INTERROGATING AUSTRALIANS: A Group Interview

Contrary to rumors in certain quarters, the Australia SF/F scene is deep and wide right now. At least from my perspective, literally half a world away, it seems like more interesting writers are popping up in Australia than ever before. In the past few years, I have personally read, in manuscript, as a consultant for Prime and other publishers, excellent work by K.J. Bishop, Anna Tambour, Geoff Maloney, and many other interesting writers.

Now, it's true that some of these writers have been around awhile and are only now coming to the attention of the SF/F world in general. But I think it's also true that we're reaching critical mass when it comes to the number of new, up-and-coming writers who hail from Australia. Something is happening Down Under, and it's gotten my attention because so many of these writers seem idiosyncratic and properly contemptuous of genre boundaries. So, in my typical magpie way—see shiny object: must investigate—I've been looking into Australian SF/F.

I don't pretend to be an expert, or to be anything other than a Johnny-come-lately. All I am is someone who likes a lot of Australian writers and would like to find out more about them.

So, to that end, I asked a number of writers a few questionsm specifically:

K.J. Bishop:
Grace Dugan:
Trent Jamieson:
Justine Larbalestier:
Geoffrey Maloney:
Cat Sparks:
Scott Westerfeld:
Kim Wilkins:

There's no particular rhyme or reason to who I asked to participate, beyond issues like being readily accessible through the internet, that I'd read and liked some of their prose, and making sure that I got a nice cross-section of experience and writing types. You'll encounter these writers, along with several others, again when they guest blog for me while I'm gone to Australia. Rather than lengthening an already long series of posts, I’ve eschewed author bio notes in favor of hotlinks to the relevant information.

And, finally, I should note that Ben Peek has already compiled an amazing interview resource, which includes interviews with 43 different Australian editors and writers. Definitely worth checking out.

INTERROGATING AUSTRALIAN WRITERS

For ease of use, I've broken up the interview into three topic-sorted posts, with links below.

General Questions

Intrinsically Australian?

Other Australian SF/F Writers and New Work