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Final Draft - Great Conversations
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Great conversations with authors from Australia and around the world.
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Book Club - Johanna Bell’s Department of the Vanishing
5d ago00:03:08Tap to summarizeJohanna Bell is an award winning author of fiction, poetry and children’s books. Her new novel Department of the Vanishing won the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. For more than twenty years Ava has toiled away at the Department of Vanishing cataloguing species as they go extinct. The pace of the work has been increasing and as is always the case there’s never enough hands. Humanity is on the brink of a mass extinction event. Birdsong is falling silent and people didn’t even notice it disappearing. It’s Ava’s job to archive the remains, even as her personal life teeters. But in her dying mother’s confused words Ava finds something. Maybe hope. Maybe a clue to the mystery of her father, long missing, and a song that contains more than any might assume… Department of the Vanishing is a visually innovative novel that weaves a mystery around just about the saddest thing I can think of. I love the birds that visit my house and as I read I couldn’t bear to think of not hearing the Magpie’s warble, or the chittering of the Galah calling me out to give it some seed. Casting the end of birdsong as the emotional heart of the novel was effective at getting me hooked on the mystery and serves as an interesting plot point as we come to realise the most versatile call of all may lurk deep within the department. There is a resonance to the idea that silence falling is the advance call of life ending. Through Ava we get a sense that the world isn’t doing ok. She’s over worked at living behind a massage parlour where the women are wonderful but the ambiance is lacking. Her partner is a dick and now the natural world is dwindling to so-much space in manila folders available to those ready to parade through the archives. Bureaucracy gone mild. The book itself is crafted as a kind of off-kilter file. Imagine a cork board linked by red twine and you’re on your way to imagining Ava collection. It is through these disparate files, recordings, and police reports that the reader is offered the opportunity to get to the heart of the mystery. Ava’s sure there’s more to all of this death and destruction, and that it’s somehow linked to her family. To the disappearance of her father all those years ago. As I read I knew that this was something unique. Moreover, Department of the Vanishing wasn’t going to serve itself up to me, I would have to work to figure it out. If you enjoy creative fiction, zines, and interactive texts, this one’s for you.
Transcribe →Book Club - Antoun Issa’s Rebirth
2w ago00:03:25Tap to summarizeAntoun Issa is a Lebanese-Australian journalist and co-founder of Deepcut News. Antoun has a new book out entitled Rebirth and with the byline a “Love Story from the depths of war.” Rebirth chronicles Antoun’s mothers experiences of the beginnings of the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and her subsequent migration to Australia. The novel centers around the experience of the pseudonymously named Khalil family and their eldest daughter Laila. Laila works as a seamstress, supporting her father’s income for the family and giving her some small degree of autonomy in moving around Beirut between home and her work. Laila is of an age when her family would be seeking a match, and for her to marry, but Laila is jealous of her independence, her role as a support to her family, and is also secretly in love with the handsome hairdresser she sees coming to and from work. Laila might reasonably worry about the approval of her family and the politics of relationships in a close knit community. When war breaks out and factions around the city close off territories she comes to understand that simple things such as living and dying can be easily overturned by desperate men with guns. In a short while she will see her life and her love transformed utterly. Rebirth is a deeply personal and tremendously affecting novel. In crafting the book Antoun Issa meticulously crafted stories from locals in Beirut and his mother’s own reminiscences. He takes these interviews and transforms them into a vibrant narrative evoking both the history of the time, but also something of the community and what is being lost as it is felt by those who would come to mourn it eternally. When I read the book it was against the backdrop of a new war unfolding in Lebanon, with invading Israeli forces uprooting town much as Rebirth describes the uprooting and displacement of the Khalil family. As that conflict escalates I turn again to Rebirth as a source for understanding what is at stake and the generational trauma visited on those who are driven from their lands. Rebirth is a vessel for that memory. It is also a testament to the humanity of the people who are caught in the middle of conflict. Those who become casualties but often don’t get memorialised as the fighters do because they are poor, or not strategically important in the schemes of little men with big guns. This is an incredible work of narrative non-fiction and a generous invitation to all readers to understand both the history and the personal consequence of a decades long conflict seared into the hearts of so many Lebanese diaspora across the world and in Australia.
