Culture Club - Doing The Work With Author Bri Lee

00:00:00.000 A rejection of sad girl novels, exploring class, power and sex in Australian fiction

00:00:12.420 and making it as a writer in 2024.

00:00:15.880 I'm Jasmine.

00:00:16.980 And I'm Maggie.

00:00:17.860 And you're listening to Culture Club.

00:00:19.340 This is our monthly interview with the person we find interesting and that we think you

00:00:24.060 will too.

00:00:24.500 we acknowledge that the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people and the Gadigal people are the traditional

00:00:33.560 custodians of the land upon which we live work and record this podcast we would like to pay

00:00:38.980 our respects to elders past and present always was always will be aboriginal land

00:00:44.920 Bri Lee is one of Australia's leading thinkers and writers she's the author of eggshell skull

00:00:53.900 beauty who gets to be smart and now her first fiction novel the work she's written acclaimed

00:01:00.300 stories on australia's manufacturing industry on whether influences are the new public intellectuals

00:01:06.520 and how australian courts are stacked against victims of sexual assault her writing is brutally

00:01:11.760 honest resilient and curious welcome brie we're so happy to have you on culture club thank you

00:01:17.580 for having me. Good to be here. So you wear many hats. You're an author, a journalist, a university

00:01:23.920 lecturer, an intellectual in general. And we wanted to start off with a question about what

00:01:30.700 does daily life look like for you? Oh, that's a tough one, actually. I feel like my life changes

00:01:36.180 pretty dramatically every few months um in general um i will wake up and walk my dog

00:01:46.360 to start which is a thrill i've always wanted a dog uh and then it depends what i have on so if

00:01:53.660 it's a wednesday for example i will spend most of the day making my newsletter news and reviews

00:01:58.120 if it's not a wednesday i will um try and get some work on my phd done before i open my inbox

00:02:05.360 which is a challenge um I will do work on whatever freelancing I have uh which is again different

00:02:14.900 every week and every month um and then the big question people have is like how what it looks

00:02:20.560 like when I work on my books um and I don't get to do that every day of my life I have to sort of

00:02:27.240 buy my time doing all of my other jobs to then, um, put sort of a few weeks, a few weeks at a

00:02:35.420 time aside to work on my books. And then, uh, that is the time in my life when I usually will

00:02:40.020 go on like a sort of complete email and internet blackout and just dedicate my time to working on

00:02:45.780 a book. So there is no real answer. Every day looks different, uh, which is what I love.

00:02:51.980 Yeah. That's fun. That every day is different.

00:02:53.820 completely it's the creative's way to be but even from the outside I would say

00:02:59.420 following your content at least for the last few months now excitingly you're of course

00:03:05.180 doing your book tour or you're at the back end of your book tour and I'm seeing you doing

00:03:10.280 incredible talks as well as you know on stage at the opera house it seems very very cool

00:03:18.320 very chic a lot of the times where we can imagine that the reality is you know sitting at your

00:03:23.620 desk kind of like hunched over a laptop for most of your days as well yeah definitely um I think

00:03:29.620 most people have a I don't know it seems like people have a pretty distorted idea of what my

00:03:34.580 average life actually looks like you know the it's like any job where um there are certain parts of

00:03:40.340 it that are hyper visible and they don't that's not like all it is it's not even 20 percent of

00:03:46.800 what it is that's like the final end five percent of like the rest of the hours where it's just you

00:03:51.980 by yourself at a laptop yeah but certainly it's true right now that I'm traveling a ton a ton of

00:03:59.120 events um yeah so basically on the road for the entire month of April doing dozens of events and

00:04:07.820 interviews um about my new book I loved your piece in Elle magazine titled Are Influencers

00:04:12.900 the New Public Intellectuals do you feel like writers need to be these sort of influences these

00:04:18.340 days well i mean yeah that was a huge piece um the piece for l ended up at about 3 000 words i

00:04:25.200 published a five and a half thousand word version of it on news and reviews um but to be yeah i'm

00:04:31.660 trying to like think about specifically okay well what i can say for my life at the moment um

00:04:38.180 is that the thing that makes me good at my job most of the time is my ability to be um productive

00:04:46.620 by myself and to be the type of person who not only can deal

00:04:52.440 with long periods of solitude and working solo but a person

00:04:57.000 who thrives and does their best work in that mode

00:05:00.880 of essentially quiet thoughtfulness.

