The Secret Life of Writers by Tablo

Steve Toltz is the author of A Fraction of the Whole, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award and Quicksand, which won the Russell Prize for Humour. Booklist called A Fraction of the Whole ‘a deliriously philosophical novel . . . with uproarious ruminations on freedom, the soul, love, death, and the meaning of life" and in a way that applies to Steve's work as a whole and his new book, Here Goes Nothing. 

The Irish Times described Here Goes Nothing as, ‘a smart social commentary on our fossil fuel-guzzling, warmongering, information-obsessed, pandemic-riddled world’ and as The Scotsman said, he writes with ‘remorseless, brilliantly withering contempt’, though this sits alongside a story and characters that are both affecting and strangely moving.

Steve’s also worked as screenwriter on shows like No Activity and Guilty Party.

Claire Messud is the author of seven works of fiction, including the bestselling books The Emperor’s Children, The Woman Upstairs and The Burning Girl, as well as a book of essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. She has received Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters among many other accolades.

Claire is also, one of the first writers published under new literary imprint Tablo Tales. Her novella A Dream Life, written in The American Library in Paris, launched Tablo Tales’ short book series of great women writers from around the world. Helen Garner described A Dream Life as ‘A perfect frolic of a book, puffed on breezes of beauty and wit: it waltzes you through a little fear, a little darkness, and tips you out, refreshed and laughing, into the sun'. Fiction Editor of Kirkus Reviews, Laurie Muchnick chose A Dream Life as her pick on the Fully Booked podcast saying: ‘It’s just so delightful to be back reading the voice of Claire Messud with its x-ray vision and her really precise writing…It’s a real comedy of manners and really sharp and funny.’ 

A Dream Life published by Tablo Tales and distributed by IPG in the US, Manda Group in Canada, Gazelle Book Services in the UK and New South Books in ANZ.

Australian novelist Hannah Kent’s first novel Burial Rites, about the last woman executed in Iceland, was a bestseller internationally and translated into 30 languages. It won a mountain of awards including the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier’s People’s Choice Award and is being adapted for film. Her second novel The Good People set in Ireland in 1825 is also being adapted for film and was also critically acclaimed – Paula Hawkins described it ‘a literary novel with the pace and tension of a thriller’ which could be applied to Hannah's work as a whole. While all of her novels are very different, they’re also tied together by bringing the past alive, and writing about enigmatic people who are often outsiders - and writing about the heart of life – about love and death and suffering. Hannah’s new novel Devotion is just out, and readers everywhere will be delighted to hear it’s ‘a glorious love story’ as Sarah Winman described. It’s both lyrical and compelling and Hannah pulls you in from the first page.

Charlotte Wood is one of Australia’s finest, most original writers. She is the author of six novels; a collection of interviews called The Writers’ Room; Love & Hunger; and The Luminous Solution, about creativity and resilience. Charlotte’s most recent novel The Weekend is funny, tender and often uncomfortable, and won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. The Natural Way of Things was a bestseller and published internationally. It received various awards including the Stella Prize, and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction. Charlotte also has two podcast series, The Writers’ Room and Eat like the Animals. 

The Luminous Solution is wise and filled with energy and inspiration - it isn’t just for writers and artists but for anyone wanting to enrich their inner life. As Ailsa Piper describes, it is a ‘magnificent book of consolation, inspiration, completely individual observation, scholarship, honesty, wisdom and wonder. Every page contains food for the mind and spirit.’ 

Sinéad Gleeson is a writer and editor, based in Dublin. Her book of personal essays Constellations: Reflections from Life, won the Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It explores an array of subjects from Sinéad’s experience with illness, to friendship, grief, falling in love, motherhood and ghosts, and throughout these disparate yet connected pieces she weaves stories about art and artists, music and literature. As Anne Enright says ‘if you want to know where passion and tenacity are born, read this book’. 

Sinéad’s short stories have been published widely and she has also edited four award-winning Irish short story anthologies. Her new anthology of music essays co-edited wih Kim Gordan is coming out in 2022.

