Editor’s note: This episode contains discussion of death and grief practices. Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For June that debut is The Eulogy by Jackie Bailey (Hardie Grant), an autofiction novel about family, death and grief that was shortlisted for the 2018…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For May that debut is How To Be Between by Bastian Fox Phelan (Giramondo), a memoir about female facial hair, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and negotiating identity for those visibly between gender binaries. Our theme song is Brok…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is Hovering by Rhett Davis (Hachette), a powerful and kaleidoscopic story about three people struggling to find connection in a chaotic and impermanent world. Rhett discussed the novel with our First Book Clu…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is Son of Sin by Omar Sakr (Affirm Press), a multifaceted tale brimming with angels and djinn, racist kangaroos and adoring bats, examining with a poet’s eye the destructive impetus of repressed desire and…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is The Cost of Labour by Natalie Kon-yu, out now from Affirm Press. Natalie was nine weeks pregnant when the trembling began. Two weeks later she checked herself into a mental health unit. Rather than a wo…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For November that debut is Permafrost by SJ Norman, out now from UQP. This brilliant collection of short fiction explores the shifting spaces of desire, loss and longing. Inverting and queering the gothic and romantic traditions,…

Welcome to the second episode of our new interview series, Pub Talk, where we chat to some of Australia’s most experienced and influential publishers, editors and agents. During these conversations you’ll receive insiders’ information about the industry, as well as advice from experts on the many pathways to publication for new writers. We’re thril…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For October that debut is The Psychic Tests by Gary Nunn, out now from Pantera Press. In The Psychic Tests award-winning journalist Gary Nunn investigates psychics, mediums and astrologers to understand their uncanny, under-inves…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For September that debut is Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards, out now from Hachette. The night Eva shared a smile with Pat, something started. Two weeks later, lying together in her bed, Pat said, ‘You can’t live your li…

Welcome to the first episode of our new interview series, Pub Talk, where we chat to some of Australia’s most experienced and influential publishers, editors and agents. During these conversations you’ll receive insiders’ information about the industry, as well as advice from experts on the many pathways to publication for new writers. We’re thrill…

We’re thrilled to bring you this special podcast episode celebrating the publication of our third print anthology, New Australian Fiction 2021. New Australian Fiction 2021 collects a number of brilliant short stories from authors from around the country, and in this episode you’ll hear excerpts from some of them. Tune in to hear Mykaela Saunders, S…

‘When you don’t understand something that important about yourself, [diagnosis is] almost a kind of cheat code to go back and understand things that you’ve been through.’ Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For August that debut is Late Bloomer: How an Autism Diagn…

Editor’s Note: This conversation includes discussion of family violence. ‘We’ve got an ongoing conversation happening about violence against women in Australia, and I felt that it was important to contribute what I had learnt from my perspective as a Muslim woman, as an Arab woman, as a daughter of someone who was murdered, and as someone who had a…

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For June that debut is The Covered Wife by Lisa Emanuel, out now from Pantera Press. Sarah is a smart, young lawyer working endless office hours when she falls head over heels for Daniel – handsome, passionate and part of the kin…

‘I wanted to dig into the complexity of an event like that, and allow people to see not just the humanity of the people involved, but also the negative aspects of how these events play out.’ Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For May that debut is Car Crash: A Mem…

‘Conversations can be really dull compared to our inner lives, and I find that fascinating. The book was, for me, a real exploration of that difference.’ Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan, out now from…

“Particularly after the hellish year we’ve just had, poetry makes the burden of existence a lot nicer.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For March that debut is Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen, out now from the University of Queensland Press.Dropbear is an innovative…

KYD’s Hayley May Bracken, Alan Vaarwerk and Suzy Garcia discuss Fiona Murphy’s new memoir The Shape of Sound (available 30 March from Text Publishing) and its exploration of how her deaf experience has been shaped by the social and structural stigma of disability. We then discuss transgressive comedy and Zoomer humour in the new ABC iview series Wh…

“I started to interrogate my own relationship with food and realise that it wasn’t so simple.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For February that debut is Eating With My Mouth Open by Sam van Zweden, out now from NewSouth Books. Eating With My Mouth Open is a pe…

In this special episode we’re talking to KYD publishing director Rebecca Starford about her new historical fiction novel, The Imitator, out now from Allen & Unwin. The Imitator is a page-turning World War II spy thriller set among London’s aristocracy, the MI5 intelligence agency, and a secret society aligned with the enemy. Our theme song is Broke…

The KYD team get together once again to discuss acclaimed Japanese author Sayaka Murata’s experimental, compelling and disturbing new novel Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and published by Granta. We also compare notes on Voxdocs, a series of eight short films created by Australian performing artists during lockdown funded by Shark …

“I wanted to write about how someone changes over the course of a life, and how a culture changes.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For November that debut is Lucky’s by Andrew Pippos, out now from Picador Australia. Lucky’s is an exuberant, magical Australian …

“My illness is not a metaphor. Any amount of self-reflection in the world will not make it go away.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For October that debut is Katerina Bryant’s Hysteria, out now from NewSouth Books. When Katerina suddenly began experiencing chr…

“I love to tell the story of my rejection and put it out there in the world because I know that so many emerging writers are facing the same dilemmas that I was.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For September that debut is Rawah Arja’s The F Team, out now fro…

This month the KYD team are discussing Eula Biss’s latest genre defying work ‘Having and Being Had’, a series of linked essays in which Biss explores her lived experience of capitalism, along with SBS’s new supernatural drama ‘Hungry Ghosts‘, in which vengeful spirits haunt the Vietnamese-Australian community in Melbourne during the month of the Hu…

We’re thrilled to bring you this special podcast episode celebrating the publication of our second print anthology, New Australian Fiction 2020. New Australian Fiction 2020 collects a number of brilliant short stories from authors from around the country, and in this episode you’ll hear excerpts from some of them. Tune in to hear Madeleine Watts, M…

“We’re living in increasingly anxious times…I think it’s bubbling away in the backdrop of every contemporary novel in some way.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For August that debut is Luke Horton’s The Fogging, out now from Scribe Publications. The Fogging …

In this episode, the KYD team get together (remotely) to discuss Brit Bennett’s expansive, multi-generational saga The Vanishing Half (Dialogue Books), and the six-part ABC drama Stateless, which explores the overlapping stories of staff and detainees at an Australian immigration detention centre. This month’s recommendations: • Alan recommends Dar…

“I honestly think that the root of racism is a lack of empathy. If you grew up only watching movies where the central character is a white dude you’re only ever going to learn how to empathise with white dudes.” Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For July that d…

‘I suddenly realised that all these environmental problems—consumer culture, plastic pollution, animal welfare—they all came together inside the whale.’ Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For June that debut is Rebecca Giggs’ Fathoms: the world in the whale, out…