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Omar Sakr is the author of three poetry collections, Non-Essential Work (2023), The Lost Arabs (2019), These Wild Houses (2017). His first novel, Son of Sin (2022) was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards. Omar performs 'Iris', a poem from his latest collection, at the 6:30 mark. The Lost Arabs won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, and the Colin Roderick Award. Omar is a widely published essayist and editor whose work has been translated into Arabic and Spanish. Omar last appeared on The Garret in 2002 after Son of Sin was published. Listen here. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Overland Literary Journal Issue 249 features several essays, including 'A guide to the colonisation of my mother tongues' by Natalia Figueroa Barroso and 'Dovetails' by EJ Clarence. Natalia is an Uruguayan-Australian poet and storyteller and a member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, with degrees in Communication, Screenwriting and Media Production. Her work has appeared in the collections Racism: Stories on Fear, Hate and Bigotry; Any Saturday, 2021: Running Westward and Between Two Worlds and various literary magazines.  EJ is an emerging writer exploring the long narrative arc of Forced Adoption through Own Voices fiction, poetry, prose and personal essays which acknowledge the tenth anniversary of Julia Gillard’s National Apology. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize, and Throat, which was shortlisted in 2021 for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pip Williams was born in London, grew up in Sydney, and now lives in the Adelaide Hills. Her debut novel was the wildly successful The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020), which was based on her original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives. The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023) is her second work of historical fiction, and exists in the same world as The Dictionary of Lost Words. Her first work was One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Zoya Patel is the author of No Country Woman, a memoir of race, religion and feminism, and Once A Stranger, her debut novel. She is co-host of The Guardian's Book It In podcast, and the Margin Notes podcast alongside Yen Eriksen. Zoya is a columnist for the RiotACT, and regular books critic and writer for The Guardian, Canberra Times, SBS Voices, Refinery29 and more. Zoya has won numerous awards for her writing and editing, and she was a 2020 judge for the Stella Prize and Chair of the 2021 Stella Prize judging panel. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eloise Grills is an award-winning essayist, comics artist and poet, interested in hybrid visual-textual forms.  big beautiful female theory is her first illustrated memoir-in-essays. In addition to being shortlisted for The Stella Prize, the work was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards and highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Her first poetry collection, If you’re sexy and you know it slap your hams, was shortlisted for the 2020 Mary Gilmore Award.  Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adriane Howell is a Melbourne-based writer and arts worker. In 2013, she graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing. She is co-founder of the literary journal Gargouille. Hydra (2022) is her debut novel. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Louisa Lim is an award-winning journalist, podcaster and author. Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong (2022) was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, as well as the Walkley Book Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her previous book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (2014), was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing. She is a Senior Lecturer in Audiovisual Journalism at the University of Melbourne. She previously spent a decade in China as a correspondent for the BBC and NPR, and her work can also be read in the New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja woman. Her memoir We Come With This Place is shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2023. An educator, she has worked in teaching and learning for many years – a gift given through the hard work of her parents. She continues to experience the privilege of living with country and with family. Debra completed her PhD in Narrative Theory and Semiotics at Deakin University in 2021. Read the transcript for this interview here.  About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Edwina Preston is a Melbourne-based writer and musician. Preston is the author of a biography of Australian artist Howard Arkley, Not Just a Suburban Boy (2002), the novel The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer (2012), and the novel Bad Art Mother (2022). Her writing and reviews have appeared in The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Heat, Island, Griffith Review and The Conversation. Read the transcript for this interview here. 