Five Camp Questions with Rachel Edwards

Photo courtesy of Rachel Edwards

​We recently spoke with Rachel Edwards, ABC producer and literary operative over at Books On Her Selection about her relationship with books, her favourite authors (Tasmanian of course) and what we should be reading this Spring.

What’s your first memory of books and how have they impacted your life? 

My Mum is a teacher and I had the good fortune of her teaching me how to read before I started kindergarten. The frisson of reading ‘this is a sheep’ and getting praised and encouraged to keep going has stayed with me for nearly fifty years.

Since then, books have been my friends, my psychologists, my teachers, my refuge and my entertainment. They have been challengers, protectors and salves. I read for many different reasons, and often deliberately outside my comfort zone. Twenty years in the book trade has taught me that we all read for different reasons, and that is the way it should be.
 
Favourite Tasmanian author(s) & why?

Ashley! The impossible question!

I really love Pete Hay, in particular his poetry (find yourself a copy of Physick if you would like to immerse in Tasmanian vernacular), and I have recently bought ten copies of his essay collection Forgotten Corners. Pete is a thinker, an elder and his blazing erudition makes me understand Tasmania in new and wild ways.

Amanda Lohrey, perfect, perfect prose. Her fiction ( most recently The Labyrinth, The Conversion and The Short History of Richard Kline) are all masterpieces. They are slow, gentle and intense.

I adore Robbie Arnott, whose fourth novel Dusk is about to be released, he is heir to Richard Flanagan, our only Booker Prize winner. I adore James Boyce for his considered takes on history and contemporary politics.

I love Benny Walter’s obscure nature writing. I’m on tenterhooks for the release of Susie Greenhill’s long awaited first novel. And Cassandra Pybus – her fearless explorations into history prize my eyes open. I have to stop myself here there are so many.
 
Why do you think for such a small state, Tasmania has produced such writing talent?

Again! An impossible question. For a state where half of us are not functionally literate, it is fairly astonishing the amount of excellent writing that comes from Tasmania. Tasmanian writers are at a disadvantage to our mainland counterparts – by dint of physical distance – and have to work even harder to be published. Maybe.
 
What should we be reading this Spring? 
​
Dusk by Robbie Arnott! (for release October 8, 2024)

When One of Us Hurts by Monica Vuu
– she’s a new Tasmanian and this has just won the Davitt Prize for crime writing.

A Very Secret Trade by Cassandra Pybus


What is next for you, On Her Selection or the writing world at large come Spring?

On Her Selection will keep offering wonderful, weird and wild second hand books for sale. By night I’m a reader, and by day a radio producer at ABC where I’ll be producing the Breakfast program over spring and summer – I love waking up our town.

And I’m currently working out which books I take with me for a week away in Thailand my ‘little’ (nearly 50) sister. She will knit, I will read, we may have a cocktail or two.

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You can find Rachel over at On Her Selection on Instagram, and tune into the ABC Breakfast program. Rachel is also interviewing Robbie Arnott on the release of Dusk, October 10th at the Hobart Town Hall - hosted by Fuller's Book Shop. Tickets here.

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Photo courtesy of Fullers Bookshop