Empowering Readers - with The Woman Booker Prize Club

Welcome to Emotely Lit, the podcast celebrating and exploring the unique literary scene of Literary Titus Mania, a beautiful and extraordinary island on the edge of the world. My name is Liz Evans and I'm a journalist, author and researcher from the UK, currently based on Unceded Land near Taluna, the human river in southern Literuita. This podcast is brought to you with the generous support of Arts Tasmania and was created and recorded on Literuita Tasmania. I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Paloar people. I pay my respects to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community of today and I pledge to support the Paloar people to achieve true telling and treaty. A few months after my novel Catherine Reale was published, I was contacted by a book club called The Book Trucks who wanted to take me out for dinner and talk to me about the book. Now my novel is full of psychological tension and as one reviewer put it has all the propulsion of a thriller but it's most definitely not a psychological thriller. I deliberately set out to query this genre with the book because the majority of thrillers I've read are not very psychological at all, most of them are crime fiction and I can say this with a certain amount of authority because Catherine Reale was written for my creative writing PhD so I did a fair amount of research. The book trucks turned out to be a small group of very smart deeply engaged readers all of whom had read the novel very closely and they really got what I was doing with this book. They understood the nuances of the characters and the fact that the suspense owed far more to the gendered nature of complex psychologies rather than murderous intent. So for me as an author it was a real pleasure and a privilege to have such a great conversation with readers and for my novel to be at the centre of such close engagement and thought provoking discussion and it also afforded me an insight into the best of what a book club can be because these women were not just avid readers, they were also very firm friends. According to the feminist tongue in cheek after one of the most famous writers awards in the world, the man Booker Prize, now just the Booker Prize admittedly. The Woman Booker Prize Club are another amazing example of a book club. A dynamic group of six women, three of whom live in Victoria, they describe themselves as a low stakes gang who read four books a year by women, non-binary and trans authors. They also review books by Tasmanian based authors for the Free Hobart magazine and compile beautifully detailed and informative reports on literary events in and around Nippeluna Hobart for their Instagram account. In this episode I talk to the Hobart faction Cat, Emily and Megan about their shared passion for books and the role that reading has played in their friendship. I also discuss the pros and cons of writer's prizes with fellow author and island fiction editor Kate Chromink, who has won prestigious awards for all three of her novels. And for this show City of Literature book recommendations Adele from Fuller's Bookstore shares her two choices, one by a local novelist and the other by writer from Melbourne. So welcome to a monthly lit Woman Booker Prize. Lovely to have you all three here that's such a treat. So maybe you can start by telling the listeners who you are, one by one and one if you can choose to tell us what you do. Well, I hope Megan will start with Megan because she's our founding member so she's got all the backstory. So I'm Megan, currently working as a policy analyst but I feel like that's just my sideline. I was doing a PhD in Utah's and I was having a bit of a rough time about 10 or so years ago. It's like maybe 12 years now, clubs back going and had some really great friends and supports but I was kind of like I want to bring these people together in a different way. Maybe meet some new people and like interact in a different way as well. Have something that takes my food away from the PhD gloom and so I reached out to a few great ones like do we want to start a book club and everyone said yes. Maybe we need a bit of destruction to that. We decided to be really low key. So no judgment if you haven't read the book, only meet like four times a year and I think the Mad Booker Prize was being announced and it was still called the Mad Booker Prize. Thanks to the sponsorship of the man group, we'll just happen to do that in a very feminist way so we thought actually this is a women's book club and it's the woman booker prize club and every year we'll read one of the books by a woman that has won the booker prize and so that's kind of how we started. And it grew from there and we had people come and go over these, we've kind of become a little static group now of the sort of three to six of us that are still in Victoria in Tasmania but it's been a wonderful journey. And sounds fabulous, I'm thinking as you're talking the book club has obviously played quite a big part in your friendship and one thing how much that's grown through being in the book club together. We're all friends before, I mean how about this small place but I would say absolutely our friendship has cemented and really been forged out of this book club more so. Yeah and different people that were just acquaintances have now become best friends. Yeah, yeah the first time I really properly met Mel was one of our book club meetings