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The hunt for Australia’s next great novel · The Front

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  Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
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  Speaker 2: Just say play the news from the Australian.
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  Speaker 1: From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Friday, July nineteenth. Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest says labor
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  Speaker 1: should push ahead with billions in tax incentives for green hydrogen,
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  Speaker 1: even though he's dramatically scaling back his own investment. Forest
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  Speaker 1: says high energy costs must come down to make green
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  Speaker 1: hydrogen a viable fuel source. An exclusive on the Australian
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  Speaker 1: dot com dot a You right Now, Defense and Veterans
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  Speaker 1: Affairs ignored mounting evidence of chronic brain injuries in soldiers
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  Speaker 1: caused by repeated exposure to blast pressure waves.
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  Speaker 2: The injuries, which have been linked.
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  Speaker 1: To suicides, are common in special Forces personnel. It just
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  Speaker 1: became a little easier to become an author. The Australians
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  Speaker 1: launching a brand new literary prize worth thirty five thousand
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  Speaker 1: dollars and a book deal today. Why TikTok is changing
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  Speaker 1: the way books are consumed and who gets to write.
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  Speaker 1: Writing a good book used to be the first step
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  Speaker 1: for getting a publishing deal. But in today's market, that
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  Speaker 1: doesn't always cut it. So how are new writers getting noticed?
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  Speaker 3: TikTok so, I was going through a very difficult time
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  Speaker 3: in my life and the one thing that got me.
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  Speaker 2: Through that was journaling.
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  Speaker 3: So when I heard of the term shadow work, that
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  Speaker 3: was the missing puzzle piece that gave a name to
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  Speaker 3: this introspective work that I was already doing in my journal.
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  Speaker 3: That's when I decided to create the shadow Work Journal.
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  Speaker 3: And it's had immense online praise and it's reached millions
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  Speaker 3: of people. It's incredible to see how many people have
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  Speaker 3: resonated with this work.
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  Speaker 2: That's Kayla Shahane.
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  Speaker 1: She's in her mid twenties and she's the author of
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  Speaker 1: The shadow Work Journal. It's a fill in the blank's
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  Speaker 1: self improvement book. Thanks to TikTok, Shahan has sold more
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  Speaker 1: than a million copies of this journal. She's now got
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  Speaker 1: a five book deal and a seven figure advance with
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  Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster. When she has a new book to sell,
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  Speaker 1: Shahine hops on TikTok.
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  Speaker 3: Good things will come your way if you make room
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  Speaker 3: for them. Lucky Girl syndrome is so real.
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  Speaker 2: Lucky Girl syndrome is like.
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  Speaker 3: A two part method, taking control of your self concept
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  Speaker 3: the mental image that you have of yourself.
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  Speaker 1: Social media can be great for book sales, but a
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  Speaker 1: genie's author doesn't always make a good influencer. Take Patrick White,
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  Speaker 1: a literary giant and a famously prickly recluse. Here he
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  Speaker 1: is after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy three.
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  Speaker 2: Mister White, first of all, congratulations, How does it feel? Oh?
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  Speaker 4: Rather bewildering. I had my door battered on half the
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  Speaker 4: night by the prayers, taking a sleeping piling on to bed.
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  Speaker 4: That's a strange way to celebrate such an hour. I
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  Speaker 4: get up very early. I'd had a very hard day
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  Speaker 4: and I wanted to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: If White was writing for the first time today and
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  Speaker 1: needed a popular TikTok account to be published and promote
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  Speaker 1: his books, would the world have read his work?
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  Speaker 4: Well, I'm not writing at this moment, but my publisher
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  Speaker 4: has another book and I'm preparing to write another one.
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  Speaker 4: Can I ask what about now?
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  Speaker 2: Perhaps not.
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  Speaker 5: Being a writer in Australia is incredibly tough. We know
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  Speaker 5: that it's really hard to be published, and I think
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  Speaker 5: a lot of the time bookshops and the culture in
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  Speaker 5: which we live encourages writers from overseas.
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  Speaker 2: That's Caroline Overington.
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  Speaker 1: She's the literary editor at The Australian and she's also
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  Speaker 1: one of the judges at the Australian Fiction Prize, the
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  Speaker 1: country's newest competition for authors. Caroline loves books that share
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  Speaker 1: unique Australian voices, but sometimes risk adverse publishing industry can
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  Speaker 1: make it hard for talented new writers to be discovered.
