Episode 2: Peter Carey

Episode 2: Alexis Wright in conversation with Peter Carey

Lately, Peter Carey has been feeling as through he’s living in one of his early short stories about collapsing, oppressive societies: “The time we’re in now feels like the sort of things I was terrified of and imagined when I was in my 20s and 30s”.

In episode two of Signposts: stories for our fragile times, the much-lauded and prolific Carey sits down with host Alexis Wright to share what life has been like in the turbulent “whirlpool” of his adopted home town, New York City, why storytelling will always flourish despite adversity, and the process of addressing the repercussions of Australia’s brutal colonial past in his most recent book A Long Way from Home.

To close the episode, Carey offers a rare reading from his work, bringing to life the voices of two characters that lived against the odds: Irene Bobs, from A Long Way from Home, and Ned Kelly himself, as featured in Carey’s Booker-winning 2000 novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, recently adapted for television.

Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria and now lives in New York. He is the author of fourteen novels (including one for children), two volumes of short stories and two books on travel. Amongst other prizes, Carey has won the Booker Prize twice (for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang), the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize twice (for Jack Maggs and True History of the Kelly Gang) and the Miles Franklin Literary Award three times (for Bliss, Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs). He is an officer of the Order of Australia and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Peter Carey's website

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