Transcribe →Katherine Johnson’s Every Wild Soul
2w ago00:28:34Tap to summarizeThe Final Draft 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. Katherine Johnson is the author of five novels including Matryoshka and Paris Savages. Katherine’s latest Every Wild Soul is the inaugural winner of The Australian Fiction Prize and Katherine is joining us to discuss today. To the world Maria Island is a paradise; an ecological wonderland off the coast of Tasmania. At eighteen years old Maria is all she’s known for so much of her life. She loves the beauty and the chance to learn about biodiversity, but she’s also conscious her life doesn’t look like other girls and that maybe she’d like to change that. Min’s father Piers has other ideas though. Ever since his wife left him he’s been determined to protect his daughter. Protection can look a lot like control though, so when a storm blows over Maria it promises more than a few ill winds for the residents. 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.
Transcribe →Johanna Bell’s Department of the Vanishing
3w ago00:47:54Tap to summarizeThe Final Draft 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. Johanna is an award winning author of fiction, poetry and children’s books. She’s joining us today with her new novel Department of the Vanishing which won the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. For more than twenty years Ava has toiled away at the Department of Vanishing cataloguing species as they go extinct. The pace of the work has been increasing and as is always the case there’s never enough hands. Birdsong is falling silent and people didn’t even notice. But now it’s Ava’s job to archive the remains, even as her personal life teeters. But in her dying mother’s confused words Ava finds something. Maybe hope. Maybe a clue to the mystery of her father, long missing, and a song that contains more than any might assume… 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.
Transcribe →Book Club - Y.M. Abdel-Magied’s At Sea
4w ago00:04:30Tap to summarizeYassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese diaspora author, screenwriter and award-winning social advocate. She has published six books, including essays in Talking About a Revolution and a series for younger readers, You must be Layla and Listen Layla. Today we’re going to be talking about her latest, literary fiction debut, At Sea. Zainab has spent her life on oil rigs living the fly in fly out life. It’s meant missing out on a lot, including a relationship with her sister. Now she’s in Perth on a promise that she will see her sister through the birth of her first child. This could finally be the chance to repair their relationship. When Zainab’s boss Bryce calls her back from leave to investigate strange goings on on the rig Clarissa Clyde, she knows this could be her big break. Zainab’s reluctant to leave Kareema but thrilled at the opportunity to take charge as a tool pusher. Joining a rig near the end of a drill isn’t easy. As a woman on the rigs Zainab knows she won’t get an easy ride, let alone an open door to the mysteries plaguing the Clarissa Clyde. The rig is almost too perfect and the team are rough but nothing she hasn’t handled. She is determined though, and haunted by Bryce’s words, ‘Make sure everyone gets out alive’. The hook for me with At Sea was Yassmin’s writing. I wouldn’t normally gravitate to a thriller set on the high seas but I know from experience Yassmin tackles big ideas. I also know she’s worked on rigs herself and so I was intrigued at how she would treat this world that seems so strange from the shore. Immediately with Zainab we come to understand that this is a man’s world. Her position as a tool pusher should give her some authority but there are men on board who would still demean her as par for the course. The novel works to understand this dynamic as both a moral problem, but also a product of the hyper-real world of a perilous lifestyle. Zainab grapples as much with her own ability to answer disrespect and violence in kind, as she does with any absolute morality of the actions. Life on the rigs is contrasted with the world Kareema offers; life on land, life with family. It’s the kind of world that Zainab has been avoiding. We see that Zainab, along with many of the men on the rig struggle with the demands of these separate lives. But why are these demands so disparate? The plot and the action of At Sea is gripping and I found myself drawn into the claustrophobic spaces and the alien vocabulary of drilling. While I understood very little of the processes involved in these mammoth endeavours to pull oil out of the ocean, the storytelling is such that the precision and the danger is never far from the character's, and therefore the reader’s mind. This is a mystery but not in the conventional sense. While Zainab is tasked with uncovering some sort of conspiracy or coverup, it is tantalisingly obtuse and she is never sure if the danger is real. Within the cauldron of life on a floating petrol bomb she must grapple with whether it is better to continually rock the boat in the name of safety, or to maintain an unexamined conformity for the sake of group cohesion. The trick is knowing and the wrong choice may not be discovered till too late. The twinned tensions of Zainab’s role as a woman with authority, and the possibility of impending catastrophe are constantly stoked. Zainab feels obligated to speak up but cursed not to be believed. Much like Cassandra, Zainab can only watch on as her situation deteriorates. At Sea sets out to achieve a lot, and broadly meets this aim being smart and pacey, technical and philosophical. It asks a lot more questions than it answers but that’s perhaps more a reflection on the world which also refuses to listen when it doesn’t want to hear.