00:05:04.420 And then the thing that makes people, not just me,

00:05:08.340 but me right now touring, the thing that makes you able

00:05:10.760 to share your work is a completely opposite type

00:05:16.020 of human being, someone who not only is good

00:05:19.240 at like speaking in front of crowds but someone

00:05:22.480 who likes spending all of their time talking

00:05:27.600 with other people.

00:05:30.000 And it's not, I am not at all, no, zero complaints,

00:05:35.100 not complaining about what an extreme privilege it is

00:05:38.880 to be sent on you know a month-long book tour and to have the opportunity to share my work with a lot

00:05:43.640 of people but um it's sort of it's tough um for those of us who also sort of struggle with this

00:05:53.920 end of things um when you believe in the work that you've done but then you're sort of made

00:05:58.760 to feel like a sellout for trying to share your work it's like you can't win you can't win yeah

00:06:04.960 I find it so interesting because I think in a lot of media spaces, like the worst thing you can be called is an influencer.

00:06:11.500 I did see a funny tweet the other day and the person was like calling a writer you don't like a content creator, which is funny.

00:06:19.340 But I always do think about, I guess, the I don't know what the word is specifically, but like the disdain for people who share a lot online,

00:06:30.340 especially i think in australian media circles i don't know if that's something that you've had

00:06:37.780 to come up against i mean i know you write quite critically on it as well yeah definitely and like

00:06:43.380 a bigger question that that article asks is if you take a 21 year old australian right now who

00:06:49.200 is someone who because their life experience or their expertise has really great ideas to share

00:06:55.380 someone who in a previous generation might have been the next Edward Said, Susan Sontag, Angela

00:07:00.760 Davis, how are they supposed to support themselves in order to do that thinking and public facing

00:07:07.920 work? Because university careers don't exist anymore the way they used to. All three of those

00:07:14.300 examples I just gave had a kind of home base at a university with a very light teaching load,

00:07:19.440 so they could do their writing and public intellectualing

00:07:22.980 just sort of with this salary.

00:07:26.960 And the other example is like historically people have used a job,

00:07:33.760 like a salaried job in the mainstream media,

00:07:35.560 which for like an average 21-year-old now is not really an option either.

00:07:41.260 That sort of career path doesn't exist the way it used to.

00:07:44.360 and so you know we we we want great challenging intellectuals of every generation we want the

00:07:52.120 next generation of thought leaders to emerge and yet we denigrate them when they start a podcast or

00:07:59.720 try to monetize some channels so that they can actually pay their rent um even though they

00:08:05.360 essentially have no other choice it's the flip side of like there has been a wonderful the

00:08:10.520 internet has allowed for a wonderful opening up where we see both artistic and intellectual

00:08:16.840 perspectives from such a broader range of like humans with different life experiences and from

00:08:23.620 different backgrounds than compared to previous generations where they had these really cemented

00:08:28.940 in gatekeepers you know it used to be that if you're an artist and you couldn't find a gallerist

00:08:34.100 to represent your work like how on earth could you reach the public with your work and the same

00:08:39.560 thing with your thoughts and ideas if you couldn't convince an editor to publish it

00:08:43.320 how could you spread the word um whereas now because young creatives and thinkers can use

00:08:51.480 the internet to um do their public facing work the flip side of that is that they also have to

00:08:57.920 use the internet to do their public facing work um and i think there's a sort of uh unpleasant

00:09:06.300 cultural problem in australia it's sort of part tall poppy part cultural cringe part a lot of

00:09:13.860 things where basically if you're not a perpetual starving artist it's like

00:09:19.800 not good enough somehow um and the only people in my experience who that benefits are people

00:09:25.920 with secret trust funds or partners that subsidize their lives because everybody else has to actually

00:09:30.340 a migrant somehow. I love that take. And I do wonder, just from your experience, you know, 0.95

00:09:37.260 you grew up in Brisbane. I love that you were nicknamed Chatterbit a lot by your family. Is

00:09:42.840 that right? Yeah. How does someone, I guess, growing up in the suburbs in Brisbane, come to

00:09:51.820 a place where your career looks like this? Like what got you interested in exploring all the ideas

00:09:56.560 in all of your different works and your different books

00:10:00.720 that you've explored?

