Speaker 1: First, a warning. This week's conversation with Sonya Orchard is
Speaker 1: about sexual assault and abuse. It's about the failures social, structural,
Speaker 1: and legal that intrench and prolong the trauma for victim survivors.
Speaker 1: It may be triggering and upsetting to hear, and I'd
Speaker 1: advised listeners to proceed with caution and the horrible thing.
Speaker 1: In many ways, the point of this episode, and the
Speaker 1: point of Sonya's powerful new memoir Groomed, is that there's
Speaker 1: an above average chance that whoever you are, you or
Speaker 1: someone in your life will have endured relevant experiences. The
Speaker 1: ubiquity of gender based violence is well understood at this point,
Speaker 1: but the idea of that and what it actually means
Speaker 1: are very different things. The phrase mean too has been
Speaker 1: so thoroughly embedded in our culture that it's easy to
Speaker 1: forget that it predated the hashtag by over a decade.
Speaker 1: When in two thousand and six, sexual assault survivor and
Speaker 1: activist Tarana Burke first use the frame. It was to
Speaker 1: encourage women to speak up and identify the prevalence of
Speaker 1: gendered violence of all sorts, free of the pressure of
Speaker 1: detail and full disclosure. Just saying me too was an
Speaker 1: act of solidarity and community, a social movement raising awareness
Speaker 1: of the grim truth that most women you know have
Speaker 1: at some time, to some degree, been on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of gendered harassment, abuse, and violence. The sharing of
Speaker 1: personal stories in this space is incredibly important. People I
Speaker 1: know and love who live with their own experiences of
Speaker 1: sexual and emotional trauma often talk about their need to
Speaker 1: devour any media they can on the subject, true crime
Speaker 1: podcasts and fiction, journalism and memoir. By connecting with the
Speaker 1: accounts of other people with similar stories, they feel less alone,
Speaker 1: more capable of putting words to what they're going through.
Speaker 1: Sonya Orchard is the author of three terrific novels, and
Speaker 1: her fourth book, Groomed, shares her personal story as a
Speaker 1: victim survivor all the way up to her negotiation of
Speaker 1: the legal system. It is powerful, very brave, and beautifully written.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Williams, and this is Read This the show
Speaker 1: about the books we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 2: About ten years ago, I was at a counseling session
Speaker 2: and this just came up as a, you know, something
Speaker 2: to fill the end of the session with.
Speaker 3: And it came up.
Speaker 2: That I'd had this what I called a relationship, and
Speaker 2: she said to me, you know, you were violated, and
Speaker 2: I was just like, no, I wasn't.
Speaker 3: Don't be ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And she was the one who kind of suggested new
Speaker 2: words to me for what I had experienced when I
Speaker 2: was a teenager, and I flatly denied what she was
Speaker 2: saying to me. And it was only when she sort
Speaker 2: of spun the story around and said, Okay, imagine your
Speaker 2: daughters are in that relationship, and that's when the story
Speaker 2: suddenly looked very very different to me, and I experienced
Speaker 2: what I realized now is a trauma response where I
Speaker 2: was shaking all over and shivering and it was like
Speaker 2: a you know, a computer crashing or something.
Speaker 3: That's how it felt.
Speaker 2: And that was very very confusing because she had just
Speaker 2: driven a truck through a wall kind of thing, and
Speaker 2: I was just like, hang on, what's on the other
Speaker 2: side of the wall.
Speaker 3: You know, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: I don't understand because I stick by my story and
Speaker 2: this is the story that I've held onto for my
Speaker 2: entire life, that I was in this regular in inverted
Speaker 2: commas relationship when I was fifteen. But she has unpicked
Speaker 2: something for me, and I don't understand what's going on here.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people might have just decided
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go there. But I suppose there's
Speaker 2: the you know, investigative journalist in me that took it
Speaker 2: on as I need to.
Speaker 3: I need to get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 2: This is it's too interesting for starters, and it's too important,
Speaker 2: and it's it's important on so many levels, sort of socially,
Speaker 2: it's important for me as a mother of teenage girls.
Speaker 3: It's you know, I just needed to.