🫢 And we apologise for the quality of Astrid’s audio. The mic was broken and we didn’t know… About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sarah Holland-Batt is the author of three books of poetry –The Jaguar (2022), The Hazards (2015) and Aria (2008) – and a book of essays on contemporary poetry, Fishing for Lightning (2021). Her honours include the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo in the United States. She is presently the Judy Harris Writer in Residence at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, and Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Studies at QUT. Read the transcript for this interview here. About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Garret is back. We kick off with interviews with the six writers shortlisted for The Stella Prize - Sarah Holland-Batt, Edwina Preston, Debra Dank, Louisa Lim, Adriane Howell and Eloise Grills. New interviews start Monday 10 April 2023. About The Garret: Writers and the publishing industry Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our host Astrid Edwards is one of the judges of the 2023 Stella Prize. As a result, The Garret is on hold until March 2023. About The Garret Follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robert Watkins is the Publishing Director of Ultimo Press. He has over 20 years experience in the Australian book industry having worked in book retail, sales, marketing, publicity, publishing and more recently as Head of Literary at Hachette Australia. Robert’s love for a good story well told has led to publishing some of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, including Maxine Beneba Clarke, Claire G. Coleman, Sarah Schmidt and Michael Mohammed Ahmad. He is an advocate for progressive and inclusive publishing that speaks to contemporary issues, whether that be in narrative non-fiction or literary and reading group fiction. About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dervla McTiernan is a wildly successful crime writer. Her debut novel, The Ruin, was a critically acclaimed international bestseller which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Fiction and the Barry Award for Best Original Paperback. The second and third installments in the series, The Scholar andThe Good Turn, garnered similar praise. In 2022 she released her first stand alone crime novel, The Murder Rule. Born in County Cork, Ireland, Dervla practised as a corporate lawyer for twelve years. After the GFC she moved with her family to Western Australia, where she now writes full time. Dervla first appeared on The Garret in 2020, and you can listen to that interview here. About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rick Morton is a senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, a regular guest on ABC’s The Drum and an award-winning author of three non-fiction books: 100 Years of Dirt, On Money and My Year of Living Vulnerably. In 2022 he edited the anthology Growing Up in Country Australia. He has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to that interview from 2021 here. About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr Neela Janakiramanan is a reconstructive plastic surgeon and advocate, and with the 2022  publication of The Registrar she adds novelist to her list of achievements. Neela was also one of the medical leads in the Kids off Nauru campaign and in bringing together the Australian medical community and operationalising the Australian Medevac legislation to facilitate medical care for refugees in offshore detention.  Neela is a regular contributor to Women's Agenda, and has also written for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald andThe Saturday Paper, and often appears on ABC's The Drum. You may also be interested in our recent interview with literary agent Melanie Ostell, who is mentioned in this interview. About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Claire Coleman is a Noongar writer, born in Western Australia and now based in Naarm. Her family have been from the area around Ravensthorpe and Hopetoun on the south coast of WA since before time started being recorded. She has written three works of speculative fiction to date - Terra Nullius: A Novel (2017), which was shortlisted for The Stella Prize, among many other awards, The Old Lie (2019) and Enclave (2022).  Her acclaimed non-fiction book, Lies Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the impact of colonisation was published in 2021. Claire has appeared on The Garret before. You can find a detailed discussion of Terra Nullius here, as well as a discussion recorded live at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in 2019 here. About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Phillipa McGuinness is a former book publisher turned author. She is the author of The Year Everything Changed: 2001, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and also Skin Deep: The inside story of our outer selves. Phillipa has appeared on The Garret before, and you can listen to that interview here. About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese Australian writer and award-winning social advocate. She has published two middle grade novels (You Must Be Layla and the award-winning Listen, Layla), as well as her memoir Yassmin's Story. Talking About A Revolution is her 2022 anthology, which combines new and old works. Yassmin has spoken in over twenty-five countries on social justice and inclusive leadership. She founded her first organisation, Youth Without Borders, at the age of sixteen, leading it for nine years before co-founding two other organisations focused on serving women of colour. Her TED talk ‘What does my headscarf mean to you?’ has been viewed over 2.5 million times and was selected as one of TED’s top 10 ideas. Yassmin has appeared on The Garret before. In her previous interview she discussed writing YA fiction and who she approaches giving speeches (and preparing for her TED Talk). About The Garret Read the transcript of this interview at thegarretpodcast.com. You can also follow The Garret on Twitter and Instagram, or follow our host Astrid Edwards on Twitter or Instagram. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.