Erin Gough on Into the Mouth of the Wolf

Erin Gough is a fiction writer living on Gadigal land in Sydney, whose award-winning work has been published globally. She is the author of three books for young adults: The Flywheel, which won the Ampersand Prize, Amelia Westlake, winner of the Readings Young Adult Book Prize and the NSW Premier’s Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and Into the Mouth of the Wolf, recently shortlisted for the DANZ Children’s Book Award for Young Adult Fiction and the CBCA Award for Older Readers.

This episode includes a discussion of Into the Mouth of the Wolf by Erin Gough, as well as reading recommendations including:

An Open Swimmer by Tim Winton
The Flywheel by Erin Gough
Amelia Westlake by Erin Gough
How to Survive 1985 by Tegan Bennett Daylight
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

Also discussed are:

• The power of audiobooks from a very young age (pre-independent reading)
• The importance of validating Australian literature by including it on the curriculum
• Finding the right story (and the right voice) as a writer
• Themes of social justice, climate justice, power and privilege, community, and loyalty and trust in young adult fiction
• Processing grief about what's happening to the environment through literature, and realising that "the way through is together"
• The process of world-building when it comes to a familiar yet dystopian setting
• The things an author writes that don't end up in the novel, and some techniques for developing character outside the pages of the book
• The changing nature of the young adult literary landscape in Australia over the last few years