Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:10 The Freeman Press Podcast is recorded in wk on <unk>, and we offer our respects to elders past, present, and emerging.
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Welcome to the Fremantle Press podcast's, Fogarty Literary Award edition. I'm Georgia Richter, publisher and judge of the Fogarty Literary Award, along with publisher Kate Sutherland and Brooke Nell. We're here to introduce the Fogarty Literary Award shortlist. It was a year in which we found ourselves in unanimous agreement and unable to split the top of the field, which is why we found ourselves placing six on the short list this year. In a moment, 2021 Foggy Literary Award winner Brook Tennell, whose author of the Glasshouse will interview Claire Olson about their manuscript, A wreck of seabirds. But first I'd like to tell you a bit about why I love their work. Kalia Olson is a PhD candidate at Edith Cowen University, where she's studying Australian coastal gothic literature. A wreck of seabirds is her first novel following many years as an avid reader and book lover. She's previously completed an undergraduate degree in English literature and creative writing and published an honors thesis on Australian gothic landscapes.
Speaker 1 00:01:27 So a wreck of seabirds is the second Australian Gothic novel on this year's shortlist. It's a ya novel in which Ren has lost a brother to drowning, and Brian is grappling with the vanishing of her sister Sarah. It's really beautiful moody work. It moves between the past and the present, and also the location where the lost sister is hopelessly trapped on an island and no one knows where she is. It's got so much tension, especially when characters aren't picking up on clues they should about where that sister is. What I loved was the sense of characters moving about in a landscape in which things are just not in their control. And I think that's the power of the gothic and the way that it asserts itself and the story, and that's just one of the things along with great dialogue, really relatable characters that makes this novel such a compelling and atmospheric read. So let's hear the interview. The Brook Dunnell has recorded with Kali Olson.
Speaker 2 00:02:31 Kalia, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 00:02:33 Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:02:34 So it's really great to be able to talk to you about your manuscript, which is called A Rack of Seabirds. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about it?
Speaker 3 00:02:43 Yeah, sure. So the, the novel is about two young protagonists, Brian Ian Ren, who meet on the beach very early one morning. And Ren is standing in the water and he's in quite visible emotional turmoil and Brian e comes across him and decides to approach him. And that's sort of the start of their journey. So these two protagonists get to know each other and sort of come to, come to terms with different experiences of loss that they each have and their different responses and struggles, um, to their own unique situations. Um, so this main storyline is told concurrently with two others. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, so we go back and forth between these three storylines. Re's story is that he has lost a brother when he was a lot younger mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And he's returned to this town after about a decade to look after his father, who is, um, he's very ill and he's getting worse and sometimes he doesn't remember who Ren is or confuses him with his brother who has died.
Speaker 3 00:03:48 So it's sort of a very hard situation for him. Um, and Brian, he has ended up in this sort of limbo in this town where she did grow up and her sister has been missing for a few years. So Briny has put off her own ideas for her future and what she really wants to do with her life to sort of wait for this sister to come back or to be there if she does, because her and her family have never got those answers. And then we have a storyline set two years prior, which is about this missing sister Sarah. Sarah and her best friend Aria find themselves in this very precarious situation on this very isolated island. Um, and they can't get back to the mainland. And this story is their struggle to survive and to be in this very isolated setting with only each other.
Speaker 3 00:04:39 And there's a bit of mystery in this storyline because the island is uninhabited, but it is the site of a, an abandoned research station. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so there's sort a lot of questions. And then the third storyline we have is about Ren as a young teenager and his kid Brother Sam, their relationship and the way it changes with their changing family life and a lot of circumstances that bring them closer together and also tear them apart. So these three storylines go back and forth mm-hmm. <affirmative> and by the end of each storyline, they all come together to form a complete picture. And I really wanted it to hinge on the landscape and the location and tell a layered story of these things that happen in the same place at different times. We're gonna
Speaker 2 00:05:25 Talk about the landscape and the location in a minute, but I was hoping you might be able to share with our listeners just a little extract to give them a taste of what the story's like.
Speaker 3 00:05:35 Sure, I would love to. It was late morning by the time Brian reached her parents' house. She'd moved into a share house the year before, but this place still settled over her. The moment she pulled into the drive, she felt the heaviness of memory, like layers she'd never shake. She let herself in, but wrapped her fingers on the glass panel. As she stepped through the door, the air was colder inside Mike, she called out about time B a voice yelled back. She followed his voice to the open living room where he sat sprawled on the couch, a booking his hand and his thumbs still holding his place. He fixed her with a serious look. He powdered for a beat before letting his face break into a grin as he sprung to his feet. Come here, he pulled her into a hug and she settled into him.