earlier. I'd just been back from the UK I think and I was trying to be honest but Mel and now she's one of my closest friends and we've become mums together as a whole lot of the journey as well. Fantastic. What do you have with readers as kids? Yeah I feel very passionate about this and very lucky in that I grew up in a house where there was a custom built bookcase in every room that was floor to ceiling, stacks of books everywhere, you know you're allowed to stay up late if you were reading, you know just finish your chapter to a new light off and seeing both my mum and dad reading is a past time and it still is. Every Christmas and birthday we're giving books to each other and we have different genres that we like but I think that's one thing we like about gifting books to each other will push each other gently outside of that comfort zone so yeah for me it's absolutely something that I see as something really beautiful to do. If you reached out to a name a book that was pivotal to you in adolescence which I think is such a critical time and we know teenagers are not reading so much these days and we'll come back to that later but if you reached out to a name a book that was really important to you and your teenage years what would that be? I was a tragic Jane Austen fan I still am so I read private literature so I reckon once a year from the age of like 14 to now and little women I think books and you were largely centered around older at that time women characters were really a little part of my reading as in adolescence. It might have been all school all the classrooms on the second floor opened out into the library which is kind of the hallway of the library. Space and the school library it's really new what they were doing in terms of young adult fiction and displaying titles face out on the shelves and I used to come out of my youth or classroom and that book was always looking at me and I was like my old enough to bring up. Girl of my age struggled to bridge her dreams in a fantasy world and fantasy is always being my sort of comfort area so that was definitely a book where I turned to a series I returned to through my teens. I don't know if I necessarily have a pivotal book that I remember but my mum did give me the hobbit at an early age because it was her favourite book I would absolutely not read that genre as an adult but to have that shared memory and connection with my mum that she was handing me her favourite books from her childhood. Yeah, that makes something very significant. I think for me it was mothering heights which I read after Kate Bush really so single so I was probably 13 when I read mothering heights and I was so struck by I just remember it was so impactful that was it for me the grantees I went on this big grante kind of obsession for a while. Yeah, so maybe early roots and that domestic noir genre are interesting. How do you choose the books that you feature? I guess you could talk about the reviews you do or the ones that you post online. You've said that you have a kind of feminist perspective, does that affect the books that you choose? Well I'm wondering what happens if and when you disagree. Well, first of all we've got a message. I don't know where it is at the moment actually, but we have added to that over the years, so I don't know how many titles are on it now. But we, I said we, into Megan, she organizes us all, she's a randomizer, so we pick something from that randomly. And that's made to look before we try and read one booker winner, who's female, a year. So that's kind of the way we've got that, but we'll just add to it throughout the year, if we hear or see something that sounds interesting or a recommendation from someone else. We always have a chat at the end of a book club session about what are we going to do next. And it might be, yeah, let's get back to the randomizer and check a few suggestions in that we've seen, or someone might just say, "I don't read this," and then we'll go research to find something that's going to fit our group from that. I'm like, "I just really feel like a cracking spine novel." We all went to try and find a novel that was a spine novel written by a woman that also featured a strong female lead. And this was surprisingly difficult. So it's really tough. So if anyone has a recommendation, it's too long ago. We do try and pick books or genres around the mood as well. I mean, we all know that the global news cycle is a bit intense at times and when it comes up to busy moments of life, we might try to choose something a little bit lighter to balance that out a bit. Or we might decide to dive right on in and pick something that's a bit topical. Yeah, it's been pandemic we read. Is it the shadow king? Yeah, we did read that one. We all couldn't. We all couldn't. No one had read it. Yeah, so we picked a nice wrong card afterwards. It's making me think what you were saying, Kat, before we started recording about the clinking and how that's kind of triggering your carpet. Going your carbon guilt. Yeah, so I broke the back on starting it during Lucy's raiders block. And normally, I love a really depressing sad novel, doesn't bring my mood down. But for me, the clinking just hit a personal nerve because of my carbon guilt and your impact on the earth. I was just like, all this just hits a bit too close to home. But it was a really beautiful novel and I highly recommend it. [Music] So thinking about the idea of meeting as a book club, is it just