00:10:02.080 I don't even know how to begin answering that question.

00:10:07.180 I'm very driven by what I'm, like, personally curious about.

00:10:14.020 I suppose, though, a huge thing is, like, if someone is wondering,

00:10:18.840 like, if this is career advice, like, how to build a career

00:10:24.140 that is very I suppose idiosyncratic or or just that is quite um self-motivated um my

00:10:33.560 I had a beat and my beat was law like I'm qualified to practice and I don't um for my

00:10:39.560 first several years of freelancing I was writing legal analysis pieces um and covering all different

00:10:46.940 areas of law different types of law reform um i now do less of that because i have other interests

00:10:55.540 that i'd rather pursue but um i think people often see the wide variation of work i do now

00:11:03.000 in sort of quote-unquote fun looking areas like um culture and lifestyle and and arts

00:11:11.280 and like forget that I you know cut my teeth for three years plus just building good relationships

00:11:20.840 with editors and always filing on time with a niche that not everyone can write about so that

00:11:27.400 would be my essentially career advice is like figure out a niche and get a beat yeah yeah and

00:11:32.800 do it really really well yeah I don't know when you potentially said this but I actually have a

00:11:38.340 quote that you said I think in an interview I'm going to say so many years ago but it's something

00:11:43.340 that's really stuck with me please correct me because I know I'll butcher it a bit but you

00:11:47.360 were talking about how for someone to be a good writer they need to be one or two of three things

00:11:52.940 right and you mentioned that someone can be an incredible fantastic writer like they can just

00:11:58.640 be naturally gifted in that way they can also be someone that is really great to work with right

00:12:05.160 like someone that people get along with that they enjoy working alongside and you also mentioned

00:12:09.800 you can be someone that files on time and you respond to deadlines well do you remember saying

00:12:14.880 this and can you please correct me if I've absolutely messed that up yeah so this is a

00:12:19.940 fantastic thing uh that I read that Neil Gaiman said years and years ago and the idea is that you

00:12:25.340 have to be two of those three things so you can either be essentially talented a pleasure to work

00:12:30.860 with will always file on time and you have to be two of those three things um to get more work and

00:12:38.760 I read I just it's a fluke that advice has held so well for me over the years uh and I first

00:12:46.720 encountered it many many years ago and I decided well I don't know if I'm talented or not so I will

00:12:52.340 just make sure that in all of the work I do that I file on time every time and that I am a pleasure

00:12:57.320 to work with. Yeah, such great advice. So your first fiction novel, The Work, was just released

00:13:03.820 at the start of April. Congratulations. Thank you. How are you feeling post-book release and what's

00:13:09.920 the reception been like so far? I'm feeling so incredibly grateful and like pretty overwhelmed.

00:13:17.180 The like kind of, not warning, like the sort of reality check I got given by people in the

00:13:25.040 industry about a year ago was that um people will not care about fiction as much as they care about

00:13:29.840 non-fiction um in general non-fiction just settles more than fiction um and this is a big pivot for

00:13:36.360 me so i was anticipating some kind of like i don't know skepticism or whatever uh but it has been

00:13:43.880 huge it's definitely the biggest book i've published so far um and that has just been

00:13:51.920 such a relief uh and really great but the thing that's been most um sort of i guess satisfying

00:13:59.440 or like artistically fulfilling is you know like it's the end of april i've toured this thing all

00:14:05.560 around the country at countless events um and done so many live events and interviews and every

00:14:11.820 single time i've spoken to someone about this book it's like they read a different book really

00:14:16.860 people's responses to it have been yeah so different and that is like incredibly gratifying

00:14:27.260 because I deliberately tried to write a book that would not only allow a reader but force a reader

00:14:34.060 to meet it in the middle because that's what I love it I love reading when I'm reading books

00:14:40.040 is when I can bring more of myself to the work on the page and I think you only get this huge

00:14:47.880 variation in different readings when people are doing that themselves that they are like

00:14:52.020 projecting and infusing the book with their own life and opinion and experience. Totally I feel

00:14:59.480 and it covers so many themes as well like I really resonated with the long distance relationship

00:15:04.400 aspect of it there were parts of it that made me feel so seen and things that yeah I haven't really

