Irma and Karen chat about the upcoming Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. Then Karen talks to Kylie Needham about how a short story turned into her debut novel, the joys and challenges of writing for television and the screen, the collaboration of the writers’ room and the vulnerabilities of the process, what writing scripts taught her about moving the narrative forward, whether authors should get involved with screen adaptions of their work, the inequality and sexism of television in the 2000s, and a beautiful moment with a literature high school teacher decades later.

About Kylie:
Kylie Needham is an award-winning screenwriter. She has won two AWGIE (Australian Writers’ Guild) Awards for television scriptwriting, and her work has been published in several literary journals. Her first novel GIRL IN A PINK DRESS, published in 2023, won the MUD Literary Prize for the best debut literary novel by an Australian author, and also won the MARION Writers Prize for Fiction.

Irma and Karen chat about audio books.

Then Karen speaks with Finegan Kruckemeyer about how he got his first break as a playwright, the difference between writing for young people and adult audiences, how much freedom there is in the parameters of commissioned works, why he acts out his scripts, why a school production of one of his plays blew him away far more than the professional production, how he goes about writing both comedy and big issues, why he doesn’t enter the rehearsal space, advice on how to get started as a playwright, and how his wife’s illness and a new puppy led to writing his first novel.

About Finegan:
Finegan Kruckemeyer is one of Australia’s most prolific playwrights and has written more than 100 commissioned plays for children and adults that have been performed all over the world. He’s received many awards for his work as a playwright, including the 2017 Mickey Miners Lifetime Achievement Award for services to international theatre for young audiences, and the 2015 David Williamson Award for Excellence in Australian Playwrighting. He’s recently had his first novel published: The End and Everything Before It.

Irma chats to agent Jacinta di Mase about what agents do to earn their 15%, the intricacies of contracts – including rights reversion, world rights, backlists and rising royalties, how an agent can fight for an author over cover design and choosing a title, the dos and don’ts of submitting to agents, the extent of editorial feedback to expect from agents, how the submission process to publishers works, the ins and outs of foreign rights, what a co-agent is and why they’re important, how film/TV deals are negotiated, how Covid transformed the industry for the better, and why a meeting at Allen & Unwin with Clementine Ford turned out to be one of the highlights of Jacinta’s career.

About Jacinta
Jacinta di Mase has a background in bookselling and publishing, and worked for ten years in two of Australia’s premier literary agencies, before setting up her own agency, Jacinta di Mase Management, in 2004. The agency represents a diverse range of writers and illustrators across all areas of the publishing market, including fiction, non-fiction, and books for children and young adults.