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  Speaker 5: There are a handful of major publishing companies and they
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  Speaker 5: have to make decisions based on what they think will sell. So,
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  Speaker 5: for example, if a vampire book takes off, suddenly you'll
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  Speaker 5: see twenty vampire books. But then if you come along
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  Speaker 5: with a book that doesn't quite fit into what they're
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  Speaker 5: looking for, you might miss out, even though what you've
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  Speaker 5: written is very good.
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  Speaker 1: And if you do get a deal literally riches await
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  Speaker 1: or not. The average income for a literary fiction author
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  Speaker 1: is just fifteen thousand, four hundred dollars according to the
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  Speaker 1: most recent survey by Creative Australia that's the government's advisory
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  Speaker 1: body for the arts. If you are just for inflation,
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  Speaker 1: the people pouring their souls into print are making less
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  Speaker 1: now than they were a decade ago.
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  Speaker 5: Some people will earn enough to make a living. It
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  Speaker 5: depends what you want from your book. A lot of
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  Speaker 5: people will say to me, I do it for the
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  Speaker 5: love of it. It's a labor of love. I mean,
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  Speaker 5: don't do it just to make your fortune. I mean absolutely,
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  Speaker 5: it is possible to make a living in Australia as
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  Speaker 5: a writer. Not everyone is going to make the top ten.
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  Speaker 5: The top ten is the top ten because there's only ten,
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  Speaker 5: so you know, not everyone's going to have a huge success.
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  Speaker 5: But I know some people they just want to write
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  Speaker 5: their book, like they have a book that they have
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  Speaker 5: something that they want to say.
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  Speaker 1: If TikTok terrifies you, There's now another way to get
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  Speaker 1: an unpublished manuscript into the world.
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  Speaker 5: It's called the Australian Fiction Prize. We're incredibly excited about it.
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  Speaker 5: We're in partnership with HarperCollins. HarperCollins being one of the
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  Speaker 5: major publishing houses in Australia, arguably the number one publishing
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  Speaker 5: house in Australia. And the great thing about this prize
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  Speaker 5: is it is open to all Australian storytellers who are
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  Speaker 5: writing fiction. There's no age limit on it. You don't
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  Speaker 5: have to be a debut writer. And one of the
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  Speaker 5: other very exciting things about it that sets it apart
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  Speaker 5: I think from other prizes is that your book, if successful,
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  Speaker 5: will be published, meaning you'll be able to find it
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  Speaker 5: on the shelves alongside other HarperCollins writers like Trent Dalton
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  Speaker 5: and Julia Baird and Dervla McTurnan and other great crime
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  Speaker 5: writers like that, You'll be able to go into bookshops
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  Speaker 5: find your book. Hopefully you'll get invited to a few writers'
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  Speaker 5: festivals as well and join that whole experience of being
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  Speaker 5: a published writer.
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  Speaker 1: And there's a twenty thousand dollar cash prize plus a
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  Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollar advance.
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  Speaker 5: We have great storytellers in this country and we always
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  Speaker 5: have had. We've had a storytelling culture here arguably for
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  Speaker 5: sixty thousand years. So it's something we really want to
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  Speaker 5: promote the idea of an Australian voice telling Australian stories.
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  Speaker 2: Coming up.
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  Speaker 1: Publishing loves a cancelation, so who's allowed to write what?
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  Speaker 1: These days, The Australian's Books coverage is unrivaled in our
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  Speaker 1: beloved review section every Saturday and twenty four to seven
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  Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot a U. We have
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  Speaker 1: author interviews, poetry reviews.
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  Speaker 2: And much more. We'll be back after this break.
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  Speaker 1: If there's a book bursting to get out of you.
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  Speaker 1: The inaugural Australian Fiction Prize is looking for entries. It
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  Speaker 1: has to be fiction, but it doesn't need to tick
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  Speaker 1: any particular boxes about theme or identity.
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  Speaker 5: Certainly, we would like the winner of this prize to
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  Speaker 5: be a book that many people read and enjoy. We
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  Speaker 5: won't be selecting, I think, a book just because of
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  Speaker 5: its worthiness. We would like to be able to select
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  Speaker 5: something that is a really ripping read as well.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps one of the hottest ongoing debates in the literary
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  Speaker 1: world is whether or not an author should write about
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  Speaker 1: marginalized characters if they themselves are not from those communities.