Speaker 1: And and also presumably once you start pulling at the thread,
Speaker 1: it's no longer a choice to see it because the
Speaker 1: scaffolding is down. Just to mix my metaphors from thread
Speaker 1: to scaffold, we get a single go. But you know,
Speaker 1: that thing of reassessing story and story is hoping mechanism
Speaker 1: no longer being adequate. Part of what I love so
Speaker 1: much and groomed is that you, in really deft, careful ways,
Speaker 1: toggle between memoirist and investigative journalist. As you say that,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, this is a deeply personal, very
Speaker 1: raw story that you're bravely sharing with readers, and on
Speaker 1: the other hand, seems to be one of the new
Speaker 1: mechanisms you have to make it possible to do that
Speaker 1: is your instincts as a writer. How can I think
Speaker 1: about utility? How can I think about where the problems
Speaker 1: are here that need to be identified? How can I
Speaker 1: write about it dispassionately? Was that the way the writing
Speaker 1: flowed out? And was that the way the retelling of
Speaker 1: your own story flowed out? That you had the arms
Speaker 1: lengthening of the writer there?
Speaker 2: Absolutely everything I wrote was very intuitive, And I think
Speaker 2: one of the ways that I deal with issues in
Speaker 2: my life and problems, whether it be a relationship or
Speaker 2: parenting or you know, whatever it is, is I research
Speaker 2: the hell out of it, and it's it's something that
Speaker 2: I do. I talk about kind of intellectualizing in Groomed
Speaker 2: and how intellectualizing and really studying a topic can become
Speaker 2: a form of sort of self soothing, where you are
Speaker 2: just poking at something and poking and poking and poking
Speaker 2: and trying to look at it from different angles, because well,
Speaker 2: I think there's trying to understand it, and there's also
Speaker 2: if you do have disassociation, which I think anyone who's
Speaker 2: had any trauma will have some disassociation, it's a way
Speaker 2: of trying to break out of the numbness. I was
Speaker 2: hitting these walls in my own memory and my own
Speaker 2: sort of sort of emotional response. I was kind of
Speaker 2: trying to feel something, and often it just wouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: Or I'd try and remember something and it wouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: So I had to do something, so I would just
Speaker 2: start reading and researching.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. I can see both
Speaker 1: the kind of support that that would give to the writing,
Speaker 1: but also the kind of comfort it would give that
Speaker 1: you don't have to feel everything that happens on the page.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can think it through.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean when I put them into the book,
Speaker 2: I didn't put them necessarily in like a glossary or oh,
Speaker 2: you'll need to understand this term. I was putting things
Speaker 2: in as I was learning about them, So I was
Speaker 2: it was the process of my discovery and learning that
Speaker 2: I thought, if this is relevant to me and my unpacking,
Speaker 2: then it's.
Speaker 3: A part of the story.
Speaker 2: A part of the story is me learning about these
Speaker 2: things and trying to fit them into my life and
Speaker 2: what they mean for me as I'm going through this process.
Speaker 1: So the crucial thing is off the back of having
Speaker 1: that conversation and therapy of suddenly starting to reassess your
Speaker 1: own experiences through this different lens and understand them differently.
Speaker 1: At some point that understanding led to a desire or
Speaker 1: a need for action and a need to kind of,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, to socialize that experience
Speaker 1: in the legal system in a kind of search for repairs.
Speaker 2: Well, it was probably about six or eight years between
Speaker 2: the therapy and contacting the police, and I think there
Speaker 2: were quite a few factors at play there. There was
Speaker 2: obviously the time that I sat with it and sort
Speaker 2: of got used to the idea of okay, so this
Speaker 2: is my new story. Now.
Speaker 3: There was the fact that.
Speaker 2: I was more aware of how trauma had played out
Speaker 2: in my life and had affected me, and I wasn't
Speaker 2: really seeing the shifts I would have liked to have seen.
Speaker 2: And you know, it can get really boring, you know,
Speaker 2: dealing with the same problems and going why can't I
Speaker 2: move on like this happened thirty five years ago? Why
Speaker 2: can't I just flick a switch and move on from it?
Speaker 2: So there was kind of getting sick of it and
Speaker 2: sick of the fact that nothing had shifted really for me.
Speaker 2: And then there was I've got three daughters, and my
Speaker 2: eldest daughter was fourteen at the time, and I was
Speaker 2: just finding myself among lots of other parents chatting about
Speaker 2: teenage parties and getting drunk and oh, it's all a
Speaker 2: lot of fun, isn't it when the teenagers go out
Speaker 2: and get drunk. And I found myself getting really upset
Speaker 2: during those conversations, and I thought, Okay, clearly, I'm not
Speaker 2: comfortable with this next phase of my daughter's hitting teenage years.
