Until Tuesday 31st March, 2020, we’d love for you to pitch us for our brand new series Conversations with Friends. All you need is a writer mate, some talking points and a way to record yourselves. We’ve got space for up to 10 episodes and we want to fit in as many fabulous authors as we can as a way of helping us all get through this next little while.
We recorded this episode Before the Virus, and as such, our plans for the new year sound like they are from an alternate universe. But we share them here anyway both as a reminder that plans and creativity and projects are still important as we navigate this brave new world, and for our own posterity, so we can gently laugh at our former selves who knew nothing of what was coming their way!
We talk about:
- Kate writing about journaling the novel on Lee Kofman’s blog.
- Katherine speaking about her relationship with Bell St Maccas on RN’s Blueprint for Living
- Also, bahahaha, Kate thinking she has time to write between 9 and 3.
Then Kate speaks with debut Melbourne author, Emily Clements.
Emily Clements is a 27-year-old writer based in Melbourne. Her non‑fiction has been shortlisted for the Feminartsy Memoir Prize, the Ada Cambridge Prize and highly commended in the Scribe Nonfiction Prize. Her fiction has been twice shortlisted for the Rachel Funari Prize and earned the Melbourne Young Writers Award. She is a former editor for Voiceworks and Visible Ink. The Lotus Eaters, published by Hardie Grant Books, is her debut book.
Our conversation covers:
- publication day feels – was it ‘orgasmic jubliation’
- writing memoir and not thinking about writing memoir
- retyping
- live tweeting events
- future writing plans
- writing a chap book for the Slow Canoe
Emily’s advice for debut writers:
Take some time off work for the month of release. ‘It meant I could sit and ride the rollercoaster wherever it took me.’
Fave debut novel:
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell
Follow Emily Clements on Twitter or Instagram and if you haven’t got a copy of The Lotus Eaters already, please consider purchasing from your local independent bookseller, many of whom are offering postage and delivery right now, to help make it through this turbulent time.
The First Time podcast 