admirers, eavesdrop on an intimate conversation about marriage and passion, and take in a tale of a strange, persistent, and thwarted passion, from the intriguing Sherwin Sleeves.
Susannah Fullerton, President, Jane Austen Society of Australia
Bruce Williams, 'Before Marriage', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 5)
Sherwin Sleeves, 'Lizzy Queelfight'; ('Sherwin Sleeves' is the alter ego of writer and producer, Sean Hurley; to hear more of Sean's work, visit his website)
4 August: Enchanted Landscapes
Join us as we explore landscapes infused with myth and meaning. From islands out of Greek legend, to the epics out of own backyards, we find that in any place people call home, great stories can be found. Guiding our journey are story-teller extraordinaire, Arnold Zable, and the consistently delightful illustrator and writer, Shaun Tan.
Arnold Zable, Sea of Many Returns, Text PublishingShaun Tan, Tales From Outer Suburbia, Allen and Unwin
Tonight we're keeping it short and sweet. We're in search of pleasures afforded by small but perfectly formed literary genres - the short story and the novella. Recent collections of each go under the microscope, revealing just how well brief, seemingly disconnected pieces can hold together. The short stories are the work of Melbourne writer, Nam Le, whose first book has just been published, to much acclaim. And the novellas are Cate Kennedy's edited collection, Love and Desire - an appropriate title for an ephemeral form and an ephermal subject. Also, a short but very interesting political experiment, with US humourist and radio host, John Moe, and an opportunity to make short, sweet audio documents of the role of books and writing in your life.
Nam Le, The Boat, Penguin
John Moe, Conservatize Me, Harper Perennial
Cate Kennedy (ed), Love and Desire, Five Mile Press
LetterVox project, 'The Book Show', ABC Radio National
21 July: The Heart of the Matter
This week we're getting to the heart of how we get to the heart of things. Law, fiction, history, journalism. Each claims to speak of the truth in its own fashion, using different tools and ideas. Yet given the same stories, each often comes to dramatically different conclusions. Journalist Chloe Hooper joins us to discuss the difficulties getting to the heart of the tragic events of recent years on Palm Island. We'll also explore about the fruitful possibilities opened up when the imagination is given full play in the telling of history, with the wonderful Frank Moorhouse. Bruce Williams is back too, with another story getting at the heart of the matters close to the hearts of Cumbersome Lovers. Also, we announce a special new project: the Final Draft Book Club!
Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island, Penguin
Frank Moorhouse, H C Coombes Creative Arts Fellow, Australian National University
Bruce Williams, 'Success', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 4)
Facts. Ronald Regan called them 'stupid things', while commedian Will Rogers declared he didn't tell jokes, he just watched the government and reported the facts. Facts, it seems are in the eye of the beholder. This week in trying to get to grips with the slipperiness of facts we meet poet and printer Alan Loney, the author of a book about a very special book about nothing, which turns out not to exist - and yet which is full to the brim of fascinating facts. We follow novelist Gerard Windsor, in search of some very personal facts, a search that takes him deep into the nature of biography and poetry. And we'll also hear all about some astonishing facts unearthed by academic and former gang-leader, Sidhur Venkatesh, using a very unorthodox research method.
Gerard Windsor, 'Chasing My Own Real Me', State Library of NSW forum on Fact and Fiction
Sidhur Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day, Penguin
Alan Loney, The Printing of a Masterpiece, Black Pepper Publishing (for more info about Alan Loney's fine press, click here)
Tom Stoppard, the British playwright once wrote: 'We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered.' This week we're off down Memory Lane, in search of that smoke. We hear two stories from two very different women, both though, looking over their shoulders, trying to make sense of the view. We also discover how books sometimes preserve traces of the lives and thoughts of their readers, as well as their authors, and we take in some more reminiscences from Cumbersome Corner with Bruce Williams.
Mira Crouch, War Fare: Sustenance in Time of Fear and Want, Gavemer Publishing
Jennifer Robertson, 'Heat' (Jennifer's most recently published story can be found in the current edition of Westerly magazine)
Bruce Williams, 'Meeting', Love at Cumbersome Corner (part 3)
Richard Walsh 'Found in Books', AbeBooks
Final Draft
Books, publishing and writing
Final Draft is 2ser’s weekly half-hour talks program concerning books, writing and publishing.
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