Join Ky Garvey as she chats with Sophie Stern, whose debut novel 'What Is Left for Us' traces two estranged sisters returning to their grandmother's crumbling Bondi clifftop house. The episode explores family secrets, alternating timelines, a vivid sense of place and the environmental threat of coastal erosion that frames the story.

Sophie shares her path to becoming a writer — taking permission to write, being shortlisted for the 2024 Penguin Literary Prize, the editing and publishing process, balancing a day job and family, creative techniques (playlists, Scrivener, residencies) and practical advice for aspiring authors: make time for your work and write what you love. The episode also previews her upcoming launch and events.

About Sophie:

Sophie Stern is from Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband and son. Her short fiction has been published in magazines and literary zines including Yen Magazine and Ellipsis Zine, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. The manuscript of her first novel, What Is Left For Us, was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize in 2024.

Home - Sophie Stern

About the book:

A devastatingly beautiful debut about sisters, secrets, and the weight of the
past. In What Is Left For Us, debut novelist Sophie Stern delivers a deeply
emotional portrait of two sisters bound by family, betrayal and the haunting
pull of home. Set between London’s corporate glass towers and the
weather-beaten cliffs of Bondi, Stern’s novel explores the question that lies
beneath every family story: how much of the past can ever be left behind?
When high-powered London lawyer Rebecca Gill receives word that her
late grandmother’s house has been left jointly to her and her estranged
sister Hannah, she reluctantly returns to Australia — and the life she
thought she’d escaped. For Hannah, a mother and wife living in Sydney’s
affluent east, Rebecca’s return threatens to unravel the fragile order
of her carefully controlled world. As the sisters begin to pack up their
grandmother’s seaside home, long-buried memories of their mother’s death
and an unforgivable betrayal begin to surface.
Through the intertwined perspectives of both women — and the ghosts that
linger between them — What Is Left For Us intricately captures the cracks
in sisterhood, the weight of inheritance, and the slow erosion of truth.

What Is Left For Us by Sophie Stern - Penguin Books Australia

Buy the book: What Is Left For Us by Sophie Stern - 9781761354441

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Host: Ky Garvey

Theme Song: Claire Houghton

Logo: Tondo Creative - https://www.tondo.com.au/

Production: Aud Pitch - https://www.virtualcreatrix.com/

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