We bring you interview highlights from the year with Ocean Vuong's dazzling follow up to his debut On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Charlotte McConaghy's urgent Wild Dark Shore and David Malouf reflects on a life of writing.
The Emperor of Gladness is the latest novel from the Vietnam born, American-based writer Ocean Vuong who made his name with his 2019 novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. His new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, takes you to a forgotten, rundown town in Connecticut called East Gladness which is a place of overgrown lawns and trampled weeds, of potholes and roadkill. Ocean shares why he thinks his latest book is self-indulgent (and that's ok), how he came to writing from business school and why his mother never knew that he dropped out of college to study literature.
A small family lives on a remote island, the father a caretaker for the world's seeds. Then in the rising seas, a woman is washed up to shore. Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore is a mystery, a story of love, and a warning.
Now at 91, David Malouf tells Claire Nichols about the place of fiction in his life and what it means to reissue three collections of poetry: An Open Book, Earth Hour and Typewriter Music.
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Thoughtful and heartfelt, American author Ocean Vuong shares the background to his second novel The Emperor of Gladness.