The Creative Conversation with Nicole Lee was an hour-long podcast featuring writers talking about creativity, craft and career. Each episode involves a casual chat with a guest artist about various aspects of his or her creative practice and their journey along the way.
In this episode, I interviewed journalist, broadcaster and book show host Jennifer Byrne. Jennifer is a prominent Australian journalist who has reported for eminent establishments such as The Age and The Bulletin, as well as the television shows Sunday, 60 Minutes and Foreign Correspondent. She is currently the host of The Book Club on ABC as well as its spin-off program Jennifer Byrne Presents.
Novelist Nick Earls is a very funny man.
He had me in stitches as we hid behind a bookshelf in the green room at the Sydney Writers Festival.
The former doctor spoke without prompted about possibly going to childcare with Eddie Izzard, working as a storytelling armchair, and using paper clips to hold together his story ideas.
Nick's novels 48 Shades of Brown, Zigzag Street and Perfect Skin are all young adult classics. His latest novel for adults is Analogue Men.
Two actors in a room usually lends itself to a lot of hamming up and playing around.
Screenwriter Craig Pearce delivered on all those dreams and more in our conversation. I was the lucky audience to anecdotes about the painful process of getting what you see in your head out onto a piece of paper, and what a young rockstar Shakespeare's life would have looked like in Elizabethan England.
Craig has won BAFTA and AFI awards for his work with Baz Luhrmann in Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby. As of our conversation, he was just about to start production on a musical version of Strictly Ballroom and a TV series, Will, based on the life of a young Shakespeare.
My first podcast on US soil was with the delightful Pulitzer Prize nominated novelist Susan Choi.
Susan is the author of The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. We had a great conversation about MFAs and their usefulness to young writers, and how her Asian American identity influences (or doesn't influence) her novels.
Susan's approach to researching a novel and how it's changed over the years was really interesting to me. She also spoke about her unique habit of writing in other people's houses when they were not home.