Holden Sheppard talks to David Whish-Wilson about his hard-hitting new crime novel True West and what it says about our right-wing past and our political present

David Whish-Wilson says seeing the rise of populism and nationalist right-wing movements around the world made him want to reflect on Australia's long history of nationalist movements. 'I hadn't seen anyone else writing about Perth's late-80s Neo-Nazi scene ... I've spoken to many Asian Australians over the years and they often talk about that as a particularly unpleasant time to be a Western Australian ... I really wanted a mini-exploration of that period to reference what's happening around the world now.' As well as being an award-winning crime writer, David is the Creative Writing coordinator at Curtin University. In this podcast, Holden and David delve into some basic things we can all do make ourselves better writers.