Transcribe →Mary Colussi’s Touch Grass
Jun 2000:29:59Tap to summarizeThe Final Draft 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. Mary Colussi’s debut novel Touch Grass won the 2025 Penguin Literary Prize. She is joining us today as Touch Grass prepares to launch itself into the world… Charlie’s soul occasionally leaves her body, at least she thinks that’s what’s happening. It’s probably not astral projection. In her job she helps people’s digital selves to leave the internet. Not their physical selves but people seem to forget anyway. Charlie’s housemate Ian won’t leave their apartment. But his twin will. And there’s a an immortal animal that won’t leave anywhere. Ever. At least that’s the theory. It’s all a bit confusing, but then that’s life 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.
Transcribe →Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore
Jun 1400:42:30Tap to summarizeThe Final Draft 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. Charlotte McConaghy is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the novels Wild Dark Shore, Once There Were Wolves, and Migrations. She is joining us fresh from winning the Literary Fiction Book of the Year at THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS 2026 for Wild Dark Shore Rowan has risked everything to get to Shearwater Island. When she is dragged lifeless from the water she wakes to find herself in the middle of the Salt family, the last residents of the island. Dominic and his children are racing against the ocean to rescue the contents of Shearwater’s Seed Vault. It’s a noble mission but Rowan questions why the scientists and researchers would abandon it to a caretaker and his children. Everyone on Shearwater has secrets and Rowan must decide quickly whether hers are in direct conflict with Dominic and whatever he is keeping from her. 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.
Transcribe →Book Club - Brendan Colley’s The Season for Flying Saucers
Jun 900:03:36Tap to summarizeBrendan Colley’s first novel was the much feted The Signal Line and introduced us to his wild and wonderful world within a world of Hobart. Brendan’s new novel The Season for Flying Saucers promises to deliver just as much of a ride. When the lights appear on the first night of summer Hobart is abuzz. Locals and paranormal pundits alike agree, it’s shaping up to be a good season. Noah is skeptical. His life is spiraling more than a little; estranged from his family, his wife has left and he’s just been fired from his job. Noah’s sure if he can make payments on the family home he’s bought back and not sure if there’s much of a family to fill it with. Truthfully there’s really nothing to leave behind if they do come to get him. Weird has followed Noah ever since the night twelve years ago when his father disappeared in the lights. Since then he’s been infamous, inseparable from the lights and this Season for Flying Saucers is shaping up to be a doozy. Of course with the lights comes the scrutiny. Now Noah is thrown into a too close for comfort version of his childhood as both his mother and sister move in and try to sort out the mystery and their fraught family dynamic. Brendan Colley has crafted a wickedly fun and far out exploration of the lengths we will go to for family. Within the double brick of Hobart’s northern suburbs we are shown the possibility of a universe much larger than we imagine and yet still not big enough to escape your mum's disapproval. Noah has hung on to the possibility of his father being a part of something bigger. That his disappearance might have some meaning. It’s coloured his world and now his family must come together and try to figure out all the things they left unsaid all those years ago. The novel plays with our own need to discover and to believe by dangling hooks and misdirection as we watch the world watch Noah and the lights that seem to be fixed on his house. While we wonder at the possibility of the impossible we see a group of people coming together and working their way through a different type of impossible. I really loved both Brendan’s first novel and now The Season for Flying Saucers. Both novels understand that our need to believe moves in both directions and even as we look out to the fantastical in the world there is so much about our inner lives that is equally surprising when we take the time to pay it the attention it’s due. This is the kind of sci-fi and spec-fic that is exciting me in Australian writing today. It understands that as we continue to live in a world that might generously be described as sub-optimal we are looking for answers large and small. I won’t tell you if the lights in the sky turn out to be real but I can tell you that in The Season for Flying Saucers, the time spent looking for them is well worth your while.