Speaker 2: There's stuff that I need to work through. But then
Speaker 2: there was that year of Grace Tame becoming Australian of
Speaker 2: the Year, Britney Higgins allegations, the Christian Porter allegations, and
Speaker 2: the March for Justice, and I think that was that
Speaker 2: was what tipped me over. And I didn't see it coming.
Speaker 2: The morning of the March for Justice. It hadn't entered
Speaker 2: my mind to go to the police. But that night
Speaker 2: I couldn't sleep and I just stayed awake all night.
Speaker 2: And you know, I tried and describe in the book
Speaker 2: what was going on for me that night, but it
Speaker 2: was almost like I just went into this kind of
Speaker 2: subliminal zone during the night and just unpacked a whole
Speaker 2: lot of stuff, and in the morning, I just thought it, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Going to the I want to take this moment just
Speaker 1: to pause on the title of the book and groomed,
Speaker 1: and why the idea of grooming and being groomed is
Speaker 1: such an important central part of the way you want
Speaker 1: to tell this story.
Speaker 2: As I write in the book, I don't actually really
Speaker 2: relate to the word, and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why I chose the word, and I use it often.
Speaker 2: It's almost like brain training, and I do talk in
Speaker 2: the book how for me and for other survivors that
Speaker 2: I've spoken with, the word that comes up constantly is
Speaker 2: that they've been robbed or they've had something stolen, and
Speaker 2: that for me is a much more potent word and
Speaker 2: something that I relate to.
Speaker 3: The word groomed is not something.
Speaker 2: That I really relate to, because when I look back
Speaker 2: on the relationship, I recall being in love.
Speaker 3: The more I looked.
Speaker 2: Into what grooming is and what it does and how
Speaker 2: underhand it is, I just found it such a fascinating
Speaker 2: concept because you are being kind of almost convinced to
Speaker 2: be in love. And that's how perpetrators are so successful,
Speaker 2: because they don't need to use violence or force. They
Speaker 2: can be pretty confident that you're not going to go
Speaker 2: and say anything because you come away thinking, well.
Speaker 3: I consented to that. So it's such.
Speaker 2: A confounding thing to experience. And you know, I spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time in the book talking about the
Speaker 2: behavioral science, the neurobiology, what grooming actually is, and how
Speaker 2: it is very closely related to our need for attachment,
Speaker 2: our need to be cared for as a child. It's
Speaker 2: very similar to courtship. It's very similar to all these
Speaker 2: things which are really important, necessary, beautiful things in our lives.
Speaker 2: Hence why it's so seductive. It's all these great things,
Speaker 2: except with this one little poisonous kind of element, which
Speaker 2: is it's done by an abuser, not a caring, loving equal.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weaponizing those instincts against you as a
Speaker 1: kind of active manipulation.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And the other thing about it, which I think is
Speaker 1: so tied in with the kind of lasting trauma of it,
Speaker 1: is that it's a recasting of your reality. Your reality
Speaker 1: is distorted by your abuser. Yeah, an interests of being grown.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, and you're so vulnerable to that as a child, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, because you can be groomed at any age,
Speaker 2: but hopefully as an adult you're more aware of power
Speaker 2: dynamics and you're not entering relationships with such a power
Speaker 2: deficit as you are as a child. Definitely, for me,
Speaker 2: I was a people pleaser and I was pretty obedient,
Speaker 2: you know. And this is again one of the things
Speaker 2: that people don't talk about.
Speaker 3: With grooming. You are there because you're getting good things.
Speaker 2: You know you're getting there are a lot of advantages
Speaker 2: and benefits and pluses. You know, whether it's attention or
Speaker 2: you know, whether the person's giving you money or whatever
Speaker 2: they're doing that there's a payoff and you are really
Speaker 2: enjoying being there. But then there's also the abuse, which
Speaker 2: you have to then compartmentalize and sort of disassociate from.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a very clever manipulation, and I still can't.
Speaker 3: Really relate to it. I can only sort.
Speaker 2: Of relate to it in a theoretical kind of way.
Speaker 2: But I find it such a fascinating sort of dynamic.
