Nikki Gemmell

This month I was lucky enough to chat with Nikki Gemmell about her latest novel The Ripping Tree. 

I am a long-term fan of Nikki’s beginning when I first read The Bride Stripped Bare almost 20 years ago. I love the way she experiments with style and structure. I love her prose. I love the fact she’s not afraid of an adverb but I’m also inspired by Nikki‘s work ethic. She’s produced adult and children’s novels and a memoir and other works of non-fiction across 22 languages and still turns out a weekly column for the Australian magazine that manages to be fresh and engaging in her signature style which is like a warm conversation with a friend. All of that, as well as raising four children.

In our chat, Nikki spoke about her work process in detail and how she works her writing around family life. We also talked about how she developed the characters in The Ripping Tree, how she structured the novel for pacing and how important pacing it, why she doesn’t read fiction while she’s writing and what inspired her to write what she calls a love letter to Australia, a hymn to the land.

Remember there can be spoilers in this podcast, although we don't reveal the huge awful secret at the centre of this novel. But as always if you prefer not to know anything about a book before you've read it, you can buy a copy of The Ripping Tree in all the usual places and come back and have a listen after you’ve read it.

About Nikki Gemmell…

Nikki is the best-selling author of fourteen novels and four works of non-fiction. She’s originally a Wollongong girl, lately of Sydney with a long stretch in London in between. Her distinctive writing has gained her critical acclaim in France, where she’s been described as a “female Jack Kerouac“. The French literary magazine Lire has included her in a list of what it called the fifty most important writers in the world – those it believes will have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century. Her best-known work is the 2003 novel The Bride Stripped Bare, and in fact she’s written another two novels that form something of a trilogy - her sexy books as she calls them in the podcast. She also writes novels for children –  the Kensington Reptilarium series and the Coco Banjo series. After, her memoir about her mother was one of the most moving stories I’ve read in a long time. Basically, she can turn her hand to anything. Four of her books  Shiver, Cleave, The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book of Rapture, made the longlist of “Favourite Australian Novels” as chosen by readers of the Australian Book Review. Nikki also pens a weekly column for The Australian newspaper which is the first thing I read every Saturday morning with my coffee. You can see why I’m such a fan.

I hope you enjoy this interview with Nikki Gemmell.

Nikki Gemmell Website - http://www.nikkigemmell.com/

Writer’s Book Club Podcast Website - http://writersbookclubpodcast.com/