Sydney Writers Festival Artistic Director Michael Williams joins Andrew on this special bonus episode Michael has been the director of the Wheeler Centre, a presenter on Radio National and RRR down in Melbourne. Michael joined SWF during the pandemic and has been instrumental in sheparding the festival through that turbulent time Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

The Final Draft Great Conversations podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

George Haddad is an award winning writer from Western Sydney. He won the Viva la Novella for his story Populate or Perish and is a doctoral candidate at the Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University. Losing Face is told between the narrative perspectives of Joey and his Tayta Elaine. Elaine came to Australia as a young wife from her village in Lebanon. Through years of work and raising a family she has confronted the expectations and disdain her adoptive country has heaped on her. Now with her husband gone she lives for her grandsons, although she is not quite sure what Joey is doing with his life. Joey’s nineteen; young enough to feel bulletproof but far enough away from school to wonder if he should be doing more. His friends aren’t everything to him, his job is even less than that but Joey feels like he has more to offer. As Joey drifts from music festivals to cafes and barbershops he wonders whether his life should be more. In doing nothing he is setting himself on a path that finds him in a car full of young men like himself. Men who want more from the world, and in one horrific chain of events try to take it.

Nell is going through a lot right now. She’s in Year Six and next everything was going to change anyway, but now her mum has a new boyfriend and they are planning on moving in together, her best friendship is feeling a little cold and her new friend is sometimes mean. Nell’s used to planning for catastrophe’s but now her life is feeling a little out of control and that’s before she starts to look at what’s going on with climate change. Nell is facing down one of the first big changes most younger people face; the transition from primary to high school and she’s doing it in a world with a very uncertain future… Join us as we discover Fiona Wood’s How to Spell Catastrophe...

In Climb we meet Ashley Davies. Ashely has a talent for climbing but so far it’s only proven useful finding the best tree at lunch time and escaping from bullies who insult her brother. Ashley loves her family and her town but now she’s in High school she realises there’s a lot she doesn’t understand. There’s too many secrets in Ashley’s life and no one wants to trust her with the truth. So when a rock-climbing competition offers her the chance to (maybe) get some answers, Ashley decides it might be worth keeping a few secrets of her own…

Callan is a writer of Science Fiction and Thrillers. He’s joining me today with his latest novel Astraeus. Astraeus takes us on board the eponymous world settler starship, where one hundred thousand people are traveling on a one way trip into the Milky Way. When an engineer is murdered the Astraeus finds itself at a turning point. Join me as we discover Callan J Mulligan’s Astaraeus...

Ashley Davies has a talent for climbing but so far it’s only useful for hiding out at lunch time and beating bullies who insult her brother. There’s too many secrets in Ashley’s life and no one wants to trust her with the truth. So when a rock-climbing competition offers her the chance to, maybe, get some answers, Ashley decides it might be worth keeping a few secrets of her own… Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Andrew Roff is an award winning writer of short stories including the 2020 Peter Carey Short Story Award for his story Bock Bock as well as the 2018 Margaret River Press Short Story Competition for his story Pigface. Both of which appear in his debut collection The Teeth of a Slow Machine. “Sometimes the only way to make things clear is to rearrange the story” The Teeth of a Slow Machine is a delightfully unsettling collection. Offering a kaleidoscopic view, the stories in The Teeth of a Slow Machine seem to exist in a dark underworld with a funhouse mirror view of life. Join Andrew (and Andrew) as they discuss The Teeth of a Slow Machine

Yumna Kassab is a writer from Western Sydney. Her work has been featured in, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin and the Sydney Morning Herald amongst. He debut book is the critically acclaimed and much prize listed, The House of Youssef. Yumna's her debut novel is Australiana. Australiana writes itself into the fabric of modern Australia. In a town of drought and flood the people have learned to ebb and flow with the whims of nature. Where every face is familiar it is in the details that the stories of life and death occur. Australiana takes the reader to the towns where we live and explores the voices that populate each corner. Yumna Kassab joins Andrew to discuss her new novel Australiana... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Ben Walter is an award winning writer of stories, essays and poems. He is the fiction editor of Island magazine and is joining me today with his debut collection of short stories What Fear Was. What Fear Was takes the reader through a diverse set of landscapes and into strange yet familiar spaces. From our relationship to the natural world to natures barely withheld disdain for our mistreatment, and abuse. This collection is a surreal exploration… What Fear Was constantly challenges our sense of where we fit in the world we too-often think we own. Ben Walter joins Andrew to discuss his debut collection of short fiction What Fear Was...

A History of Dreams transports the reader to Adelaide in the late 1930’s. Margaret, Esther, Phyl and Audrey are finishing high school with dreams of what the future might hold. Margaret wants to attend university but her father forbids it as improper for a young woman. Within their lives and their families, each of the women is constrained in their own way by the society around them. The world seems to be pushing them towards marriage and nuclear families, no matter what they want for themselves. But Audrey has a way to fight back, a secret passed down through generations of spinster women. Audrey is going to teach the others witchcraft!