00:15:09.920 read much about um gonna fangirl here it was one of my favorite books that I've read of the past

00:15:16.480 year so far so I'm recommending it to everyone yeah loved it thank you thank you so much and on

00:15:22.980 that train of thought as well uh with everyone's different interpretations I guess for listeners

00:15:29.860 of our podcast who might not have come across this book yet how would you describe it oh well

00:15:34.680 it's contemporary fiction like realism so it broadly follows two characters there's pat a man

00:15:40.820 in his late 20s um who's originally from regional queensland and now lives in sydney's eastern

00:15:45.680 suburbs and then there's lally who's in her early 30s she owns and runs her own gallery in new york

00:15:51.580 uh and it's about like one component of it is about their relationship and whether or not they

00:15:57.420 can kind of make it work uh but it's also a lot about their respective jobs and about kind of

00:16:03.360 ambition and work and what you sort of have to sacrifice to make it and different types of

00:16:09.460 precarity. It's set in the art world, but I actually think it's a lot more about kind of

00:16:15.580 money and real estate and power and gender than anything else. What made you want to write about

00:16:21.040 the art world and have it set across both Australia and America with alternating perspectives?

00:16:27.800 Yeah, it wasn't so much that I wanted, like from the outset, for it to be set in the world of

00:16:31.960 visual art in particular but I knew I wanted it to be in a creative industry uh and there are many

00:16:37.540 reasons why visual art is good it makes for um like this the scenes like the industries in art

00:16:43.940 are pretty wild like the sort of antiquities old art scene that Pat is from is like such a different

00:16:50.280 world to the new contemporary kind of experimental modern art world that Lally represents and so that

00:16:58.000 that kind of offered up a really spicy automatically kind of tense tense uh clashing

00:17:05.920 right of perspectives and ideas um but i wanted a book that was set in a creative industry where

00:17:12.400 neither of the protagonists were themselves artists i'm very interested in all of these

00:17:17.700 other jobs of like publicists and dealers and agents and whatever it's like all of these other

00:17:25.180 jobs who are not actually artists themselves but who have a huge impact on how that art is like

00:17:30.600 shaped priced perceived and ultimately received by an audience um like kind of how the sausage

00:17:37.520 gets made stuff that I'm really fascinated by and that I'm frankly quite cynical about um

00:17:42.340 and then I knew I wanted them to have a long distance component because the other sort of I

00:17:48.120 mean if this was like grade 12 English we'd call it a motif but the recurring thing in the book

00:17:55.180 is this idea of like image making and what it means that that it's only a very very new development

00:18:06.300 in the entire history of humankind having relationships that we are creating and or

00:18:12.160 maintaining those relationships through screens and through the way that we take pictures and

00:18:17.740 videos of ourselves and take pictures and videos of others and um for anyone who has read the book

00:18:22.880 like there are all kinds of ways in which people taking photos and videos of themselves and photos

00:18:28.900 and videos of other people kind of recurs but from slightly different angles at the issue um

00:18:35.760 sort of questioning how much control we have over that and um the impact it has on our lives

00:18:42.880 with that in mind right because you've mentioned that it took you five years to write this book

00:18:48.080 i've got it right next week i keep looking at it it's it's here um and i feel like you can feel

00:18:53.500 the depth of it because even though the the time that it's set in doesn't span you know five years

00:19:00.320 or so uh the characters feel so rich and they feel like their lives expand so much further from

00:19:08.460 the actual just like the pages of this novel so what was it like actually writing your first novel

00:19:13.920 you spent some time in the states as well for this is that right yeah so thank you for saying

00:19:18.620 that first of all that's very generous um yeah it did take me five years um and part of that was

00:19:24.220 that you know the first version of this manuscript was about 200 000 words which is double um the

00:19:32.120 finished product so uh the like feeling that you describe of these people being um what like

00:19:41.380 realistic human beings and that even if something isn't explicitly mentioned on the page you kind

00:19:45.900 of have this sense of what area of their background was or what their opinion on something else might

00:19:50.760 be or just that they're fully formed i think you only get that by overriding by like i can tell

00:19:57.620 you anything you want to know about not just these two main people but um pat has two siblings and

00:20:03.040 two parents lally has one surviving parent and a stepdad i know everything about them even though

00:20:08.980 they didn't make the cut often um you only get that level of realism when it would just be so

00:20:17.940 it is so easy to create like kind of cardboard cutouts for your supporting characters just

00:20:23.460 and like to just sort of make them as like kind of puppets do whatever you need them to do

00:20:29.080 to let the main narrative and the main characters develop in the way you want them to develop but

00:20:34.700 um in my opinion as a reader you can sniff you can sniff and like tell pretty quickly whether

00:20:41.620 a supporting cast are you know fully formed real human beings or if they're just um kind of yeah

00:20:49.660 fake and put there to for the author to be able to take shortcuts and like the only way to do that

00:20:57.100 and make it do make it done well is like to take the time that it takes yes and i yeah i keep

00:21:05.700 thinking about the characters afterwards this is what maggie said and like the last not spoiling

00:21:11.520 anything but the last page i keep thinking about that last page and like oh what did they do at

00:21:16.520 that point in history how did they survive like you know their relationship survived um but like

00:21:22.460 the topic of family and class divide is a really big theme in the work and the class divide in

00:21:29.720 Australia is something that a lot of Australians are refusing to acknowledge at the moment and he

00:21:34.640 tackled the topic in the non-fiction work who gets to be smart but why did you want to write about

00:21:39.540 this creatively? Yeah I think I mean I think Australians have not wanted to acknowledge or 0.99

00:21:45.800 talk about class forever um i think it's one of the many complicated facets of like being a

00:21:52.820 nation this that this version of our nationhood is founded on colonization we don't want to talk

00:21:59.140 about any way in which people are stratified because then we would have to take a long hard

00:22:03.820 look at the actual truths that this kind of society we now live in is built upon and how

00:22:10.300 farcical that is um and if you want to have you can't have conversations about class without

00:22:15.500 having conversations about things like stolen wages right like i think australians don't like

00:22:20.700 thinking too long and hard about any of these questions because um it it gives them a sort of

00:22:26.900 frightened feeling of opening a can of worms that they don't want to have to then deal with um but

00:22:32.220 in this novel um i'm really interested in how class functions in like creative industries as i

00:22:40.140 mentioned like i'm a bit of a cynic about it i'm a real like this book is like my most romantic

00:22:46.140 self and my most cynical self doing battle for five years and not just romance in terms of people

00:22:52.980 i am a real romantic about art and i mean art in the big sense you know literature music um

00:23:00.420 performance art whatever creativity i'm a real romantic about that and i'm in some ways like a

00:23:06.140 purist and uh and like sometimes i don't know kind of like fanciful about it um and i believe

00:23:11.840 in it and i believe in its power and i believe in the importance it has in my life uh but i am

00:23:17.420 absolute cynic about the industry uh and i i wanted you know to ask some uncomfortable questions

00:23:26.660 about the way not just gender but class function in the creative industries uh and how and why

00:23:35.000 that might be again like deliberately invisibilized what like who does it benefit if someone looking

00:23:41.640 at a work of art on a gallery wall thinks that only one person the artist is responsible for

00:23:47.720 what they're receiving like who who benefits from their work being like hidden in that way

00:23:53.400 and who even has like the material wealth like material reality of cash and capital that is

00:24:04.440 required to be able to live a life of artistic freedom um we like thinking and talking about

00:24:12.240 art as though it is separate from money and that if you're an artist who thinks about money

00:24:16.480 then you don't take the work seriously enough or whatever and that's just um that is such a luxury

00:24:23.840 to be able to think that your art and your money uh don't interact with each other yeah and even

00:24:30.340 breaking away from the novel and looking at your own life as well as just the Australian media

00:24:35.740 landscape nowadays uh you know you're not just a writer you run workshops you speak or moderate

00:24:41.300 panels you have your own newsletter do you think people are able to financially sustain themselves

00:24:47.420 as just a freelance writer nowadays or do you think we need all these different mediums

00:24:54.360 to exist i guess yeah i'm not sure it has ever been a reality like ever for somebody without

00:25:01.880 family connections to just start out and continue doing their art purely like whether it's writing

00:25:11.600 or music or visual art if you don't have family money or a partner supporting you

00:25:16.800 pretty much you've always had to find some other way to make rent i don't think that's new

00:25:22.580 um what i would say is like to again paraphrase somebody else's advice for anyone listening

