The 2022 Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival is set to be a literary feast for all ages on the weekend of 13-15 May. And, to make things even more enticing, our very own Josh Kemp will be appearing over the weekend to discuss his novel, Banjawarn, which won the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.
In Josh's session, Sunday 15 May 2pm, he explains how he came to write his debut novel, Banjawarn. Kemp's debut is a haunting Australian gothic thriller about a true crime writer who finds an abandoned young girl and embarks on a road trip from hell to find her estranged father, travelling through the scorched landscape and blood red dirt of the northern Goldfields of WA. With its echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Randolph Stow, the book is already earning a reputation as a modern classic amongst other Australian gothic novels like Picnic at Hanging Rock, Taboo and The Secret River.
Josh Kemp is an author of Australian gothic fiction. Banjawarn was the winner of the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and is his debut novel. His short stories have been published by Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Seizure, Tincture, and Breach. He lives in the South West of WA but is drawn, over and over again, to the red dirt of WA’s north.
You can book tickets for Josh Kemp's event here.
Visit the Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival website.