the six of you and do you do it online? Or how does that work now? Inspiration. And so during COVID, we'll be online, obviously, although Megan was very kind and was walking the streets of private and do dog drops and a little box, which is lovely. But we largely will meet in person. But recently, some of our members have shifted to the Big Island for several zoom in as well, but it's a bit of both. We try to do it for a year, for meetups. We catch up outside of that as well, of course, but for proper book catch ups. And we'll take it to enter as to where that is, usually someone's house, lots of cups tea. We really like to eat as well, so we've always got good snacks. At the store, we get to get in the same place as many people as can come from the mainland. We have a big bookish retreat. Yeah. The last year as actual book clubs has been slower. You know, people having kids, people making states, people starting with new jobs, people having illness and stuff like that. A book club is there to support that not make it harder. And I think that's what's nice for us to come out of book club is, yeah, book club will always be there. But it's the support that we give each other outside of that. When we do get together, it's like maybe half an hour an hour of talking about the book. Yeah. And then a bit longer talking about other books we've read. And then it moves into podcast and TV shows. Unloading of our lifestyle is a therapy book. Yeah. It's always a whole day of it. Yeah. Yeah. You're really touching on something very fundamental about the role reading house in terms of community building. I think it's amazing how many women I know are in book clubs, secret book clubs. Not so much secret, but it's just part of everyone's lives. You don't know that at thousands of them all around the city, all around the world. It's such a beautiful thing. And I think this is pretty stereotypical, but I think typically women are much better at holding and creating communities and men. And I think we see that in loneliness statistics. I think we see that in challenges as we age. And I think that potentially book clubs could really help address some challenges for the male population around a lack of community and connection. It's really directly pointing out to the fact that you're mainly your book. I think women are typically more social creatures. Again, that's a huge stereotype, but I think we see that a lot. And I think book clubs and reading can really facilitate bringing people together. And I'd love to see that happen more for men. The idea of a man that's pushed online is all about achieving and improving yourself. And as part of this, they'll say, "And you'll read 10 minutes of a non-fiction self-help book a day." And it's all about self-improvement. But reading a fiction book can give you just as many benefits. Maybe the benefits of reading fiction isn't widely sprued. I look at my own partner. He reads largely non-fiction. He had a really good choice. So that's good. He loves a bit of escapeous fiction. He loves the Matthew Riley. But he doesn't read many women. And I read books by way of my life, but I'm reading it very, very tired of books. I think love different genders and backgrounds and different genres. And I wonder what he's missing out on. If he's a kind of reading. He knows to hear we've kind of created a bit of an echo chamber, I think, because of the types of books we read and the people that we end up engaging with online. And I think everyone does that. But yeah, my husband is the same. He won't read largely non-fiction. And he loves that, which is great. It's very obvious who's bookshelf is who is in our house. Speaking, Kim's echo chamber. Do we do more cross-promotional? We have a very small male following. But I heard on the radio in the last year about a tough guy book club that was started coming with Melbourne. Yeah. And it's just men without phones. And I like to talk about work. They have some strict rules. And they just go to the pub and talk about books. So I do wonder if there's something in meeting stereotypes. Stereo, typical men where they're at. They've seen a lot of success. They've got book chapters around the world. So maybe there's a role for us to play in some cross-promotional. We might not be featuring the books that you want to read. But there's other avenues. And maybe we have a role to play in that. I've been reading quite alarming statistics. The fact that reading is very much under threat. The national literacy trust in the UK. And last year they identified a 36% decrease in reading enjoyment levels since 2005. The iPhone appeared in 2007. So there is a direct link. The education department in the UK has invested 27.5 million pounds into libraries. And it occurred 2026, the national year of reading. They want to give every state primary school a library. And they've also got things like the Premier League, soccer stars, distributing thousands of books to kids. Going into schools, giving talks. They've launched a new prize to children's book prize, which is kind of into being this year. And the first winner will be announced next year. And there will be kids judging your spies among the adults. So there is some concerted effort in the UK to get kids reading. But boys and men is definitely an issue. And I know that this annual literacy survey looked at the most impacted group in terms of the decline was boys aged 11 to 16. And I think, Kat, you're right. This is linked very much