!!Updated and extended cut - Hear more from Jennifer Shahade about incredible women in Chess!! Jennifer Shahade is a two-time US Women's Chess Champion Chess Queens tells Jennifer's own story alongside those of the top female players from around the world.

The Stella Prize is now in its tenth year, beginning when a group of women in Australian publishing banded together to address the huge and unacknowledged disparity in the ways women's writing was represented in Australia. Jaclyn Booton is the Executive Director of The Stella Prize and she joins Andrew to talk about the work of The Stella Prize, the recent achievements of the Stella Count and the 2022 Shortlist announcement.

Deaf PI Caleb Zelic has always been an outsider, estranged from family and friends. But when he receives a message that his brother, Anton, is in danger, Caleb sees it as a chance at redemption. He tracks Anton down to a small, wind-punished island, where secrets run deep and resentments deeper. When a sniper starts terrorising the isolated community, the brothers must rely on each other like never before. But trust comes at a deadly price … Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Australiana takes us to the north-eastern New South Wales region around Tamworth, an area Yumna lived for many years as a teacher. Across diverse and interwoven sections Yumna weaves a tale of a region overwhelmed by drought and struggling to reconcile itself to the threat of oblivion that the lack of rain brings. Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Alice Wren is mid-flight. At the insistence of an urgent email Alice has fled Berlin, returning to Australia and her hometown of Fraser. After seventeen years the city is not what she remembers. The taxis are blue, her sister resents her disappearance and the nephew she has never met is now almost a man. As for the city of Fraser; it changes daily, shifting, dislocating and rearranging itself in unfathomable ways. Lydia and George don’t know what to make of Alice’s sudden return. Who is this woman who says she is there relative and what is the dark secret she is trying to escape from? Rhett Davis joins Andrew to discuss Hovering... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Festivals are back and it's time to get amongst it with like minded book lovers! With book stores featuring author events and Sydney Writers Festival about to drop its 2022 programming the time to read and mingle is now! Blak & Bright Festival was established in Naarm in 2016. Making a triumphant return in 2022, the festival now features a Sydney event!

With International Women’s Day recently being marked on March 8 it was impossible to go past Eliza Reilly’s new book Sheilas. With the tagline Badass Women of Australian History, Sheilas promises to kick down the doors of history classrooms and rip the stale, pale and male textbooks from your hands delivering a powerful hit of the women that chroniclers of history forget or relegate to the footnotes. Featuring more than a dozen women across a century of Australian History, Sheilas is all the inspiration you need to go out and change your world for the better. Eliza Reilly joins Andrew to discuss Sheilas, Badass Women of Australian History

Sheila’s presents profiles of prominent women who have played important but often unheralded roles in shaping the world we live in. Beginning in the 1860’s with Mary-Ann Bug; bushranger and highway woman extraordinaire, the book intersperses badass lives with historical tidbits that serve to illuminate just how awful it was to be a woman, let alone a poor woman, or a woman of colour. The thrust of the book is that progress has not been made in a vacuum and is directly the result of people who wouldn’t sit down when they were told.

Jane Harrison is a playwright, novelist and researcher descended from the Muruwari people. Jane is also the director of Blak & Bright a First Nations Literary Festival based in Naarm (Melbourne). Blak & Bright Festival is making a triumphat return in 2022, and the festival now features a Sydney event! What - Blak & Bright Sydney Satellite event When - Saturday the 19th of March Where - Writing NSW, Callan Park, Balmain Road, Lilyfield Details - blakandbright.com.au

Sixteen year old Janet McClymont went missing weeks ago and the town of Quala in North Queensland is on edge. Parents are jumping at shadows, ferrying kids to school lest they walk too close to the canefields where Janet disappeared. Every inch of the region has been searched and the worst is feared. Tensions run high as the townspeople watch each other with suspicion. Every man in town has been questioned and while Janet could have been taken by an outsider, the townspeople cannot help but ask; what if the culprit is among them? Join me as we discover Maryrose Cuskelly’s The Cane...

Alice Wren is mid-flight. At the insistence of an urgent email Alice has fled Berlin, returning to Australia and her hometown of Fraser. After seventeen years the city is not what she remembers. The taxis are blue, her sister resents her disappearance and the nephew she has never met is now almost a man. As for the city of Fraser; it changes daily, shifting, dislocating and rearranging itself in unfathomable ways. Lydia and George don’t know what to make of Alice’s sudden return. Lydia retreats into an online sanctuary, craving the predictability and control of her digital garden. George maintains a kind of stoic silence, communicating online through text. It is the only way he can quiet the voices that flow unbidden through his head. Book Club is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.

Claire joined Andrew in conversation to discuss the impact of the pandemic on authors whose books have released in the last two years. In the course of their conversation they discuss the ways we interpret and understand history. The impact of wholesale lies being sold as alternate truth and even get into the workings of Claire's writing. Featuring Claire discussing her upcoming novel 'Enclave'! Join Andrew in conversation with Claire G Coleman... Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople