Sisteria Podcast

And we’re back! For our season two premiere, playwright, actor and screenwriter Michelle Law joins us to chat about her recent trip to Hollywood, her earliest forays into writing, and the joys and challenges of creating the award-winning web series Homecoming Queens. Michelle Law is a freelance writer based in Sydney, Australia. She writes for print, film and television, and theatre. As a screenwriter, she has received an Australian Writer’s Guild AWGIE award for her interactive media work, and had her films screened on the ABC and at film festivals locally and abroad. She has also been a recipient of the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. Her debut play Single Asian Female was staged in Brisbane and Sydney to sold out audiences. Homecoming Queens, the web series she co-created, co-wrote and stars in premiered on SBS On Demand this year – the first online series commissioned by SBS. She is currently working on the feature film adaptation of Alice Pung's young adult novel Laurinda.

In our season one finale, satirist Julie Koh joins us to discuss switching careers, experimental short fiction, and whether satire can change the world when it feels like the world is satirising itself. Plus, a bonus for our listeners – the audio of Julie’s reading at the Emerging Writers’ Festival 2017 Program Launch. Julie Koh is a Sydney-based writer. She quit a career in corporate law to pursue writing, and her short stories have appeared in The Best Australian Stories and Best Australian Comedy Writing. Julie has written two short-story collections, Capital Misfits and Portable Curiosities. The latter has been shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Literary Awards, and the UTS Glenda Adams Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Portable Curiosities was also one of The Guardian’s Best Australian Books of 2016, an Australian Book Review 2016 Book of the Year, a Sydney Morning Herald Daily Life feminist reading pick of 2016, and a Feminist Writers Festival Best Feminist Book of 2016. Julie is the editor of BooksActually’s Gold Standard and a founding member of Kanganoulipo.

In this episode, writer, theatre maker and hip hop artist Candy Bowers joins us to discuss losing love for The Cosby Show, representation in Australian comedy and TV, and how to call people out (even when they cry). Candy Bowers is an international award-winning playwright, actor and comedian. A NIDA graduate, Candy has worked across the main-stages at Melbourne Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company and Circus Oz. As the Co-Artistic Director of Black Honey Company, Candy makes work that delves into the heart of radical black feminist dreaming and cuts and tickles in equal measure. This year you can catch her on the small screen in Newton’s Law and The Ex PM.

In this episode, writer, poet and Program Manager of the Melbourne Writers Festival Jessica Alice joins us to discuss poetry as a truthful political medium, pathways to a career in arts programming, and the intricacies of modern dating etiquette. Jessica Alice is a writer, editor and artistic programmer. She is the Program Manager of Melbourne Writers Festival, Chair of the Kat Muscat Fellowship Custodial Committee and a Shadow Board Member of Melbourne Festival. She also directed the National Young Writers' Festival in 2014–15. Jessica’s writing and reviews have been published in The Guardian Australia, Metro Magazine, Overland, Junkee, VICE, The Lifted Brow, Spook Magazine, and Cordite Poetry Review, among others. Our theme music is Rainbow Chan’s “Last”, from her latest album Spacings.

In our special International Women’s Day episode, poet and broadcaster Alicia Sometimes joins us to talk about championing other women’s successes, the humour and poetry of science, and feminism and footy in the context of the new AFLW league. Alicia Sometimes is a writer, poet, broadcaster and musician. She is a regular guest on 774 Radio National and is one sixth of The Outer Sanctum Podcast. Alicia was editor of the national literary journal Going Down Swinging for seven years. Alicia was one of the 3RRR’s Breakfasters team in 2015 and was on Aural Text for fourteen years and has appeared in ABC TV's Sunday Arts and ABC News Breakfast. Her poems have been in Best Australian Poems, Overland, Southerly, Westerly, The Age etc. Alongside Nicole Hayes, Alicia edited an anthology of footy stories called From The Outer. Their next book, A Footy Girl's Guide to the Stars of 2017, was released in February and showcases some star players of the inaugural AFLW season. Our theme music is Rainbow Chan’s “Last”, from her latest album Spacings.

In our latest episode, writer and feminist Amy Gray joins us to chat about motherhood, RuPaul, naked selfies, the politicisation of women’s bodies, and how we can maintain the rage and take positive political action in the post-Trump world. Amy Gray is a freelance writer based in Melbourne. She often writes about feminism, popular culture, media, parenting and the gentle art of sitting. Her work has been published in The Age, The Guardian, ABC, SBS, The Lifted Brow and a bunch of other places. Our theme music is Rainbow Chan’s “Last”, from her latest album Spacings.

In our debut episode, best-selling novelist Hannah Kent joins us to discuss her new novel The Good People, the importance of literary journals as training grounds for emerging writers and editors, and battling self-doubt, creative anxiety and the desire to do too much. Hannah Kent is the co-founder of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings. In 2011, she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award for her debut novel, Burial Rites, the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. Since its publication in 2013, Burial Rites has been translated into nearly thirty languages and has received numerous awards and nominations. Her second novel, The Good People, was released in September 2016. Our theme music is Rainbow Chan's "Last", from her latest album Spacings.