with that sort of performative online influencer kind of trend. And compared to that, reading is perceived as a sort of slower, more solitary activity. Which I think is ironic, because if you're online, usually by yourself in room. And you're doing something which doesn't necessarily connect you to other people in the way that reading does. Reading does connect you to people in terms of ideas, experience, information. The most beneficial reward of reading. And it's so important to encourage children to do this. This is the building of empathy. I think when you read, you step into the life of an experience of somebody else. And that could be someone similar to you, that could be someone who's living in a completely different life. It could be anywhere and the least of that. It could be fantasy made up, it could be futuristic, whatever. And the ability to look at the world to someone else's lives, I think is maybe for bigger and more important than now. And just think that we're losing that. And children is merely sad, and it's quite scary. Yeah, I think that's another really important point. Because I know that some studies have been done into the amount of time kids spend online, and they've actually drawn a parallel with that. And the decrease in empathy in terms of teenage capacity, they're literally thinking about and attending to themselves in selfie for land. Yeah, it's a literal thing. Yeah, so what do we do about that as opposed to the question? It is the question. One thing that we definitely notice is that books to grab or book talk, is heavily same-out, and we've kind of put ourselves in a niche that we really books by women, encouraging able to read more books by women, but perhaps we're creating which is a good idea. focus there and a big issue in those stats as well is that men who do read other men, while women would read men and women. I think we're probably all need to diversify our reading, but it seems to be that for men particularly and there's a much more pressing matter. Yeah, and I definitely came across some statistics around this too before I panel about women writers might presented last year to writers festival. I think that the stats were something like 80% of books are read by women. I don't know how they found these stats that they did drill into the research. Women will read books by men, men will not read books by women, but does actually extend to more picture apparently. And even people like David Nichols says 70% of his readers are women because men don't want to read books about relationships and emotions and sex, which I find fascinating. And of course, this conversation was generated again with last year's book I'm not sure when the flash by David Sarle which inspired all this press and you know the male novelist is back because if he'd ever gone away it could be really, really hadn't. So so what is interesting when we're talking about boys and men not reading and you know that's linked to writing, but at the same time hearing you say that you're reinforcing something as an echo chamber, but actually you know women are still in the process of gaining a footing in some ways in this literary space. That was part of our reason of being in the Woman Booker Prize cub is promoting books by women non-binary and trans authors. So definitely played into it that we're very aware of the major literary awards are going to male authors. And if a woman wins people get very upset. The video comment before around lots of novels and general being around the human experience is a really interesting one and it would be really interesting to understand that more is that the reason that men aren't reading fiction and novels or is that I don't think it feels yeah it is a human experience isn't it? It was funny just of going right to the general post-news. Why aren't people with any gender reading? I used to just assume everyone read and I'd be like what have you been reading? What kind of things do you read? Now there's this kind of slightly awkward question that feels really silly like do you read? But actually asking that question you were acquaintances and even a lot of friends that I've never talked about books with is now it was really rich side community of men who read fantasy and sci-fi which I don't have as so much amongst my viewing friends. I feel like fantasy and sci-fi has always been a really interesting genre very exploring more difficult subjects like gender, like diversity and putting it you know a different situation that makes it safer to talk about or more interesting to talk about and it's interesting that yeah a lot of men that I know either read non-fiction or go straight to the title remote experience of sci-fi and fantasy but there's a really rich way that we can talk about keeping an experience in those genres in a way that we can bring men into fiction and reading through that. Yeah you're making a really really interesting point there I think and coming back to this idea of the world of book clubs and book talk in that online space I'm also wondering if there's anything that can be done more in terms of live events in the UK I've got a friend who did a pop-up rock and roll book club festival he was someone I knew in the music industry so he could pull in people like Jarvis Cocker out all sorts of people and have this incredible event but things like that can generate interest and maybe bring in in a music found where you could do something with soccer I'm just wondering