Podcast
Final Draft - Great Conversations
Hosted by 2SER 107.3FM · EN
Great conversations with authors from Australia and around the world.
38episodes
Episodes
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Sara Haddad’s The Sunbird - young readers' edition
Mar 500:24:38Tap 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. Sara Haddad is an editor and writer. You first met Sara on Final Draft when we discussed he debut novella The Sunbird. Today Sara is returning with a young readers edition of The Sunbird. The Younger Reader's Edition of the Sunbird rediscovers the story of Nabila and explores her story for a new audience. 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 - Shailee Thompson’s How To Kill a Guy in Ten Dates
Mar 100:03:41Tap to summarizeShailee Thompson is a writer and educator and today we’ve got her debut novel, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates. Right off the top I’ll let you all know that How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is a horror/slasher story. It has a lot of fun playing with the genre and that’s why I’m bringing it in for you, but if that’s not your thing right now just mute the next few minutes. Jamie needs a break from her PhD thesis on the intersection of rom coms and horror movies. Academia can be murder! So Jamie and her best friend Laurie decide to go to a speed dating event at a local nightclub. Dating is hell and the apps are cooked but this should be a laugh. At least each ‘date’ is only ten minutes. It’s all going so-so, with a few sparks from aesthetically pleasing partners when the lights go out. Not exactly romantic but when they come back on Jamie finds her current date slashed ear to ear as she is thrown into a fight for her life! It only gets bolder and bloodier from here in How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates but this is a narrative that knows its genre. Jamie quickly draws on her academic experience to teach the survivors the ‘Rules’; ten vital tricks to staying alive in a slasher film. These are the group's lifeline as they search for an exit and a way to return to the real world. But their villain has their own plan and besides people never follow rules. Like so many of us Shailee Thompson has come of age in a post Scream world where it’s not enough to simply fill the screen with vicarious gore. The horror films of the seventies and eighties gave a whole generation some freudian insight into human nature and now the post modern slashers of the nineties are spawning their own progeny that know they’re in a story and really want to flip the script. Thus How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is part slasher, part rom com, with a protagonist who doesn’t know whether she’s a leading lady or a final girl, and really prefers not to make the choice. The novel is filled with jump scares, meet-cutes, blood spatter, and sexual tension (not necessarily in that order. From the outset, Jamie’s thesis introduces us to the notion that both genres share a lot in common and the rest of the story goes to extreme lengths to test that theory. This is a lot of fun… Genre heads will enjoy the way the tropes are both respected and inverted. Literary nerds can geek out at the high concept meta narrative. Armchair sleuths can try to solve it. Film nerds will love the myriad nods and easter eggs. And we can all enjoy the vicarious pleasure of not being stuck in the story ourselves. How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is a knowing, pacy, well written look at the type of story we usually take for granted as entertainment. It reassures us it’s ok to have fun, but also the fun is part of a much more clever and dangerous world. Being a book nerd has never been so much fun.