00:25:28.860 um i once uh heard annabelle crab get asked um for some career advice about journalism

00:25:35.560 and she said your hardest day on the job is your first day on the job and your second hardest day

00:25:41.980 on the job is your second day on the job um because like when you're starting out it will

00:25:46.780 never be as hard as it is when you don't not only when you're like frankly not that good yet um but

00:25:52.480 you don't have the connections you don't have the relationships um or the confidence in yourself

00:25:57.780 and I have found that has been true for me um when I started out for the first sort of three

00:26:02.940 three or four years it was so much harder than it is now I still work the same hours but

00:26:11.340 on overall and projects that I care a lot more about and overall for more money and it's just

00:26:17.140 less rough um than it was for the first yeah three or four years yeah I think that's something

00:26:24.520 that Maggie and I definitely can relate to like getting your foot in the door then getting your

00:26:29.340 arm in the door getting your whole body and like proving yourself for years um yeah you're right

00:26:35.740 if anyone listening it does eventually get easier if you keep up those um connections and that work

00:26:40.840 but going back to the novel there is a lot of great sex written into this book which was so

00:26:48.160 refreshing after the frankly depressing straight sex that we've been reading and seeing in film

00:26:53.660 and tv since the rise of the sad girl novel you previously described this to the shameless book

00:27:00.260 club as heteropessimism which i loved can you talk us through why you subverted that trope and

00:27:06.660 wrote so many great sex scenes into this book yeah so I did the bulk of the drafting of this novel

00:27:12.860 in 2019 2021 and during that time I was reading a lot of books which we would now classify as like

00:27:21.620 sitting somewhere under the kind of broad umbrella of sad girl novels but basically what I was reading

00:27:26.880 a lot of was women in particular young women getting fucked badly by men in particular older 0.96

00:27:33.340 men uh and i mean badly as in like a whole spectrum of versions of bad and i just was 0.95

00:27:39.580 getting really fucking down about it um i just had this overwhelming sense of like god surely

00:27:45.320 it gets better um and one thing that i realized quite early on when i was forming who these

00:27:55.100 characters would be was that things got really really interesting if i made pat in his late

00:27:59.800 20s and lally in her early 30s because that is even a small age gap like that i imagine that

00:28:05.880 they're about five years apart but even that small age gap going in the opposite direction to what is

00:28:11.880 normal in our culture and what certainly was normal in our literature during those years in

00:28:18.120 particular it changed all of these power dynamics really interestingly um it changed how comfortable

00:28:23.860 they might be articulating what they want and don't want during sex it changed how much capital

00:28:29.080 they brought to the relationships it changed um just how confident they were in themselves

00:28:33.240 in those relationships um and what's been interesting to me as well is that to see is

00:28:41.060 that when I started writing this book I was like Pat's age I was in my late 20s and now that I

00:28:46.320 finished this book and I'm touring it I'm in my early 30s Lally's age and what I believe to be

00:28:54.300 true now is that lally's higher levels of like confidence and agency in like dating and sex are

00:29:05.360 like much more accurate for the women i know in my life who are that age um and so it's to me it's

00:29:13.760 like absolutely in the dna of this book you could not this this would be a completely different book

00:29:19.040 if the age is ages even with such a small gap were reversed um and like to be honest i felt like

00:29:29.040 because of all my previous work i spent a lot of my 20s thinking and writing about bad sex

00:29:33.300 in all of its shapes and forms and i actually think like there's something quite radical

00:29:38.800 um in particular about women talking about good sex and what it means um especially for women who

00:29:47.380 are having sex with men what it means to ask for slash demand good sex um that appears to be some

00:29:55.220 kind of final frontier yeah it did feel radical when reading it and that's what i guess i meant 0.76

00:30:01.700 by refreshing like yeah um knowing that these are the conversations that i'm having with my friends

00:30:08.020 even about people in long-term partnerships it's not that oh we've been together for 10 years so

00:30:14.500 it's depressing and I hate my wife kind of like rhetoric which um is very common um so yeah loved

00:30:22.260 loved that aspect of the work we'll of course have the book linked in our show notes and everything

00:30:29.160 um but we also read that recently ish you were in Antarctica for a month uh doing research for

00:30:37.780 your next book can you tell us more about that experience and potentially what's coming next

