Cassie McCullagh

So I'm hankering to leave the world of Spud and Sick Boy and go back to that.

I guess you could call this slightly a biography, but I've just finished a book that's coming out on the 25th of September, and it's about the Australian roadie.

So I am trying to tell the story of those men and surprisingly large number of women who set up gear and equipment for rock and roll bands.

So I go back, I think I've identified the first Australian roadie and that was back in 1959.

And I go through to the present day and the road crews that work with, you know, Flume and a whole bunch of contemporary artists.

So I've interviewed about 80 people.

uh roadies and i've had the first book i've done where i didn't want it to end because i've just been flabbergasted by the characters that i've met and it was also driven um by by a more serious um component i mean road crew in australia have almost five times the national suicide rate there's a there's a horrible terrible toll um

Oh, yeah.

I hope you've got a good legal team, Mr Coop.

That process is happening at the moment.

But, yeah, no, very, very funny, very human stories.

But, yeah, there's a dark side to it as well.

And I'm Cassie McCullough, coming to you after a very eventful week in the book world from the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

the Book Industry Association of Australia Awards and the Sydney Writers Festival.

More on all of that soon.

And I should say that today's guests have all been judges of literary awards.

The literary editor of The Australian, Stephen Ramey, novelist Suzanne Leal and academic and writer Bernadette Brennan.

Well, yes, we'll see.

Also, new Australian fiction from Jenny Acklin, Little Gods, with an impressive 12-year-old girl at its centre.

And David Peace's fragmentary tribute to a Japanese writer in the book Patient X.