Steve Toltz on writing fear, Here Goes Nothing, and nailing why we do what we do

Steve Toltz is the author of A Fraction of the Whole, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award and Quicksand, which won the Russell Prize for Humour. Booklist called A Fraction of the Whole ‘a deliriously philosophical novel . . . with uproarious ruminations on freedom, the soul, love, death, and the meaning of life" and in a way that applies to Steve's work as a whole and his new book, Here Goes Nothing. The Irish Times described Here Goes Nothing as, ‘a smart social commentary on our fossil fuel-guzzling, warmongering, information-obsessed, pandemic-riddled world’ and as The Scotsman said, he writes with ‘remorseless, brilliantly withering contempt’, though this sits alongside a story and characters that are both affecting and strangely moving.Steve’s also worked as screenwriter on shows like No Activity and Guilty Party.

Claire Messud is the author of seven works of fiction, including the bestselling books The Emperor’s Children, The Woman Upstairs and The Burning Girl, as well as a book of essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. She has received Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters among many other accolades.Claire is also, one of the first writers published under new literary imprint Tablo Tales. Her novella A Dream Life, written in The American Library in Paris, launched Tablo Tales’ short book series of great women writers from around the world. Helen Garner described A Dream Life as ‘A perfect frolic of a book, puffed on breezes of beauty and wit: it waltzes you through a little fear, a little darkness, and tips you out, refreshed and laughing, into the sun'. Fiction Editor of Kirkus Reviews, Laurie Muchnick chose A Dream Life as her pick on the Fully Booked podcast saying: ‘It’s just so delightful to be back reading the voice of Claire Messud with its x-ray vision and her really precise writing…It’s a real comedy of manners and really sharp and funny.’ A Dream Life published by Tablo Tales and distributed by IPG in the US, Manda Group in Canada, Gazelle Book Services in the UK and New South Books in ANZ.

Australian novelist Hannah Kent’s first novel Burial Rites, about the last woman executed in Iceland, was a bestseller internationally and translated into 30 languages. It won a mountain of awards including the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier’s People’s Choice Award and is being adapted for film. Her second novel The Good People set in Ireland in 1825 is also being adapted for film and was also critically acclaimed – Paula Hawkins described it ‘a literary novel with the pace and tension of a thriller’ which could be applied to Hannah's work as a whole. While all of her novels are very different, they’re also tied together by bringing the past alive, and writing about enigmatic people who are often outsiders - and writing about the heart of life – about love and death and suffering. Hannah’s new novel Devotion is just out, and readers everywhere will be delighted to hear it’s ‘a glorious love story’ as Sarah Winman described. It’s both lyrical and compelling and Hannah pulls you in from the first page.

Charlotte Wood is one of Australia’s finest, most original writers. She is the author of six novels; a collection of interviews called The Writers’ Room; Love & Hunger; and The Luminous Solution, about creativity and resilience. Charlotte’s most recent novel The Weekend is funny, tender and often uncomfortable, and won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year. The Natural Way of Things was a bestseller and published internationally. It received various awards including the Stella Prize, and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction. Charlotte also has two podcast series, The Writers’ Room and Eat like the Animals. The Luminous Solution is wise and filled with energy and inspiration - it isn’t just for writers and artists but for anyone wanting to enrich their inner life. As Ailsa Piper describes, it is a ‘magnificent book of consolation, inspiration, completely individual observation, scholarship, honesty, wisdom and wonder. Every page contains food for the mind and spirit.’ 

Sinéad Gleeson is a writer and editor, based in Dublin. Her book of personal essays Constellations: Reflections from Life, won the Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It explores an array of subjects from Sinéad’s experience with illness, to friendship, grief, falling in love, motherhood and ghosts, and throughout these disparate yet connected pieces she weaves stories about art and artists, music and literature. As Anne Enright says ‘if you want to know where passion and tenacity are born, read this book’. Sinéad’s short stories have been published widely and she has also edited four award-winning Irish short story anthologies. Her new anthology of music essays co-edited wih Kim Gordan is coming out in 2022.

Anna Gerber is an award-winning Creative Director, working with storytelling, design and technology. For over 20 years, she’s worked with global teams and companies like Google, Penguin, Mercedes and WeTransfer. Anna co-founded Visual Editions, a publishing house with refreshingly innovative book design and ideas. It won many awards and each book they made joined the permanent collection at The Art Institute of Chicago. Anna also dreamed up Editions at Play with Britt Iversen and Tea Uglow from Google Creative Lab, to tell experimental stories for the mobile phone. They made the first ever blockchain book, and published a ghost story that knows where the user is, and a book using Google Street View to travel the world. They received a Peabody Futures Award, and each Editions At Play story is part of the permanent collection at The British Library. In the pandemic Anna worked on Stories of Splendid Isolationwith voice activated stories for the home, and Anna is currently working with The Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles on making the first ever open access digital scent archive. In all of her work, Anna brings stories into the world in surprising ways, and helps make our digital experiences more thrilling and human. www.annagerber.com

Katie Kitamura’s writing is taut, morally complex, beguiling, and gets under your skin. Garth Greenwell described her as ‘among the most brilliant and profound writers at work today’ and as Evie Wyld said she’s ‘one of the best living writers I’ve read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money'. Katie has written for publications like the New York Times, The Guardian and Granta, and teaches creative writing at New York University. Her first novel was The Longshot and then came Gone To The Forest. Katie’s third novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Italian award Premio von Rezzori, was translated into sixteen languages, and is being adapted for film. Her new novel, Intimacies has just come out and was recently one of Barak Obama’s summer reading selections. The narration has an elegance and deceptive distance at first, then it pulls you in til you’re utterly hooked. It’s a beautifully written and thought-proving book with astute observations about human nature, performance, language, and how we grapple with a world that doesn’t have clear cut edges. Find Katie's novels in all good bookshops such as: Readings in Melbourne https://www.readings.com.auLRB in London https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.ukCity Lights in San Francisco http://www.citylights.com

Doireann Ní Ghríofa has published in both Irish and English and has written six acclaimed collections of poetry. Her most recent, To Star the Dark was described by The Irish Independent as ‘playful, serious, joyful, and moving’. Her book of prose called A Ghost in the Throat received Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and had phenomenal reviews across the word. Doireann has also received many other awards and accolades including a Lannan Literary Fellowship, Italy’s Ostana Prize, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.A Ghost in the Throat dives into all manner of subject from bees and breastfeeding to anatomy and what happens to bodies when they’re given over to science. Many scenes are grounded in the minutiae of a woman’s life, as Doireann both celebrates and documents motherhood, rearing children and the joy and messiness of it all.  At the heart of the story is one of Ireland’s great poets, a woman named Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill and her iconic poem or keen of lament. A Ghost in the Throat is part obsession, part honouring and it is not actually classifyable, which is also part of the appeal. To use Doireann’s own term, this is a female text.

Louise Adler is one of the most significant figures in Australian publishing. Born in Melbourne, Louise was educated locally and studied in Israel at the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, then in Britain at the University of Reading, and in America at Columbia University. She taught literature at Columbia for ten years and also taught at the University of Melbourne. Louise has since had a range of impressive roles that include Editor of Australian Book Review, Publishing Director of Reed Books Australia, Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Melbourne Age and Presenter of Arts Today on Radio National. More recently she was CEO and Publisher-in-Chief of Melbourne University Publishing and served on the boards of both the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for over a decade. Louise is currently Publisher at Large at Hachette Australia and on the board of the Monash University Museum of Art. She has been awarded the Order of Australia for services to literature.

Andrew Solomon’s work has had a major impact across the world. His books have made concrete changes for the better, fostering empathy and understanding in everyone who reads them. Andrew writes on politics, culture and psychology and is an activist in LGBTQ rights, mental health, and the arts. He’s a Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University, a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University and is a former President of PEN American Centre, and currently on their Board of Directors. He founded the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT Studies at Yale University and has written for publications such as The New Yorker, the London Times, and more. He’s lectured widely and his TED talks have had over twenty million views.Andrew’s first book was a study of Russian artists, called The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost. Then came his novel A Stone Boat that was described by Harold Bloom as ‘one of the authentic achievements in American fiction’. His memoir, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was one of the London Times One Hundred Best Books of the Decade. Solomon’s book, the bestselling Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity came out in 2012 and tells the stories of families raising exceptional children who find profound meaning in doing so. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; the Wellcome Book Prize and many more accolades. There was also a celebrated documentary based on the book. The last book Andrew published was Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World, a collection of his international reporting, and he has also more recently published an Audible Original called New Family Values that explores how the concept of family in America today has utterly changed, though the economic and legal structures lag behind.