Transcribe →Kay Kerr’s Might Cry Later
Feb 2700:38:16Tap 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. Kay Kerr is an author and journalist based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Kay’s latest novel, Might Cry Later, is out now. Nora is home for Xmas, Actually she’s been home a little longer than that and will probably be staying a bit after. At twenty-one and living in Melbourne Nora found her life imploding. What came next, well Nora’s not quite ready to face yet, but she came home with a brand new Autism diagnosis that no one in her family wants to talk about. Holidays are hard enough, but as Nora watches all the people in her life gather round she questions whether her neurodiverse brain can regulate through all this stimulation. 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 →Christian White’s The Long Night
Feb 2300:50:07Tap 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. Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. He is the bestselling author of titles including The Nowhere Child (2018), The Wife and the Widow (2019), and Wild Place (2021). Christian’s joining us today with his latest The Long Night On a quiet night in the sleepy little village of Talowin, Em sits in the Royal Oak pub waiting for her date. Em’s convinced she’s going to die alone, but who knows maybe this date will be different. It’s getting late and Em’s about to give up when a figure enters the pub, and what happens next will change Em’s life forever… 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 - Kay Kerr’s Might Cry Later
Feb 2100:04:20Tap to summarizeSummer time in the Final Draft household brings lots of new release and pre-release titles and the corresponding challenge of knowing where to start. When the titles started rolling in though it was very easy to pick up Kay Kerr’s new novel, her first aimed at adult readers because I’ve enjoyed her Young Adult writing, as well as her strong autistic characters and her approach to neurodiversity. Kay is an author and journalist based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She’s the author of Please Don’t Hug Me, Social Queue, and Love & Autism. Kay’s latest novel, Might Cry Later, is our book club title for today. Nora is home for Xmas, Actually she’s been home a little longer than that and will probably be staying a bit after. At twenty-one and living in Melbourne Nora found her life imploding. What came next, well Nora’s not quite ready to face yet, but she came home with a brand new Autism diagnosis that no one in her family wants to talk about. Holidays are hard enough, but as Nora watches all the people in her life gather round she questions whether her neurodiverse brain can regulate through all this stimulation. Might Cry Later is the story of Nora and her journey through late-diagnosis of Autism. For context, and acknowledging differences in reporting, average ages for diagnosis are typically reported within childhood and females are generally diagnosed later than males. Nora’s story of declining mental health before a diagnosis represents so many women’s experience of having their neurodiversity misunderstood or misdiagnosed on the pathway to diagnosis. That’s the stats but what Kay Kerr gives us is the heartfelt and raw story of what that means in the real world and confronts us with the challenge that getting a diagnosis is just the beginning. When we meet Nora at her parent’s home in the Gold Coast Hinterland it seems like she’s in paradise. Nora acknowledges how the peace and natural environment are good for her and helps her regulate a sensory system she’s learning reacts differently to other people’s. Nora’s also having to deal with how her family, and particularly her family at Xmas care little for sensory regulation if it does not fit in with a rigorous regime of decorating and social engagements. The story weaves between Nora’s Xmas struggles and her memories of her younger, undiagnosed self and all the struggles that now make so much sense to her. These memories force her to face the ways she wasn’t supported as she needed, but also how her behaviours also hurt those closest to her, particularly her best friend Fran. Might Cry Later flirts with a range of classic text structures including rom-com, bildungsroman and quest, whilst ultimately carving its own path through an inevitably messy world. Nora is both endearing and unlikable to the reader, as she is to herself and it’s a strength of the storytelling that we go on this journey of uncertainty with such confidence. I found myself rooting for Nora in her everyday work to figure out her life. Her story is a wonderful look into the autistic experience, and part of a growing body of writing exploring the neurodiverse world.
Transcribe →George Kemp’s Soft Serve
Feb 1700:38:11Tap 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. George Kemp is an award winning writer of fiction, plays and television. In 2024, George was accepted into The Faber Academy, during which he wrote his first novel SOFT SERVE. In a small town McDonald’s four reluctant individuals gather to remember Taz. Pat is still mourning the son she lost too young. Fern, Jacob and Ethan miss their friend and struggle with how their lives have become stuck since his death. This is no simple anniversary though. As fires circle the town, bearing down on the Maccas, the four must confront how they are trapped not just by natural disaster but by their choices since Taz died. 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 - Michael Thompson’s How To Be Remembered
