In this special Feature Episode brought to you by Penguin Books Australia, we speak to four debut authors about their new books.
Erin Riley
Erin Riley is a writer and social worker who has spent most of the last decade working alongside marginalised populations in community aged care in and around Sydney. Erin brings a queer lived experience to their professional work and to their writing. They were a Penguin Random House Australia Write It fellow in 2021, and have been published in various publications including Kill Your Darlings and Bent Street. Erin lives in Sydney with their partner and Remy the dog. A Real Piece of Work is their debut book.
Advice: Have a go!
Debut Recommendation: Small Acts of Disappearance by Fiona Wright
Find Erin on instagram.
Vidya Madabushi
Vidya Madabushi is an Indian writer living in Sydney. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney, and her first novel, Bystanders, was published in India in 2015. Bystanders was shortlisted for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize, and a previous version was longlisted for the Australian Vogel Award.
In 2018, Vidya received the Writing NSW Grant for Fiction for the creation of this novel. The Days Toppled Over is her Australian debut.
Advice: Don’t let your writing be sheep, rather let it be an exquisite wild animal running free.
Debut Recommendation: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Find Vidya on Instagram and Twitter.
Annette Higgs
Annette Higgs is a writer living in Sydney, Australia. She was born and grew up in Tasmania, leaving on her 18th birthday to study literature and law at the Australian National University in Canberra. She has lived, worked and studied in Sydney, London and Italy, and holds a Doctor of Arts from the University of Sydney. A Pushcart nominee, her short work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Australia, the USA, the UK and India. Her novel On a Bright Hillside in Paradise won the 2022 Penguin Literary Prize.
Advice:
- SUBMIT!
- Don’t think too much about who will or won’t want to read it.
Debut Recommendation: Denizen by James Mckenzie Watson (who we speak to here)
Find Annette on her website or instagram.
Nick Bhasin
Nick Bhasin is a writer and editor based in Sydney, but originally from the US.
His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, Junkee and McSweeney’s and he has occasionally appeared on ABC Melbourne radio as a cultural attaché .
He won the US music game show Name That Tune and his satirical parenting blog ‘Daddy’s Little Miracle’ was selected to join the New York Times’ parenting section’s blogroll.
Nick has worked as an editor for Junkee, 10 Daily, SBS, Foxtel Magazine and OK! Magazine. He has a tremendous speaking voice. I Look Forward to Hearing From You is his debut novel.
Advice: 1) Win money on a game show (!). 2) novel is so long and it takes so long to write you have to love the process. (Also quote William Goldman — Nobody knows anything.)
Debut Recommendation: Really Good Actually by Monica Heisey
The First Time podcast 