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  Speaker 1: In recent years, Australian author Thomas Kennely apologized for assuming
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  Speaker 1: an Aboriginal voice in his book, a Prize nominated nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy two novel, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. He said
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  Speaker 1: he would not write that book today. And then there's
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  Speaker 1: Helen Demdenko. She was a twenty three year old Ukrainian
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  Speaker 1: Australian fond of folk dancers and traditional costumes. When she
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  Speaker 1: unleashed a culture war, Demidenko wrote a manuscript which won
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  Speaker 1: the Vogel Literary Award in nineteen ninety four and the
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  Speaker 1: Miles Franklin in nineteen ninety five. In winning the Miles
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  Speaker 1: Franklin Award, Miss Demidenko joins an illustrious list of Australian
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  Speaker 1: authors Patrick White, Thomas Kannely, Peter Careyington. And then it
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  Speaker 1: was revealed she was not actually Ukrainian at all. Her book,
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  Speaker 1: The Hand that signed the Paper told the story of
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  Speaker 1: Ukrainian characters who she claimed were based on family members
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  Speaker 1: participating in Nazi death squads and themselves being persecuted by
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  Speaker 1: Jewish communists. The book had already prompted accusations of anti Semitism,
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  Speaker 1: and then it turned out Demdenko's name was really Helen
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  Speaker 1: Darville and her parents were from Scunthorpe in northern England.
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  Speaker 1: She claimed the whole thing, including the folk dancing, wasn't
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  Speaker 1: a fraud, it was a clever marketing ploy So setting
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  Speaker 1: clever marketing ploys aside? Is it okay to write about
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  Speaker 1: things you haven't personally experienced or to adopt the identity
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  Speaker 1: of someone else.
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  Speaker 5: You cannot put the shackles on writers. You just can't.
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  Speaker 5: And I know that there are some people who say, oh, well,
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  Speaker 5: you have to stay in your lane, or you can't
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  Speaker 5: write a character with a disability unless you have that
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  Speaker 5: disability yourself. You can't write a character who has same
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  Speaker 5: sex attracted unless you are yourself gay. That is absolute
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  Speaker 5: and utter nonsense. So I will never be the kind
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  Speaker 5: of person. I will never be the kind of critic
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  Speaker 5: that says, oh, this book didn't work because the writer
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  Speaker 5: should not have been allowed to write it. Anyone can
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  Speaker 5: write anything at any time, for any reason, and may
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  Speaker 5: you be judged on how well you pull it off.
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  Speaker 5: My advice to young writers would be to tell the
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  Speaker 5: story you want to tell, and don't be cowed by
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  Speaker 5: some of the criticism out there in the wider market,
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  Speaker 5: because for sure, there is a lot of pressure on
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  Speaker 5: people not to write certain things, not to hold certain
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  Speaker 5: points of view, not to be agitating for certain groups
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  Speaker 5: of people. And I think that all of that is nonsense.
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  Speaker 5: What is in your heart and you write what you
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  Speaker 5: want the world to know. Let your light shine as
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  Speaker 5: brightly as you can, because that's what the world needs
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  Speaker 5: from you. It doesn't need the same story that everyone
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  Speaker 5: else is telling, and it doesn't need you to live
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  Speaker 5: in some kind of metaphorical cage where you're frightened to
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  Speaker 5: say what you think or what you feel, or what
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  Speaker 5: you see or how you've experienced things. Go out there
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  Speaker 5: and tell the best story you can tell.
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  Speaker 1: Caroline Overington is The Australian's literary editor. The Australian Fiction
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  Speaker 1: Prize is open until August two, and you can find
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  Speaker 1: it by searching Australian Fiction Prize.
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  Speaker 2: For the best.
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  Speaker 1: the nation. Join ours subscribers now at the Australian dot
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  Speaker 1: com dot au.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on the front.
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  Speaker 1: Our team is Joshua Burton, Kristen Amiot, Stephanie Coombs, Tiffany Dimack,
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  Speaker 1: Jasper leek Leat Sammagloo and me Claire Harvey.