if there's anything like that you've ever thought about doing live events or pop-up events or anything. Definitely because we do have people reach out to us all the time asking if we do anything in person or can they join and Megan's had this really great idea of well we've not gotten to that point in of doing live events but is there a way that we can connect people who want to who want to join a group and create a community. We have plans of doing some speech editing. Yeah our ambitions have kept pace with our lives. No, absolutely not. Our activity has dropped off just as else sort of like opportunity to do or as come around but we've definitely been chatting about some ideas I've got a half written for for like a book club matchmaking service that we could use a little online platform to get out there and talk about community we've got good relationships with some of the book shops and also bars around towns and so we're sort of thinking about ideas around book shops being dating. They're doing it in the UK there's this whole kind of lit social craze which I think is in some way a response to the disappearance of live music venues and young people are going out they're going to bars they're going to clubs to spoken word events to poetry readings they're doing dating events book bars have been a thing in the UK for a while I'm desperate for one here yeah we do. Hi I'm Adele from Fullers Bookshop my Nifalina author is The Hobart Hotel by Mary Luth Stevens and I absolutely love this book it's the history of rest point done in a fictional way most people only know it as a casino but it was also a hotel beforehand which is something a lot of people didn't know I'm usually for Mary Luth it's half set in Tasmania and it partially set in Uruguay as well which is just incredible half of the timeline is World War Two so that's when it starts in Hobart at the opening of the Ruby Arrow Hotel and then it goes to Uruguay and it becomes kind of an espionage style novel which is great and then the other storyline is a girl when the casino itself is opening who's training to be one in the lightning bugs so that's in the 70s I didn't grow up in that time so it was great seeing the political unrest that the casino caused and what it did to the likes of the workers and it's just fantastic my other book is After the Siren by Darcy Green and this is a Melbourne author and the reason I love this one so much is sports romance is huge at the moment and this one is two guys on the same AFL team who get into a relationship essentially so it's kind of enemies to lovers romance and obviously AFL's not necessarily the most friendly area for that to happen so it's how they navigate their sport their team their lives and their public personas yes it's a lot of fun when I spoke to Rebecca Armitage for this podcast she talked about the fact that she's the Reef with a Spring book club pick for December 2025 and that there might be some literary snobbery around that in more literary circles but she said anything that gets people reading you know and people will go out and read that with a Spring book and they may not read anything else they might just read 12 books a year which is brilliant I have so many thoughts about this because there is such a lot of snobbery and smoothing this around the types of books I love a rom-com sometimes it's the ultimate check out you've had a long day go home and you dive into a book that you know is going to have a happy ending and it's such a nice thing to do for yourself but if you tell certain people this or you move in certain circles so you really it's cheaply right like there's such a negative connotation around that which I think is nuts because anything that will get people reading is surely better than sitting there and doing scrolling on your phone yes I agree I love the success of jewel eaters book club because again whatever gets people reading reading more widely as well and she's always talking to the authors and I think we have a great opportunity here in Tasmania in that I've found all of the authors are just craving to talk to people and we've also got these readers who want to be connected to the authors talking to them about their books and what they're reading and I think that could be a great opportunity for us in Tasmania to to connect those two people you can set books comes up with more structure as well which I think might be a nice gateway because I think sometimes the idea of talking about something which it often leads into talking about feelings can be quite scary but if you have some structured questions and you can give those to people at advance they can think about stuff and then bring back to the table it doesn't have to be something that's completely free for bookshops are really great at running book clubs we facilitate and you can just sign up to come on that time yeah whatever and like you were saying earlier about sporting clubs trying to promote reading I think that's really great opportunity in Tasmania where we've got the jack jumpers and in the devil it's really trying to be able to community and so we can involve them from the beginning in their scarcity of leadership that would be brilliant one of the things I think is very interesting and happy is that we do have this incredible pool of brilliant published authors and lots of people that are writing and we have some of the lowest literacy rates in the country so there's a huge disconnect so anyway we can kind of