Anna Gerber is an award-winning Creative Director, working with storytelling, design and technology. For over 20 years, she’s worked with global teams and companies like Google, Penguin, Mercedes and WeTransfer. Anna co-founded Visual Editions, a publishing house with refreshingly innovative book design and ideas. It won many awards and each book they made joined the permanent collection at The Art Institute of Chicago. Anna also dreamed up Editions at Play with Britt Iversen and Tea Uglow from Google Creative Lab, to tell experimental stories for the mobile phone. They made the first ever blockchain book, and published a ghost story that knows where the user is, and a book using Google Street View to travel the world. They received a Peabody Futures Award, and each Editions At Play story is part of the permanent collection at The British Library. In the pandemic Anna worked on Stories of Splendid Isolationwith voice activated stories for the home, and Anna is currently working with The Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles on making the first ever open access digital scent archive. In all of her work, Anna brings stories into the world in surprising ways, and helps make our digital experiences more thrilling and human. www.annagerber.com

Katie Kitamura’s writing is taut, morally complex, beguiling, and gets under your skin. Garth Greenwell described her as ‘among the most brilliant and profound writers at work today’ and as Evie Wyld said she’s ‘one of the best living writers I’ve read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money'. Katie has written for publications like the New York Times, The Guardian and Granta, and teaches creative writing at New York University. Her first novel was The Longshot and then came Gone To The Forest. Katie’s third novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Italian award Premio von Rezzori, was translated into sixteen languages, and is being adapted for film. Her new novel, Intimacies has just come out and was recently one of Barak Obama’s summer reading selections. The narration has an elegance and deceptive distance at first, then it pulls you in til you’re utterly hooked. It’s a beautifully written and thought-proving book with astute observations about human nature, performance, language, and how we grapple with a world that doesn’t have clear cut edges. 

Find Katie's novels in all good bookshops such as: 

Readings in Melbourne https://www.readings.com.au

LRB in London https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk

City Lights in San Francisco http://www.citylights.com

Doireann Ní Ghríofa has published in both Irish and English and has written six acclaimed collections of poetry. Her most recent, To Star the Dark was described by The Irish Independent as ‘playful, serious, joyful, and moving’. Her book of prose called A Ghost in the Throat received Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and had phenomenal reviews across the word. Doireann has also received many other awards and accolades including a Lannan Literary Fellowship, Italy’s Ostana Prize, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

A Ghost in the Throat dives into all manner of subject from bees and breastfeeding to anatomy and what happens to bodies when they’re given over to science. Many scenes are grounded in the minutiae of a woman’s life, as Doireann both celebrates and documents motherhood, rearing children and the joy and messiness of it all.  At the heart of the story is one of Ireland’s great poets, a woman named Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill and her iconic poem or keen of lament. A Ghost in the Throat is part obsession, part honouring and it is not actually classifyable, which is also part of the appeal. To use Doireann’s own term, this is a female text.

Louise Adler is one of the most significant figures in Australian publishing. Born in Melbourne, Louise was educated locally and studied in Israel at the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, then in Britain at the University of Reading, and in America at Columbia University. She taught literature at Columbia for ten years and also taught at the University of Melbourne. 

Louise has since had a range of impressive roles that include Editor of Australian Book Review, Publishing Director of Reed Books Australia, Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Melbourne Age and Presenter of Arts Today on Radio National. More recently she was CEO and Publisher-in-Chief of Melbourne University Publishing and served on the boards of both the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for over a decade. Louise is currently Publisher at Large at Hachette Australia and on the board of the Monash University Museum of Art. She has been awarded the Order of Australia for services to literature.

Andrew Solomon’s work has had a major impact across the world. His books have made concrete changes for the better, fostering empathy and understanding in everyone who reads them. Andrew writes on politics, culture and psychology and is an activist in LGBTQ rights, mental health, and the arts. He’s a Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University, a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University and is a former President of PEN American Centre, and currently on their Board of Directors. He founded the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT Studies at Yale University and has written for publications such as The New Yorker, the London Times, and more. He’s lectured widely and his TED talks have had over twenty million views.

Andrew’s first book was a study of Russian artists, called The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost. Then came his novel A Stone Boat that was described by Harold Bloom as ‘one of the authentic achievements in American fiction’. His memoir, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was one of the London Times One Hundred Best Books of the Decade. Solomon’s book, the bestselling Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity came out in 2012 and tells the stories of families raising exceptional children who find profound meaning in doing so. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; the Wellcome Book Prize and many more accolades. There was also a celebrated documentary based on the book. The last book Andrew published was Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World, a collection of his international reporting, and he has also more recently published an Audible Original called New Family Values that explores how the concept of family in America today has utterly changed, though the economic and legal structures lag behind.

