Speaker 1 00:00:10 The Freeman Press podcast is recorded in Wla Onk, and we offer our respects to elders past, present, and emerging.
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Welcome to the Freeman Press podcast, special Fogarty Literary Award edition. My name's Georgia Richter, and I was publisher and judge of the Fogarty, along with publisher Kate Sutherland and Brook Denell. This year we three judges found ourselves in unanimous agreement and unable to split the field, which is why we found ourselves placing six on the short list in a moment. 2021 Foley Literary Award winner Brook Denell, whose author of the Glasshouse will interview Josh Kemp about his manuscript Jasper Cliff. So Josh Kemp is an author of Australian Gothic fiction. His debut novel BK, was the Cogburn of the 2021 Dorothy Hewitt Award, and it won the 2022 Ned Kelly Award for best debut crime fiction. Josh has previously been shortlisted for the Kill Darling's unpublished manuscript award and long listed for the Fog literary award and highly commended in the Viva la Novella Prize. He lives in the southwest of Western Australia, but finds himself drawn over and over again to the red dirt of the states north.
Speaker 1 00:01:22 And that's exactly where his novel Jasper Cliff is set. It takes us into the desert and the most brutal of Australian landscapes where people are only ever just scraping by. And if you make a bad decision, you might find yourself dead. Josh Kemp is really at home in the gothic tradition and in writing crime. He combines these skills to pile on the atmosphere and the terror and creating a rock formation called the Rift, which has a kind of terrible magnetic attraction over people who find when they look into the crack, they can see the parts of the past being played out there. This is the kind of thing you don't wanna read late at night, which I discovered to my peril. So let's hear that interview. Brooke Nell has recorded with Josh Kemp.
Speaker 2 00:02:14 So Josh, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 00:02:16 Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 00:02:18 We're gonna be talking about your manuscript Jasper Cliff. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that story?
Speaker 3 00:02:25 Yeah, so Jasper Cliff is about this young bloke called Lachlan, whose little brother goes missing, and the last place he's seen is this tiny sort of dying little town in the east Pilbara called Jasper Cliff. And Lachlan decides to head up there and and search for his brother. His car breaks down before he even gets to town and he finds himself marooned in Jasper Cliff and Marooned at the local pub where he's surrounded by a, a kind of ragtag cohort of, uh, weird and wonderful locals. Mm-hmm. Uh, there's Pip who's English expat, who's trying to keep the service station running despite not getting much business these days. And there's shrub and June who are kind, but grieving parents. And there's Glen who on the surface seems like a very funny affable guy. Um, but maybe the less said about Glen, the better <laugh> and, uh, Lachlan's sort of not there long before he realizes just about everyone has, has lost someone in Jasper Cliff. It's a place of secrets and some of these secrets prove to be pretty terrifying. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:03:46 <affirmative>, after you've given us that little enticing introduction, would you be able to share an extract from the manuscript with our listeners?
Speaker 3 00:03:53 Absolutely. Okay. In retrospect, it must have been so hard for mum to raise two epileptic kids, him and Toby, especially after their dad said he'd be back an hour late from work and instead caught a plane over east to shack up with the other secret wife and kids he had stashed away in Sydney. The few times Lachlan had fitted in public, had left him more embarrassed than anything, particularly the time his body started to seize in the playground. In year six, he'd half expected to get teased afterward, but the frightful jerks and the froth spilling from his mouth appeared to scare the shit out of the kids so much. None of them mentioned it. Grandma had made him the most self-conscious about his epilepsy. She was always a bit hair-brained. Mom said she smoked too much dope during the sixties and so was missing a few sheep in the top paddock.
Speaker 3 00:04:52 His grandmother only witnessed one of his seizures and she reckoned he started ranting about something while he was jolting garling. She started in on him and mom and Toby with all this new age bullshit about the two boys being recipients of some kind reckoned they'd been gifted with the site. She'd heard Lachlan raving about one during his fit, and the boys were having visions of things too far back in the past for them to have possibly known anything about. She even tried to convince both boys in private to stop taking their daily anti-convulsants because western medicine surely interfered with the special abilities which the universe had chosen bestow upon them. Not sure what's brought on all these inconvenient memories because now he's standing on the side of the road and the Triton sits there idling in the mud. When Lachlan pivots slowly, he sees Glen standing a few meters away in the gravel shoulder.
Speaker 3 00:05:55 He's staring out at the ripen hills and Lachlan's never seen another human being so elated in his life. The expression on his tanned face so euphoric, it's a little frightening, that look of sheer in cautious abandon. What are we doing? Lachlan calls out to him. I thought we were going to Jasper Cliff, a single tier Gades down the pock cliff side of Glen's right cheek. And he doesn't answer, doesn't even know Lachlan is close, can only see the rip hills in the distance with devotional eyes. The black Morga trees all drip with rain closer to Lachlan and he sees now they're hanging above a dead shorthorn bull. Looks like a road train must have cleaned it up because it's such a mess. Fresh too. With the flies sipping on the milkshake of hot blood pooling from the bull's mouth, Lachlan staring at the dead shorthorn.
