I have been doing A Lot of work connecting the memoir with its audience lately. This has been affirming and wonderful, while occasionally giving me material for my therapist when an interviewer asks a question I realise I need to go away and unpack. One of these was with Radio New Zealand, whose skillful interviewer Kathryn Ryan asked me some great and curly questions: listen to our in depth conversation here.

Jo Case wrote an in depth review of the memoir here, describing it as ‘blackly comic, alternately stoic and vulnerable memoir’, and its ‘grim moments, of which there are many, are interspersed with flashes of joy and exuberance’.

Finally, as mentioned previously, episode two of How to Avoid a Happy Life: the podcast is now available (hence the photo above). The episode is called 90s activist, and you can listen to it here, or on any platform you can find the Fremantle Press pod. The Press describes this one as:

Julia takes us back to her rowdy youth and the start of her social activism, where her proclivity to stand up against the unfairness she saw in the world helped her navigate the early nineties. Julia discusses how she learned to act on various injustices – from WA’s first ever gay pride march to getting arrested at a sheep export protest – and how her activism coloured her professional career in government roles.

Episode Three, Generation Gap, will be available very soon.