meet in the middle ground there is something we should be aiming for there's a really great momentum I think in the last year with the UNESCO City of Liturin people are really thinking about how can we connect how can we relate what can we do different what can we do more how do we feel new city with literature and I really loved at last year at the UNESCO City of Liturin first anniversary forum the library in particular which is where we are recording this talking about the literacy angle and so they're launching a Spanish language collection particularly focused on young readers to bring the American communities Hobart from the Orange Library, Brickman and future circles and embrace all literacy not just English literacy it was just great my partner has a work-sponsored program where he goes and sits with children in primary schools every week on Wednesday morning and listen to the kids read and just praise and support them for reading. One thing that we're missing in our University of Literature is our master newspaper very rarely covers bookish events or literary launches and successful authors and so the third thing we do is book club is review Tasmania books for the Hobart magazine and Tasmania loosely as said in Tasmania about Tasmania by Tasmania and through that we've been careful to maintain the balance of more literary ones more commercial ones and I think as observers of the literary scene I think we are seeing a little bit more of a breakdown of the borders and more important facial fiction coming out of Tasmania which is really exciting and increasingly we have a backlog as well you know sometimes we'd sort of think oh what are we going to read next now we have the next six months of reviews planned in the backlog because we just can't keep up and they're all new releases let alone in the backlog of Tasmania and fiction that love to feature that's just really great books from the past that never got the same highlighting that they would get now yeah there's quite a few of those one of the ones that's bringing some on for me is Anna Dusk's in human nature I only heard about that because of Kate Chromick talking about it the what white is read night five leaves left with Jane Wilson but I was just blown away by that book it's like nothing I've ever read I am going to ask you about literary awards because of your name referencing the book of prize the man book of prize what's your opinion of the man book of prize and it's kind of form I guess I follow it the most deeply and so on that's the way sort of wish that ain't a lot of the group and over the last few years over at the shortness says they've come out which has been a really fun experience and a good opportunity to engage with other readers while things are fresh and topical the thing I like about the book areas even though it's kind of set up as the pinnacle prize of English language literature is it actually has no firm rules and the judges change every year and so something that I really enjoy about reading the whole list is you get a much better idea with my but also you get the themes of the year it's kind of just like capturing the zeitgeist more than picking a book that's going to last generations I feel in some ways you get to understand that group of people and how they came together and created a certain dynamic about this year in the future and the books always feel like quite coherent as the set together even though they varied and so I think that's a really interesting process and I love seeing the judges announcements every year now so I'm like okay what's going to come from that group it'll be different that what last year's growth would have chosen this year so we're such an odd prize in that way I think it's only the the value of its prize money that makes it so breakdown but still it's fun I love the Dublin book prize because that's chosen by libraries and there's a new prize starting this year but it's going to be judged by readers in kind of pools really interested in that dynamic but yeah this is interesting because I think looking at it without too much context sometimes I look at a book that's got lots of stickers on and I think Christ it's going to be so dense and all but I'm not reading but sometimes yeah it can put you off depending on your knowledge of exactly what reading is talking about of the structure of the prize itself but really it helps you diversify your reading because often will read stuff from the book that I would never have picked up in a million years but yeah it always gives us something to talk about and some some book prices are just really snappy and intellectual and it's interesting to read something that plays with structure and form but if it's got no feeling in it personally if you take my bite sorry the last few years of the book have been really good they've covered the whole manager from stylistic objects to really sweep your way fictional targets and there's something for everyone in a collection like that yeah I think you're capturing what makes it such an interesting prize I looked into the history of it when I was doing my research and I learned things I never knew Rebecca West was one of the first people involved in putting it together and she was just amazing in terms of the things that she was saying and she was very harsh kind of renowned for that but it was really interesting and one thing I came across was a quote by Julian Barnes who was shortlisted in 87 for his book Flowber's parrot