Speaker 3 00:06:52 Only a moment before its jaw suddenly pops open and now more flies gust from its wreaking insides despite its mouth extended to the limit. Lachlan can't see much down the dead bull's throat. It's all darkness. Reality appears roed all around the dark crater disturbed somehow Matter has failed to fill it in. Now the jaw rips and tears to get wider and wider until it's like staring into the depths of a dead volcano. Only darkness within sheer black like existence before the Big Bang. But as Lachlan stares on, he starts to see the show starts to unfold before his eyes in a pinprick of light right at the center of the void. And he sees it, he sees the truth, he sees what happened to his little brother and he starts to whale in horror.
Speaker 2 00:07:51 Thank you so much. That's so engrossing. For listeners, this manuscript and your previous novel are both pieces of, uh, Australian Gothic fiction, which is set in remote Western Australia. So WANs in the gold fields and Jasper Cliff is in the Pilbara. So I was just wondering what is it that draws you to those parts of the world in particular and why do you think it's such a suitable setting for the Australian gothic genre?
Speaker 3 00:08:22 I think both stories deal with the idea of the past coming back to haunt the present. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And a lot of that is to do with frontier history. I remember, um, when I wrote Jasper Cliff, I actually, I did the same trip that that Lachlan does in the book. And much like Lachlan, my car broke down. I got stuck in marble, but, and um, the first day in, in Marble Bar, I found this memorial on the main street sort of commemorates the early settlers in Marble Bar and the early prospectors in particular. Mm-hmm. It gives each person's name, you know, their birth date and the date they passed away. But strangely enough, they also state the way the person passed away. It's such a <inaudible> thing. The least gory way, um, any of those settlers passed was, you know, cirrhosis of the liver. And as I say in the book, that was the public.
Speaker 3 00:09:17 So it really gives you an idea of this sort of unspoken violence and that unspoken part of our history that I think West Australians, but Australians as a whole, I in particular, I think non-indigenous people are not very good at talking about. We're not very good at coming to terms with that part of our history. Cause it is uncomfortable and sometimes it's, uh, like I said, it's pretty gory. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I think now we're seeing like a reckoning in non-indigenous Australia and a lot of Australians want to engage in this history as uncomfortable as it is, you know, at the end of the year we're gonna have the, the vote on the voice in December. You know, there is this reckoning of coming to terms with that more uncomfortable side of our past
Speaker 2 00:10:03 On that kind of suits the gothic element that you are growing for as well.
Speaker 3 00:10:10 You know, the past is sort of obviously present Yeah. In a place like Marble Bar or, or a place like Gule where wan is is partly set the sort of debris, the detritus from the gold fields. It's still just laying around, you know, and it has been laying around for 150 years. It, it's not uncommon to be walking around and you, you'll step on an old, you know, whiskey bottle and when you pick it up, you'll see the date. You know, and it, it might be sort of, um, early 19 hundreds, even late 18 hundreds, the the pasts constantly sort of resurfacing and with it some, I think probably some uncomfortable truths as well.
Speaker 2 00:10:49 Yeah. And that's definitely true of Jasper Cliff, isn't it? And so what does it mean for you to be shortlisted for this year's Fogarty Literary Award?
Speaker 3 00:11:00 It's just so lovely. I remember the long listing in 2019 was, it was a really important moment for me because, you know, I'd had some short stories published, but I wasn't getting a lot of traction with my longer work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I'm sure all the emerging writers know what this is. Like, you start to go, what's going on? Am I sort of, you know, doing this for nothing? And the long listing was a confirmation that I I was at least doing something right. You know, I was sort of on the right track. This is an award for young writers, 18 to 35. So I think it's a particularly important for that reason to show, uh, young writers that they are on the right track. So to be shortlisted this time, to be honest, it just feels a little bit like showing off <laugh>. Um, but I'm <laugh> I, I'm eternally grateful. It's, um, it's so wonderful and the fact that there's six of us on the short list this time shows that the West Australian writing community is in a very, uh, a very healthy place.
Speaker 2 00:12:04 Yeah, it's great, isn't it? So thank you so much for talking to us about your manuscript today, Josh, and all the best with the award.
Speaker 3 00:12:12 Thank you so much, Brooke. Thanks. Fabulous.
Speaker 2 00:12:14 I'm actually going to be hosting the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award, and that's a free event, which takes place at the E C U Spiegel Tent on Thursday, the 25th of May, 2023. Tickets are available from the Fremantle Press
[email protected] au. So I'm Brooke Dunnell, and thank you so much for spending time with us today.