Speaker 3 00:06:19 Missed you. She smiled back and nodded at the book in his hand lightly. It was a bound copy of criminal case law dogged and marked with Post-Its. She knew if she opened to any given page, she'd find it full of scrolling notations and references. He laughed throwing the book back onto the couch behind him. One of its needs to back up this fight if we're really going to do it. Brian's gaze flicked to the old school, photos still perched on the bookshelf, and she felt the familiar tightness in her chest. Mike placed a hand on her shoulder giving it a gentle squeeze. Hey, he said softly drawing her gaze back to him. I didn't mean that how it sounded. She held the smile on her face. I know what you meant. She raised the keys in her hand, ready to go. He nodded. Grabbing a jacket from where it hung by the door.
Speaker 3 00:07:07 I could have driven, you know, he said as I approached her Kia, she rolled her eyes. He'd sold his perfectly respectable car and bought a roaring beast of a motorcycle in its place. Brian had ridden with him once and sworn never to repeat the experience. She suspected it was a final act of rebellion to get him through the next few years before he condemned himself to a lifetime of starched shirts and dress shoes. Mike was smart and he was driven and their sister's disappearance had made Brian anything but that. After the search had been dropped, she'd spent the better part of the year in a haze of depression, blackout drunk nights and beds that weren't her own. Her parents blamed each other. Her grownup brothers only drifted further away after one too many slammed doors and bitter accusations. Their dad walked out and kept moving all the way to Brisbane.
Speaker 3 00:07:54 But she'd had Mike this year. He'd moved to the city to be closer to school, but he spent as much time as he could back home, often making the two hour commute back to Perth in the early hours of the morning to make an in time for lectures. She turned to look at him as they waited at a red light. I saw this guy this morning. She began, he nudged her gently with a curled fist and eyebrow raised suggestively. He smiled back. Not like that. He reminded me of her, I guess, or maybe of me. He stared at her intently. How do you mean? He asked carefully. She was quiet for a moment. The light turned green and she didn't reply until they'd pulled into the parking lot before their most frequented cafe. She killed the ignition with a deep sigh and finally looked over at him. I guess he reminded me of bad days.
Speaker 2 00:08:43 Thank you so much for sharing that. That's really, really enticing. As I said earlier, the sense of place in your manuscript is really, really strong. There's the, the small coastal town where a lot of the events take place. There's that remote island that the two friends end up on and even out at sea there's, you know, the the fishing boats, the choppiness of the ocean. What was it that inspired you to kind of pick that setting and how were you able to create that, do you think?
Speaker 3 00:09:14 I have always lived here in Perth. This is where I grew up and I've always lived in suburbs close to the coast. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it's just, I suppose, something that's always been there. I wrote this as part of my PhD where I was looking at gothic literature and gothic locations. Um, and I started thinking about why coastal settings aren't used as much in those stories. So that's sort of how it began. And then I read a lot of West Australian coastal fiction or Australian coastal fiction in general. Tim Winton, who I've always loved and a lot of other authors as well. But I find a lot of Australian fiction does really rely on landscape and setting in a very strong way so that it, it almost feels like a character. So that was something that I really wanted to do in this book and I really wanted that to be in there. So I've said it in a fictional coastal town, but a lot of the descriptions and specific places are based on places that I see every day. A lot of the inspiration for the island was Rottenest Island, if it wasn't a tourist destination and it hadn't been built up, and if something else had happened there and it had, you know, just sat there in the ocean. So there's a lot of things like that where I've taken my own experience and then created a fiction from that.
Speaker 2 00:10:39 I personally think you've really achieved that, making the landscape into a character. It really, especially that island that's got those real gothic qualities that you were going for. Um, so my final question today is what does it mean for you to be shortlisted for this year's Fogarty Literary Award?
Speaker 3 00:10:59 It means everything, to be honest. It's amazing. And, um, I feel like the, the writing community in Perth is such a lovely close, close-knit community. And I think I've been involved in it for a really long time. From the other side, I always go to a lot of author and author events and, you know, signings and readings and festivals and all of those things. But I've always gone as a reader mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so this has just really felt like, uh, sort of a welcoming into the other side of that community, into the other side of that family, which is really, really lovely. Everyone's been so, like, so supportive and so nice and sort of straight away, like it's happened really quickly, which is incredible because all I've ever wanted to do was write and be a writer and, and be a part of that. So it's, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 00:11:51 Oh, thank you so much for, um, sharing that with us. Thank you for coming today and um, really best of luck for the award. Thank you so much. So I'm actually gonna be hosting the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award. This is a free event that's gonna take place at the E C U Spiegel Tent on Thursday, the 25th of May in 2023. Tickets are available from the Fremantle Press website, which is www.fremantlepress.com au. I'm Brooke Nell, and thank you so much for listening to the podcast today.