he eventually won it in 2011 with the sense of an ending but in 1987 he was clearly a bit sore because he said this the prize drives publishers mad with home book sellers mad with greed judges mad with power winners mad with prize and losers the unsuccessful shortlistees plus every other novelist in the country mad with envy and disappointment so that made me wonder about the function of a book prize I think like the brightest festival prizes it's all just good press it's just completely off tender but I've seen this thing about the competitiveness of direct claims on recalls drag case over the years is they're nicer to each other because the stakes are lower what matters is being on the show and getting the press not winning the second place person the seventh place person can do just as well of their most performance opportunities as the winner these days and I think the same goes for no surprise if you're on the long list and maybe your book's not even out yet because they do have some issues with the published exchanges but if that means that someone notices your book who you know it might have otherwise been a thousand bookseller like just one of those ones that passed it by but if that means someone sees that then someone loves it and they tell someone else that they loved it that's great yep a great I mean book a prize you exist purely for the joy of reading you know there's a lot of emphasis on reading there's a I don't know how to put this not a poor cousin of writing but it's not a cost ever right yes yeah exactly and you read to write and you know I mean I've always been a writer in my profession but I read because I couldn't not it's how it makes sense of the world so it's been a real honor and the treat to talk to you today about reading thank you so much thanks for giving it to you we love you we love you we love you so people can find us up on Instagram if you're interested in what we read and the hay bar yes home at magazine a great publication and now i discuss the pros and cons of literary prizes with Kate Cromanck I remember being at an event with you and Jane Lawson probably for the launch of your novella at fullers where she described you as Tasmania's most awarded writer which is true isn't it I mean everything you've written has won an award so you're the perfect person to ask about literary prizes what's the value of them how did they impact on writers I mean I never ever considered awards other than financial ones but not for the published work it's to help get the writing done where you kind of send them a chapter and then they give you a fellowship with a financial reward but I've never thought about literary prizes really because I don't know they just have never been on my radar so yeah I mean obviously if they've been on yours and if one loads of them they're interesting aren't they it is such a joy and a thrill to win one and it usually comes with money and as we know it can be tough to earn a living wage in this industry and so that's always extremely welcome and sometimes if you're shortlisted and don't win there's a smaller prize as well and I do think they create a lot of dialogue they create a lot of reading the bigger prizes you know the Miles Franklin the Stella and obviously the international prizes like the booker those books then get scrutinized in a way that I think is really exciting they get compared against each other and whole conversations happen around them encompassing as well the books that weren't on the list and perhaps should have been so I think they can be quite invigorating culturally they are a challenge kind of psychologically and I guess because they are caring within them sort of an inherent failure as well so if you get longer shortlisted for a prize for example and then you don't win your accomplishment becomes a failure and the accomplishment is a thing to be celebrated you know I was shortlisted for this thing with some other writers I really admire but it turns into a disappointment if you don't then win the prize and then if you do win the prize and you then don't win another prize or you write another book and you don't win a prize for that book I think it creates this kind of external measure that you are constantly striving for and can never quite reach because there's no writer who's won everything all the time you know and I think the trouble with the external marker is that it is not quantifiable there are so many books that could be shortlisted for a certain prize like the stellar prize you know the stellar shortlist was released recently it's really exciting shortlist you know there's a lot to be read and a lot to be able to do. said about those books, equally, there were so many other books that could have been on that short list that aren't. And once you get to a certain level of professionalism in your writing, which basically I guess means that you're published to a degree, it becomes a matter of taste. Yeah, and also, I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure that I fully trust the system because when you look at who's judging, it's never objective. I don't think it can be. Oh, no, it's art. Yeah. And it must be subjective. And in the small country as well, you know, people, no people who know people. But I feel like he talked about being shortlisted or being longlisted as a failure. I mean, I think if that was me, I'd probably consider it a triumph, but I know what you mean. You still haven't actually won. Maybe prices