Sisters in Crime Australia is delighted that Tasmanian award-winning writer Heather Rose, was available to speak to national co-convenor, Karina Kilmore, for this week’s Murder Mondays interview.
(Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.)
Heather is also a public speaker, writing mentor and a teacher of creativity and imagination but she is not always known for writing crime.
Her work spans literary fiction, magical realism, political fiction and fantasy and has garnered major awards including Stella Prize, the Christina Stead Prize, but only two of her eight novels fit into the crime genre – The Butterfly Man which won the 2006 Davitt Award for best novel and, now Bruny, which is short-listed for this year’s Davitt Awards.
The Butterfly Man takes the story of the infamous Lord Lucan and imagines he ends his days in Tasmania. It’s an unusual theme and even more unusual in that it reduced two hard-bitten crime readers (one a convenor of Sisters in Crime) to tears!
Heather’s latest book, Bruny (Allen & Unwin) is a political thriller set in Tasmania:
A right-wing US president has withdrawn America from the Middle East and the UN. Daesh has a thoroughfare to the sea and China is Australia’s newest ally. When a bomb goes off in remote Tasmania, Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on the island of Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go…
Bruny was shortlisted for the 2020 Fiction Book of The Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards and the Independent Booksellers Book of the Year.
Murders Mondays are available on Sisters in Crime YouTube channel at 6pm on Mondays. Previous guests include Malla Nunn, Sara Partetsky, Judith Rossell, Sulari Gentill, Sarah Epstein, Mirandi Riwoe, Kerry McGinnis, Kathy Reichs, Ellie Marney, Katherine Kovacic, Candice Fox, Anne Buist, Dervla McTiernan and Val McDermid.