00:30:43.200 for you yes so um this was uh so amazing i got to spend a month on a ship going to antarctica so

00:30:50.180 that was last year that is where my next novel is set um what i can say about it yeah what i can say

00:30:57.280 about it is that like this is about the book is that they're it the main characters are scientists

00:31:03.360 uh they have dedicated their lives to um you know trying to fight the climate emergency and like

00:31:10.180 sort of save the planet and they have quite sort of uh extreme ideas about overpopulation and about

00:31:16.900 humans ruining the planet um again these are the characters ideas which i am not my fictional

00:31:24.240 characters for anyone a reminder um but they uh yeah down there at the bottom of the planet uh

00:31:33.940 and sort of think that they are total rational agents and then i put them into a pressure cooker

00:31:39.960 situation. And I'm interested in general about human nature, about how most absolutes become

00:31:45.860 relative under pressure. Wow. What a teaser. Do you have a rough date of when that is coming out

00:31:53.500 or your very early days? No idea. No idea. Well, enjoy the work for now. Just hold on to that.

00:32:01.440 Thank you. Thank you so much. We have been talking a bit about the state of media and

00:32:08.720 freelance writing and art and money in general but we wanted to know if there's anything that

00:32:14.180 excites you about our current and future media landscape in Australia and in general

00:32:19.420 or is it all feeling a bit bleak no no um I really see a lot of the tough state of affairs as the

00:32:30.620 like opposite side of the coin of the great state of affairs which is that we are able to

00:32:37.440 both get and give such a wider range of voices than ever before um i you know i mentioned like

00:32:47.800 for example if we use writers because your question is about media if we use writers like

00:32:52.700 writers can use the internet now they don't have to wait for anyone you don't have to wait for any

00:32:56.460 gatekeeper of any shape or form to get your work out into the world the flip side of that is that

00:33:01.420 You have to use the internet. 0.99

00:33:02.740 That sucks. 0.97

00:33:04.360 But, you know, these are, that's the same, 0.99

00:33:08.800 those are opposite sides of the same coin.

00:33:10.400 And I do think it's an exciting time for media.

00:33:13.460 It's an exciting time for independent media.

00:33:16.920 It is a rough time in general, though.

00:33:21.620 But I think that if you are someone who has a unique perspective

00:33:26.580 and who if you're someone who's willing to do the leg work

00:33:33.540 and you can afford to persist, like it only takes three years

00:33:41.140 to develop a profile for yourself and it's just never been the case before

00:33:48.220 that somebody can really take that into their own hands

00:33:51.180 to the degree that you can these days.

00:33:53.780 Yeah.

00:33:54.240 Interesting that you've put a number on it there,

00:33:56.220 the three years I haven't ever heard it like quantified like that but I guess I would say that

00:34:02.060 is correct wouldn't you Max? Yeah I mean I very much relate to a lot that you're saying Brie

00:34:08.040 because um very much someone with a chip on the shoulder being like you know I have no family

00:34:12.800 connections no nobody in the industry but because of social media I've been able to create that

00:34:18.140 platform that has helped me to the same degree and I guess like three-ish years kind of makes

00:34:23.960 sense but it does vary for everyone and um it's hard and just because what's worked for us won't

00:34:31.280 work for the you know someone else coming into the industry now as well like things change so

00:34:35.480 rapidly too yeah they do and I would say like you know three years the reason I say three years is

00:34:41.560 because I think a lot of people completely understandably get really disheartened at the

00:34:48.840 like late second year stage um and uh most people will most of us do and i include myself in this

00:35:01.460 like we compare other people's highlights to our daily grind like that's what social media forces

00:35:06.080 you to do if you're not really really careful you will um be like in the trenches on your work

00:35:12.800 whatever work you're doing and you're just constantly seeing other people get promotions

00:35:18.920 launch their book buy an apartment like whatever it is doesn't even matter like what it is you're

00:35:24.800 seeing other people's highlights when you're in the trenches doing your everyday grind

00:35:28.680 and in my experience the people who are able to push through that time just through like sheer

00:35:37.420 you know obviously material reality like some people can and cannot afford to like stick with

00:35:44.560 low-paying work for x number of years in particular if you have caring obligations

00:35:49.280 like to either children or elders or whatever um but if you can stick it out that persistence