Since Evie Wyld was first published, her writing has been celebrated for its fine observations, and way of pinning down emotional nuance. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award and Evie was listed as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Her second novel, All the Birds Singing, won the Miles Franklin Award, the Encore Award, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, and was longlisted for the Stella Prize. Then with her third novel The Bass Rock she won the Stella Prize. It weaves together the lives of three women across different periods of time and explores male violence, in different guises. But Evie doesn’t just explore male violence, she gets in deep, and leaves you reeling from the cumulative impact of this age-old misogyny. It’s one of the most unsettling and artfully written novels of recent times. Evie’s also written a graphic novel with illustrator Joe Sumner called Everything Is Teeth, and she co-runs Review, an indie bookshop in Peckham London.

Since Interpreter of Maladies was published in 1999, Jhumpa Lahiri has written three works of fiction in English, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and the Booker shortlisted, The Lowland. She has also written a work of nonfiction, In Other Words, which was the first book she wrote in Italian, translated into English by Ann Goldstein. In addition Jhumpa edited The Penguin Book of Short Italian Stories, highlighting a thrilling selection of Italian writers, some of whom hadn’t been seen in English before. She has also translated various books from Italian including Domenico Starnone’s Trick. 

Jhumpa received the Pulitzer Prize for Interpreter of Maladies and numerous other awards for her writing including the PEN/Hemingway Award; the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; and a National Humanities Medal, awarded by Barak Obama. She has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Whereabouts is Jhumpa’s new book, her first novel written in Italian and this time, she also translated it into English. There’s a grace and a gentle precision to her pared back style as she looks at every day moments in specific places, and the solitude, frustrations and intimacies of being human. 

Nikki Gemmell is one of Australia’s great writers. Since Les Murray printed Nikki’s first short story in Quadrant Magazine, she’s written thirteen novels. One of them, was the erotic blockbuster The Bride Stripped Bare which was published anonymously back in 2003. It was described as a ‘raw and unflinching’ look at sexuality – and it’s that raw and unflinching eye that makes her writing as a whole so engaging. Nikki’s books have been translated into 22 languages and in France, she's been described as a ‘female Jack Kerouac’. Nikki also writes books for children, is a columnist for the Weekend Australian Magazine and she’s published various non-fiction books, musing about life, love and death. In all of her work there’s a sort of sinewy energy that bristles on the page, and her fine observations and sensual descriptions are a joy to read in all of their guises. Her book After has the feel of a literary detective story as Nikki investigates her mother’s death, though at the heart, it’s a celebration of her life and their relationship in all of its wondrous complexity. Her new novel that’s just come out is called The Ripping Tree. It’s a poetic thriller that’s vividly imagined and confronting – a particularly Australian story, set in the time of white settlement. 

You can find Nikki’s books at all good bookshops, and here's a Sydney-based one for starters: Kinokuniya Books https://australia.kinokuniya.com/productsis_searching=true&restrictBy%5Bauthor%5D=Gemmell+Nikki&taxon=2

Charles Yu writes playful and inventive novels and short stories, often with a kind of sly irreverence. There’s warmth and wisdom at their heart, he’s very funny. Charles has written two collection of stories, Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You and the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and his latest Interior Chinatown that won the National Book Award and Le Prix Médicis Étranger. Charles has also received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, been nominated for two Writers Guild of America awards for his work on the television series Westworld, and has written for shows on FX, AMC, Facebook Watch, and Adult Swim. He’s also written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine,The Atlantic and Wired. 

Andy Griffiths is one of the most loved authors in Australia. Andy and his partner in crime illustrator Terry Denton have collaborated on more than 33 bestselling books including the Treehouse series, all of which have sold over 10 million copies – which must make them some of bestselling Australian authors of all time. They’ve been published in over 35 countries and have had various books adapted for stage with sell out seasons at the Opera House. Andy is an ambassador for The Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the Pyjama Foundation and has received countless awards for his books and contribution to Children’s Literature. 

* You might want to listen to this interview in a few sessions as it’s much longer than usual (everything Andy said was gold so I didn't edit it down). He’s incredibly humble, generous and funny (forgive my excessive laughter) and his life story is an inspiration. Enjoy.