Speaker 1: You write really well about the desire to constantly pick
Speaker 1: up the scape of knowledge about this stuff that even
Speaker 1: as the personal processing was at some of its hardest points,
Speaker 1: you couldn't resist reading everything you could find other accounts, watching,
Speaker 1: listening to just absolutely mainlining any stories about kind of
Speaker 1: similar reviews. And I'm curious about the relationship between comfort
Speaker 1: in seeing the familiar and seeing the echoes and discomfort
Speaker 1: seeing elements of your own experience echoed in the stuff
Speaker 1: that you read help or was it jarring? Did it
Speaker 1: make it harder to carve out your own space?
Speaker 2: It definitely helped, and it helped for quite a few reasons.
Speaker 2: I could feel enormous empathy for other survivors in a
Speaker 2: way that I couldn't for myself, and that helped me
Speaker 2: kind of, I think grieve because I could kind of
Speaker 2: grieve for these other survivors. It's so lonely grief, but
Speaker 2: then when you're around other people who are grieving, it
Speaker 2: can you can find incredible kind of company in the loneliness.
Speaker 2: And so I think there was a lovely feeling of
Speaker 2: community within this otherwise kind of harrowing space. And it
Speaker 2: helped me feel like not such a freak because people
Speaker 2: were describing exactly what I was feeling and doing, and
Speaker 2: I was just like, Okay, this is what I'm experiencing.
Speaker 2: Is these are normal responses or you know, I don't
Speaker 2: like using the word normal, but these are to be
Speaker 2: expected and not total outlies.
Speaker 1: When we return, Sonya shares her grueling journey through the
Speaker 1: legal system and reveals why she didn't hide under the
Speaker 1: covers the day Groomed hit the shelves. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So there's another overlay that we haven't gotten to yet.
Speaker 1: If we begin with the stories that you tell yourself
Speaker 1: to cope and to be able to get through life,
Speaker 1: and then we have the layer of stories that come
Speaker 1: when confronting one's own experience and giving it a different
Speaker 1: name and dealing with it. But the third level is
Speaker 1: the legal system and the ways in which there are
Speaker 1: structures and pressures for how a story must be told.
Speaker 1: There that in some ways rob you again of the
Speaker 1: telling of your own story. And that's a kind of
Speaker 1: key part of how Groomed plays out. Your experience with
Speaker 1: the legal system was not a happy one.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't enjoy it.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't enjoy reading it. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: beautifully written, but it was it was upsetting. You know,
Speaker 1: six to eight years between that therapy session and when
Speaker 1: you felt ready to go to the police, talk me
Speaker 1: through what it felt like to suddenly lose ownership of
Speaker 1: your own story again having just regained it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Ah, what's the best word for it, fucked? Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: It's you're going through the legal system, not because you know,
Speaker 2: you think you're going to have a great time in
Speaker 2: the legal system and you're not going to get any
Speaker 2: money or anything like that for you know, a criminal case.
Speaker 2: You're going because you've had power taken from you and
Speaker 2: you're trying to regain that power and to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm in charge, I make the rules to do with
Speaker 2: my body and what things are okay and what things
Speaker 2: aren't okay. So you're trying to kind of gain control
Speaker 2: and then you enter this system where the door is
Speaker 2: shut in your face. Once it hit the legal system,
Speaker 2: that's where I felt like I was just out in
Speaker 2: the cold. And there would be all these hearings that
Speaker 2: were being conducted that I wasn't allowed to be at,
Speaker 2: and there would be the accused and his lawyers, and
Speaker 2: then the prosecution lawyers for the opp crown lawyers, and
Speaker 2: there would be a magistrate. So everyone was there except
Speaker 2: for me, the person who could actually explain what was
Speaker 2: going on, and they would have these hearings, and I
Speaker 2: would be kind of frantically saying what happened in the hearings,
Speaker 2: and they'd be like, oh, well, it's just going to
Speaker 2: be you know, it's going to be another three months,
Speaker 2: and we'll let you know if a nitting happens and
Speaker 2: if we're hearing you know, So you're constantly, you know,
Speaker 2: constantly sort of knocking at doors trying to say, you
Speaker 2: know what's going on, and just let me in the room.