are more for readers than writers, because they do bring books to readers' attentions. And you know, you get stuff on Instagram, where people are kind of taking photographs of all the books, they've read that were on the long list for this or the short list for that. I mean, the set up price isn't an interesting one, because it's so all-encompassing. It's not restricted to genre. And you've got nonfiction, with fiction, it's kind of a bit sprawly, isn't it? I really feel for the judges actually, because I don't know how you could choose if you had on your short list an incredible work of nonfiction, an incredible poetry collection, an incredible novel. How do you choose the thing that is the best, because they're different things. They might be equal in their perfection, but they're just different in nature. And is that fair on the writers? I don't know. It is a very old one. It's very, very old. I think as a reader there, I can be quite guided by probably the short list, it's because I don't have time to eat long lists unless they're super short long lists. But, you know, I read Flesh because that one, the booker. And there was a book I heard of recently that was on the international booker prize short list, I think, from last year, that just sounds incredible. And the international ones, I think, kind of gravitating more towards and ever, because of the city of literature designation, which is kind of opening up my mind a bit, and just thinking about reading in terms of cultural diversity and inclusivity, especially after talking to Amon Jaffer for this podcast, and just, you know, being curious about other perspectives and other literary traditions as well. But yeah, prizes and awards, as you say, you know, because you can't really quantify or qualify either. How do you settle on that? I mean, I know that they have criteria and when you see what the judges are looking for and how they're looking for it, when you read the comments by, I guess, the booker prizes, the most famous one. It's well thought out. It is very well thought out, but it also includes in it the dynamics of the group of judges. So on a much, much smaller level, you know, if I've been judging a short story prize or something, there've been times when I haven't chosen the one that I wanted to win, because I've put the one that I want to win to my fellow judges and they've had equally strong feelings about something else and we've had to negotiate and agree on one that we can agree on. Yes, life up after experience as well. And I'm always proud, you know, to award the winner, and I always think it's a worthy winner, but it comes down to the unmeasurable quality of the human dynamic, which probably encompasses such things as zeitgeist, you know, whatever that is. I think probably one of the most exciting things that a literary prize can do is offer a lesser known book to a much wider reading audience, which is a wonderful possibility if the judges choose something that was sent to them that none of them have ever heard of before and, you know, surprised them with a book like Flesh, which was quite distinct and peculiar and perhaps wouldn't have reached such a broad audience if it hadn't won the booker. And I've discovered so many treasures that way. And even on a much, much, much, much, much smaller scale, my first book was only longlisted, not shortlisted in the UK for the Walter Scott Prize. And that book, partly because it's peculiar and partly because it was released in COVID and other reasons as well, it didn't make a huge splash here and it didn't make a huge splash anywhere, but it made it to the UK. And some people there read it too, otherwise wouldn't have found it. And that alongside the fact that my name was alphabetically next to Hillary Mantell's, that was the the truest joy of being on that list. That's fabulous. I do wonder if prizes are becoming more, I don't know, more talked about or the hold more weight or the hold more significance now. I mean, I don't remember them ever being that important sort of 10, 15 years ago. Yeah, interesting. I wonder if it's a reflection of the growing precarity that we feel as readers and writers, not just financially, but existentially with things like AI and just the bullshit horror of the world as it is, that it's something we can latch on to as something that can be profitable for writers, something that is a clear hinge for discussion and something that has a form. So it's quite validating. Yes, perhaps. Thank you so much for listening. On the next episode of remotely lit, I speak with author Rebecca Armitage about her debut novel The Air Apparent, a publishing success story. It's ultimately a coming to age story about what this young woman's going to do, there's clothes, you know, it's glamorous, but I do want people to, even if they don't really feel like doing it, just perhaps reflect on, you know, unearned power and colonialism. I think younger people are much smarter and a much more open to those conversations than media bosses and publishing houses to realise. If you've enjoyed this episode with remotely lit and would like to show your appreciation to me, Liz, you can shout me a coffee at www.bimyacoffee.com/lizethans If you go to remotelylit.com, you'll find the show notes for this episode, including links to books, festivals, anything else that we've discussed. You can also rate, review and follow the show and spread the word far and wide because it will all help others to find us.