Mar 22, 2023Tap to summarizeTommy Llewelyn’s got a problem. Every year on the fifth of January his life resets. No records, no belongings, no memories. No trace Tommy ever existed.It’s a problem Tommy’s been enduring ever since he was born and the universe is showing no sign of letting up.When Tommy meets Carey Price though, everything changes. The universe still seems to be out to get him but Tommy’s finally got a reason to fight back. This time he’s going to be remembered.How To Be Remembered is the debut novel from Journalist and podcaster Michael Thompson.How To Be Remembered opens on the suburban life of the Palmer’s. They’re upwardly mobile in a fairly standard way. Some might even say forgettable. Everything’s going to plan until Elise gets pregnant. Their lives progress until little Tommy’s first birthday approaches and well… you know what happens next.Tommy’s first reset sees him estranged from his family and entered into the foster system. From here his life is an uphill battle as he struggles to understand what is happening to him through the eyes of a child.From the get go How To Be Remembered knows where the heartstrings are and isn’t afraid to tug them.The character of Tommy is immediately endearing and sympathetic. Thompson gives us enough to care about him and want to see him succeed even as he battles with his own special groundhog scenario.The thing with this book is that it would have been all too easy to set up a standard hero's quest on the road to Tommy overcoming his ‘condition’. There are plenty of signposts that point to this archetype; an adversary, a love interest, a goofy best friend. All reassuring you that things are going to be alright.It’s almost like Thompson wants you to feel this familiar story shape even as he carefully foreshadows that Tommy is not going to have his romantic climax. Because remember, Tommy is destined to reset, no one will remember.As we shuck off the weeds of narrative determinism the we are left to conclude that Tommy is not destined to be part of some grand story precisely because Tommy is something of a guide for existing outside of stories. Tommy must find a way to exist outside of the universe’s plans. I think the point here is that Tommy’s condition has forced him out of the autopilot of modern life. Tommy can’t fall back on the ‘plans’ we see his birth parents making, he can’t fulfill the expectations or become the cliche. Tommy has to carve out something meaningful or risk having nothing at all.I found How To Be Remembered a really poignant and affecting story. Even when I knew it was going in for the emotional kill it still got me (and I found myself more than a little moist in the ocular area).The thing for me was whether or not I felt for Tommy (and at times he kinda lost me) I always felt for his situation and I truly wanted to believe in his mythology where best friends and lovers always end up back in each other's lives.How To Be Remembered hits all the right emotional notes and is well paced, leaving me more than a little tired in the mornings after I told myself ‘just one more chapter’. This is definitely a book for the romantics and those of us looking for a life less ordinary.
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Book Club - Michael Mohammed Ahmad's The Other Half of You
Aug 11, 2021Tap to summarizeThe Other Half of You is situated firmly within Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s body of work. Beginning with The Tribe and following through The Lebs we discover unfolding the story of Bani Adam. Bani is a young Lebanese Australian man. He is an Alawite Muslim; a member of a family, a tribe, but also a young man trying to figure out where he belongs in a contradictory society that does not seem to make room for men like himThe Other Half of You is a continuation of this quest for identity both as an individual and within his family and his religion. It’s also a beautiful love letter written by a man to his young son.The story opens with a kind of invocation. Bani tells his son Khalil “You brought me here, now let me take you back” and so begins a story at times serious, at times hilarious, moving through Bani’s exploration of the world where he lives.A place situated in time; young Lebanese men felt the stigma of being branded rapists following the conviction of the Skaf brothers in the early 2000’s.A place defined by family; working to respect, to honour, to please those who raised him and the extended clan who would forever be his life.AndA place scarred by politics, as Muslims were victimised in the wake of the September 11 attacks in America and closer to home in the riots unleashed by white supremacists at Cronulla.The Other Half of You describes Bani’s attempts to reconcile his life, his love, his education in the search for someone he can spend his life with.The book is immediately fascinating for its dialogue between BAni and his young son. It’s easy to forget as we progress that this open, honest and candid narrative is a confession and design for life from father to son.I don’t want to overlook this. Because we live in a world where men talk to men in terms, harsh and combative. To be a man is to be defined more by violence than love.The Other Half of You opens up the history of an individual. It’s a history, as I’ve mentioned, Mohammed carefully chronicles in his writing, and he welcomes a new generation to this story.Opening up this book I found parts of Sydney that I no longer get to visit. Areas in lockdown and areas that too often are only part of the food tourist trail for other suburbs.In his story Bani covers these grounds in an epic love story and an honest desire to communicate how that love came to be.I’ve found myself gravitating to incredible contemporary stories of Sydney lately. Partly because I’m now part of ‘Greater Sydney’ living in the Blue Mountains. And partly because whatever your relationship to the streets of this city we are now separated in reality where we were previously separated by apathy.If you want to travel and find love though, check out Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The OTher HAlf of YouI’m a big fan of Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s writing; both for his eloquent prose, his biting sense of humour and his sense that we as a city and as a country are not hearing the stories of so many people. If you want to hear more of Michael Mohammed Ahmad he and I have had many a conversation on the Final Draft podcast. Wherever you listen in...Want more great conversations with Australian authors?Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week from 2ser.https://2ser.com/final-draft
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