Melissa Harrison is an award-winning novelist, nature writer and podcaster. Melissa’s podcast The Stubborn Light of Things has the same title as her book that was named the Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. In the book it feels like she’s taking us by her side as she walks through the greens of London and the English countryside, sharing warm and poetic observations of the natural world. There’s a joy in her lush descriptions, with the magic of frogspawn, seahorses in the Thames, murmurations of starlings, elfin dog violets and more. Melissa’s writing is finely observed, musical and intimate and she echoes this in her podcast with her soothing voice and recordings of the fields and birds. 

Melissa also contributes a monthly nature column to The Times, which the book was based on, and writes for various other publications. Her most recent novel, All Among the Barley, was described by Jon McGregor as “a masterpiece”. Her other novels are Clay and At Hawthorn Time and she’s written a non-fiction meditation called Rain: Four Walks in English Weather, and edited four anthologies of the seasons. 

Janine di Giovanni is an author of various award-winning books and one of the world’s great foreign correspondents. She has had a thirty year career in war zones, reporting on conflicts from the first Palestinian intifadato the siege of Sarajevo, the Rwandan genocide and many other wars across the world. She was a long-time Senior Foreign Correspondent for The Times of London and a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair, and now writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, Harpers and more. Janine has received countless awards for her work including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award, the Courage in Journalism award, and the Blake Dodd, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  She’s also a Senior Fellow and lecturer at Yale University.  

Janine has written nine books including Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love and more recently The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria. Each book of hers should be required reading. In addition to contextualising the conflicts, Janine shares the human stories – and in a way, she sheds light on what many people choose to remain in the dark about. She exposes what we find so hard to confront about humanity and ourselves. Follow Janine on twitter @janinedigi.

Jenny Hewson is a literary agent based in London. She worked for 13 years as an agent at one of England’s best agencies, Rogers Coleridge and White or RCW as it’s known, representing authors across fiction and non-fiction. A year ago she joined the prestigious Lutyens & Rubinstein agency, bringing her list of authors with her, including Sarah Perry, Melissa Harrison, Amy Sackville and Alexander Macleod.
Lutyens and Rubinstein was the first literary agency to own an independent bookshop when they opened their doors in Notting Hill in 2009. The bookshop itself has a beautifully curated selection which makes it a pleasure to browse – and of course having a bookshop means the agents can witness the appetite of readers daily.

Lang Leav is a poet and novelist whose work has a rare and powerful way of connecting with readers. Lang was born in a refugee camp, grew up in Sydney’s Cabramatta and now lives in New Zealand. She has received various accolades including a Churchill fellowship and a Goodreads Readers’ Choice Award. Her first book, 'Love & Misadventure' was self-published and became a runaway success. Her following poetry books and novels have all been international bestsellers. Lang also shares her writing on Instagram and other social networks to a combined audience of over 2 million people. There’s something intimate, even diary-like in her tone as though she’s sharing her innermost thoughts, exploring themes from love and loss to feminism and the nature of writing. She celebrates the female spirit, her heritage and craft. Lang’s new book is 'September Love'. In the forward Lili Reinhart describes her words as ‘individually plucked with precision and purpose’ and ‘like looking straight into her heart and seeing my own heart silhouetted underneath’.

James is an old-fashioned farmer based in England’s The Lake District where his family have lived and worked for over 600 years. He’s the author of the bestselling memoir The Shephard’s Life which won the Lake District book of the year, was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Ondaatje prizes and translated into sixteen languages. It speaks of his life’s work and his profound connection to the land. It resonated around the world, as have his photos and words on social media where he’s become a sensation.
James’ new book is called English Pastoral and as with the first, it feels like a kind of love song to his father and grandfather. It continues the conversation from The Shephard’s Life sharing personal anecdotes and observations but also looks at the big picture and the consequences of large scale industrial farming and the loss of ancient rhythms of work. It’s about what farming was like in James’ childhood and what it has become, not just in England but across the world. It’s devastating to read about this ‘total war on nature’ and while there’s a lot of grief about what has been lost, there’s also hope, showing what we can learn from the old ways to reinvigorate our natural landscapes. And James’ writing, his descriptions of the wilds, the animals and his farm is luminous – the book really is a revelation.