Penmanship Episode 11: Susan Johnson (September 2015)
Channel: Penmanship
Date: 2015-09-30

Episode 11 of Penmanship, a podcast about Australian writing culture hosted by Andrew McMillen.

Susan Johnson is an author and staff writer at Qweekend.

Susan has recently published her eighth novel, 'The Landing', which takes its name from a fictional lakeside community north of the Queensland capital of Brisbane, where all of the 200 or so residents intimately know each others’ business. In addition to her prolific fiction work, Susan has published two non-fiction books, including a memoir, and also works as a staff writer at The Courier-Mail’s Saturday magazine, Qweekend. I’m more familiar with her fine work in the magazine, but when we met at the News Queensland offices in mid-September, we spoke largely about her fiction writing.

Our conversation also touches on her experiences with the shrinking sizes of author advances in recent years; her early career as a cadet journalist at The Courier-Mail, and how she later found her way back to the newspaper where she began; the hostility that creative people and artists tend to be met with whenever the topic of writers’ grants are discussed in public; and how she wrote herself into existence with her first novel, after first meticulously deconstructing her favourite authors to better understand how they wrote.

Over the course of ten books and thirty years, Susan Johnson has been long-listed and short-listed for many national and international awards. Her first shortlist was for the 1991 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (for 'Flying Lessons'), followed by the 1994 National Book Council’s Banjo Award ('A Big Life') and the National Biography Award 2000 (A Better Woman). 'The Broken Book' was shortlisted for the 2005 Nita B Kibble Award; Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; the Westfield/Waverly Library Literary Award, and a slew of other awards, including a long-list for the Miles Franklin and the International Dublin IMPAC Award. Her last novel, 'My Hundred Lovers', was published in 2012 to critical acclaim. Susan is an Adjunct Professor in Creative Writing at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She currently lives in Brisbane, from ten years in London, France and Greece. She is a feature writer at Qweekend magazine, The Courier-Mail.

Susan Johnson on Twitter: @SJreaders
Penmanship on Twitter: @PenmanshipAU
Andrew McMillen on Twitter: @Andrew_McMillen

Show notes: http://penmanshippodcast.com/episode-11-susan-johnson/

The theme song for Penmanship is ‘Eternally Yours‘ by Australian band Laughing Clowns, used with permission of band leader and songwriter Ed Kuepper. I recommend purchasing 'Cruel, But Fair – The Complete Clowns Recordings' via iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/album/cruel-but-fair-complete-clowns/id129575674