Transcribe →Antoun Issa’s Rebirth
Jun 500:45:31Tap to summarizeThe Final Draft 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. Antoun Issa is a Lebanese-Australian journalist and co-founder of Deepcut News. Antoun has a new book out entitled Rebirth it’s described as a “Love Story from the depths of war.” and chronicles Antoun’s mothers experiences of the beginnings of the Lebanese civil war and her migration to Australia. This is a deeply personal and tremendously affecting novel. Antoun takes his interviews with his mother and his time in Beirut and transforms it into a vibrant story. 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.
Transcribe →Book Club - Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore
Jun 200:03:50Tap to summarizeCharlotte McConaghy is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the novels Wild Dark Shore, Once There Were Wolves, and Migrations. Wild Dark Shore is the Literary Fiction Book of the Year at THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS 2026. Shearwater Island has a dark history. Pillaged for its natural resources, the island saw the massacre of hundreds of thousands of whales, seals and penguins to prop up the energy needs of industrialising countries. Since those dark days the island has become a miracle of environmental renewal only to see itself threatened again by rising sea levels that could see it vanish forever. Rowan has risked everything to get to Shearwater Island, and the wildest storm in years may just claim that price. When she is dragged lifeless from the water she wakes to find herself in the middle of the Salt family, the last residents of the island. Dominic and his children are racing against the ocean to rescue the contents of Shearwater’s Seed Vault. It’s a noble mission but Rowan questions why the scientists and researchers would abandon it to a caretaker and his children. Everyone on Shearwater has secrets and trust is in short supply but Rowan must decide quickly whether hers are in direct conflict with Dominic and whatever he is keeping from her. Wild Dark Shore is a novel that confronts us with our humanity in the face of climate destruction. When Rowan arrives on Shearwater she finds a family fully immersed in the ecosystem of the island. Dom keeps the infrastructure running against all odds, much in the same way he desperately tries to keep his kids around him as a single dad. His eldest Raff struggles to understand how to be a man after living the last eight years on the island. Fen is more at home in the water and Orly has known nothing but the wilds of Shearwater his whole life. As Rowan struggles to know who to trust she must reconcile herself to the fact she is at their mercy. Can she discover the secret of Shearwater before it’s all too late. Wild Dark Shore makes much of its Gothic set up and wild setting. We are give a narrowed cast of characters in extremis and watch as they circle each other warily. With suspicion as a guiding principle we are offered the possibility of a dark heart whilst also shown the love and attention they carry for the island and it’s welfare. Even as the human drama plays out we are confronted with the broader ecological catastrophe that plagues not only the central characters but the wider world they are only superficially separated from. The grievances they carry against each other start to pale in comparison to the challenges they must face as the weather continues to change. I found this a satisfying read both for its central mystery but also for its dealing with feelings of hopelessness and climate grief. As we see more frequent and worsening natural disasters we are going to need books like Wild Dark Shore to help us work through how we might possibly understand our place in it all
Transcribe →