00:35:56.180 is often like the biggest difference between people who've quote-unquote made it and those who

00:36:03.040 um don't all of which is to say basically i don't think it has that much to do with talent

00:36:07.560 that's like that's the exciting moral of the story there's my opinion is that it's not if

00:36:14.180 you are looking at somebody who has a career that you want and you are like afraid that you

00:36:22.220 just don't have some special source that it takes to get there uh probably not the case

00:36:27.960 nine times out of ten the thing differentiating you from that person is not some unknowable

00:36:33.320 quote-unquote talent that you can't do or be or get that is so so inspiring yeah we feel that

00:36:42.560 doing the podcast for four years still going um and also for yeah getting into like new projects

00:36:50.500 that is really really great advice we've been talking a lot about work and the media

00:36:55.700 but do you have any hobbies and interests that are completely separate from work that you enjoy

00:37:00.480 um I have a dog and I live in an apartment so for like over an hour every day I'm just with my dog

00:37:07.000 which is fantastic uh and I realized that for me if I'm going to have a hobby it has to not have

00:37:12.500 any words in it otherwise I find a way to turn it into work um so yeah um so that's why a dog is

00:37:20.900 good no words um and also it sounds silly but um because I live in an apartment as well without

00:37:27.120 even a balcony whereas I'm used to growing up in a lot of nature um I like buy and arrange a lot of

00:37:35.100 flowers because it's colors and shapes and like calming creativity that I can't can't make work

00:37:45.240 can't turn into work yeah using your hands not on a keyboard and cooking i guess is the other one

00:37:53.340 yeah i actually really enjoy cooking when i do have time at home because again colors shapes

00:37:59.640 senses yeah no work no words no work no words that's a good mantra uh we've got one last question

00:38:07.940 for you brie every week on our podcast we give our listeners recommendations on what we've enjoyed

00:38:13.560 reading listening to or watching recently can you share one recommendation with uh us yes i've been

00:38:20.480 talking about this non-stop for the last couple of weeks it's a brand new novel by the irish author

00:38:25.660 keelan hughes um hughes spelt h-u-g-h-e-s keelan spelt interestingly um c-a-o-i-l-i-n-n um and it's

00:38:37.440 called The Alternatives and it's so good it's the best book I've read this year without a doubt

00:38:43.940 I am a huge admirer of Keelan Hughes this is her third novel this book is about four sisters they

00:38:50.900 lose their parents quite early in their life and so that creates very interesting dynamics between

00:38:55.380 them like more interesting even than you would already have from just having four sisters

00:38:58.700 it's contemporary realism but one of the sisters basically decides to get on her bike literally on

00:39:05.700 her bicycle and exit her life like just to sort of go into the countryside and says to the other

00:39:11.560 three sisters please leave me be please don't look for me um I kind of quit everything and it's about

00:39:18.160 the other three sisters you know variously doing or not doing that like following orders or not

00:39:27.720 following orders and then whether or not they do find her and if they do what happens and it's just

00:39:32.300 she keelan hughes is so incredibly smart and the book is exquisite like these in terms of like you

00:39:40.820 you like a book with fully formed human beings where characters are actually humans like this

00:39:45.820 is it this is as good as it gets oh my gosh glowing review i'm sold this is actually on my bookshelf

00:39:50.940 what yeah so it's being bumped up there in terms of order yeah i've had it there for a little while

00:39:56.720 it really grabbed my attention when it um arrived so now that it's got that incredible glowing

00:40:02.200 review that's yeah being bumped up to my next read number one on the tbr list yeah thank you

00:40:07.540 so much again for joining us today brie it's been such a pleasure and a privilege to chat with you

00:40:12.280 uh where can our listeners connect with you online on the internet if they must thank you uh so my

00:40:19.940 weekly newsletter comes out every wednesday at 5 p.m is news and reviews that's a sub stack

00:40:24.480 um otherwise i'm brie.e.lee on instagram and all of my work is on my website which you can just

00:40:31.200 find by googling really amazing well thank you so much for your time today and everyone go out and

00:40:37.860 buy the work by really it's in our show notes if you want the link asap but thank you so much for

00:40:42.940 your time and we'll talk to you later thank you both this has been great bye

Culture Club - April 30, 2024

Doing The Work With Author Bri Lee

Episode Stats

Transcript