Speaker 2: Let me in the room with him, his lawyers, give
Speaker 2: me a lawyer, and we will bash this out in
Speaker 2: ten minutes. And I do describe this period of feeling
Speaker 2: like I was in a straight jacket because I was
Speaker 2: kind of in this battle mode, ready to go back
Speaker 2: to the scene of the crime and fight it out again.
Speaker 2: But I was just being told to, you know, just
Speaker 2: sit in the waiting room.
Speaker 3: We'll deal with it. Leave it to us.
Speaker 1: Plus, you've been wildly retraumatized in the process of having
Speaker 1: to dredge it up and go into forensic detail over
Speaker 1: stuff that is hard enough to kind of tell the
Speaker 1: story of in broad terms. Let alone, yeap expose yourself to.
Speaker 2: That absolutely and be and you're going in with the
Speaker 2: knowledge that you are ninety five percent of the evidence,
Speaker 2: and so the entire job of the defense is to
Speaker 2: undermine you. Like if they can undermine you and they
Speaker 2: can kind of break you down, then they've won. So
Speaker 2: you realize very early on that truth is completely irrelevant,
Speaker 2: like there is there doesn't seem at any point a
Speaker 2: time when people are trying to actually work out what happened,
Speaker 2: and people don't seem interested in what happened. It's just
Speaker 2: can they break you? Because if they can break you,
Speaker 2: then they've one. If they can't break you, then you win.
Speaker 1: So laying out these different versions of your story, personal, structural, legal,
Speaker 1: all of those a question we come back to again
Speaker 1: and again on read this, it seems is different feel
Speaker 1: differently about the cathartic potential of writing, about whether it's
Speaker 1: a thing that frees them from stuff they're working through
Speaker 1: or whether that's a bit of a false economy. I
Speaker 1: think we've come back again and again to the fact
Speaker 1: that writing is not therapy. Therapy is therapy and worth
Speaker 1: doing alongside the writing. But what about for you, the
Speaker 1: experience of putting it down in a book and seeing
Speaker 1: that book in the world and having a launch doing interviews.
Speaker 1: Actually thinking about it as an artifact, how's that been?
Speaker 2: I'll have to break it down into a few because
Speaker 2: there's the writing process and then there's the publishing process.
Speaker 2: The writing process, a lot of people said to me,
Speaker 2: it must have been really hard to write, and it
Speaker 2: was incredibly easy to write and even enjoyable to write.
Speaker 2: And I think that possibly a lot of it come
Speaker 2: back to that sense of control that I didn't have
Speaker 2: in the legal system. But when you're the writer, you
Speaker 2: are you are God. When you are writing, you know,
Speaker 2: you decide what goes in, and you decide how are
Speaker 2: you going to say this? So you become the protagonist
Speaker 2: and you become, you know, the hero of the story,
Speaker 2: not that you know, necessarily a traditional hero, but you
Speaker 2: are the person who tells the story and tells it
Speaker 2: how you want to tell it. So I found that
Speaker 2: sense of being able to say what I wanted to
Speaker 2: say and be in control of my story really really helpful.
Speaker 2: The publishing side of things was terrifying, and you know,
Speaker 2: thankfully I had a very supportive team, my agent and
Speaker 2: my publisher, a firm press or very support if. I
Speaker 2: have very supportive friends, my husband, my kids. So I
Speaker 2: had a great network around me, but it was still
Speaker 2: absolutely terrifying, and I did initially say that I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to have a launch because I just wanted to
Speaker 2: hide under the doner. When the book came out, I
Speaker 2: was just so like, I just want to be in
Speaker 2: another country. I just don't want to be here and
Speaker 2: look people in the eye who have read my book.
Speaker 2: But very quickly I started getting messages from people who
Speaker 2: had read it who were thanking me, And of my
Speaker 2: four books, it's been the most rewarding of all four
Speaker 2: books because of the gratitude from people saying thank you,
Speaker 2: You've helped me make sense of my story. I've been
Speaker 2: sitting with this for thirty or forty years, and I
Speaker 2: now understand things better, and yeah, thank you for putting
Speaker 2: words to what I've got go through. So I get
Speaker 2: those messages every day. And I had been warned that
Speaker 2: I would get a lot of messages from readers and
Speaker 2: that it could be really triggering for me.
Speaker 3: It's been the opposite. It's made me.
Speaker 2: Feel very confident that what I've done in writing this
Speaker 2: book has been worthwhile.
