Meg Mundell: novelist, journalist, and research fellow

Meg Mundell, who won winning the Davitt (Best Adult Crime Novel) in the recent awards, was this week’s guest for Murder Mondays interview with Sisters in Crime national co-convenor, Karina Kilmore.

(Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.)

 

 

 

 

Like Karina, Meg hails from New Zealand and has ended up in Melbourne working as an author and journalist.

Meg Mundell is also a research fellow in writing and literature. Her research interests include place, spatial justice, homelessness, housing, narrative, cultural geography and environmental psychology. Her critically acclaimed debut novel Black Glass (2011) and story collection Things I Did for Money (2013) were published by Scribe, and her writing has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Australian Book Review, Overland, Meanjin, Cordite Poetry Review, The Monthly, The Guardian, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Weekend Australian.

Her second novel, The Trespassers (UQP) isMeg’s first foray into crime and, as well as winning the Davitt, has been shortlisted for the Norma K. Hemming Award and an Aurealis Award (for best science fiction novel). And it’s has been optioned for TV!

The Davitt judges said they “were mesmerised from the novel’s opening page to the very last word. Each sentence is poetry, and the story enthrals from start to finish. The Trespassers is presciently set during a global pandemic, and is speculative, literary fiction at its finest. It tracks the deprivations and fears of passengers sailing from London to Melbourne as new infections break out on board. Its themes of murder, indentured labour and corporate sabotage conclude in a chilling and haunting finale.”

Retired County Court Judge, Jane Patrick (Brighton Vic), won the traditional Davitt Be Immortalised in Fiction Competition, which means her name will be included in Meg’s next crime novel.

Click HERE to read The Sunday Age interview with Meg.

Murders Mondays are available on Sisters in Crime YouTube channel at 6pm on Mondays. Previous guests include J. P. Powell, Kerry Greenwood, Lili Wilkinson, Petronella McGovern, Heather Rose, Malla Nunn, Sara Paretsky, 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.