Speaker 1: I am a big fan of your earlier novels, and
Speaker 1: I did want to ask do you look at those
Speaker 1: earlier novels now and see them differently? Do you see
Speaker 1: things that you were working through in them that you
Speaker 1: might not have identified at the time, or echoes and
Speaker 1: shadows that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, all three of my earlier works have a
Speaker 2: theme of someone not understanding what's really going on. All
Speaker 2: of them have got sort of unreliable narrators that tell
Speaker 2: a story and it becomes, I think, in all three stories,
Speaker 2: quite clear to the reader that the narrator is not
Speaker 2: seeing what's really going on. And I was halfway through
Speaker 2: writing my last book, Into the Fire, when I had
Speaker 2: the therapy session that kind of uncovered this kind of
Speaker 2: different story of my past, And that was the biggest
Speaker 2: aha moment for that book, because I suddenly realized what
Speaker 2: I was writing then and that I had kind of
Speaker 2: split myself into two characters who were the two females
Speaker 2: in that novel. One of them had one story and
Speaker 2: the other one had another story of their past. And
Speaker 2: the novel is these two stories kind of parallel, which
Speaker 2: one are you going to believe as a reader kind
Speaker 2: of thing, and all is revealed at the end. And
Speaker 2: I don't think I would have been able to finish
Speaker 2: that book had I not had that therapy session and
Speaker 2: that a heart moment, because that was the novel that
Speaker 2: was I think the warm up for me writing this memoir.
Speaker 1: I guess if the body keeps score, the body of
Speaker 1: work provides commentary.
Speaker 2: Or something absolutely and it's yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: I think a therapist would probably you know, there's probably
Speaker 2: a book therapist out there for writers who could look
Speaker 2: at someone's.
Speaker 1: Body for thost sessions. Let me just read what you've
Speaker 1: written and then.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly weather gaps and I do.
Speaker 2: I do feel like, you know, I could just walk
Speaker 2: into a therapist's office and hand over my four books
Speaker 2: and just go, okay, start there.
Speaker 1: That's very efficient a reading list. I'll see you when
Speaker 1: you're done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of pre reading for therapy, and
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that Groomed we'll join the rank
Speaker 1: of things that empower and strengthen not just victim survivors,
Speaker 1: but anyone who's finding it hard to find words to
Speaker 1: share a story. I think you've done them, and all
Speaker 1: of us are great service.
Speaker 3: So thank you, thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 1: Sonja Orchard's new book, Groomed is available at all good
Speaker 1: bookstores now, and do take care out there. If today's
Speaker 1: episode has raised issues or concerns, make sure you tap
Speaker 1: into your support systems or call one eight hundred respect
Speaker 1: or other similar services in your local area. Don't try
Speaker 1: and manage it alone before we go. Instead of what
Speaker 1: I've been reading this week, a shout out to some
Speaker 1: former Read This guests. Michel de Cretza, Santillachingarpe, Dylan Hartcastle
Speaker 1: and Melanie Cheng are all on the long list for
Speaker 1: this year's Stellar Prize. The full long list of twelve
Speaker 1: authors is up on the Stellar Prize website and you
Speaker 1: can go to the Read This archive to hear those
Speaker 1: interviews with those writers. Best of luck to everyone in contention.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: please tell your friends and rate and reviewers. It helps
Speaker 1: a lot next week on Read This Fresh from Tasmania,
Speaker 1: It's Australian literary legend.
Speaker 4: Robert to say, I love language, I love literature. Are
Speaker 4: you allowed to use such an old fashioned word on
Speaker 4: this program? This is a literary what would you call it? Concoction? Really,
Speaker 4: that's the joy of it. Nobody wants to know about
Speaker 4: my religious beliefs, or the first time I was attracted
Speaker 4: to this man or this woman. No one wants to
Speaker 4: know that what they want is the words I think
Speaker 4: they want to float on, the language that they think
Speaker 4: I might come up with. That's the only thing I
Speaker 4: can do. The actual memory it's your self, is not
Speaker 4: so important. It's the language for me, it's my all.
Speaker 1: Really read this as a Schwartz Media production, made possible
Speaker 1: by the general support of the AAR Group. The show
Speaker 1: is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by
Speaker 1: Travis Evans and original compositions by Zalton Fetcher and Posey
Speaker 1: mcacky does the transcript for the website. Thanks for listening,
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