Festival Highlight ! Celebrating a Writing Life with Nikki Gemmell

And what a Writing Life it has been!

This fascinating interview will explore Nikki Gemmell's writing journey. How did she begin? Where do her ideas come from? Her greatest and most traumatic moments. Life today and advice for aspiring authors.

Harper Collins reminds us that as the author of the international sensation, The Bride Stripped Bare (2003), Nikki Gemmell defined sex, desire and identity for a generation of women. Now, two decades later, she comes full circle, with her latest book, Wing (2024), with another incendiary novel about what it means to be a woman today. Wing is described as an explosive, contemporary literary thriller from international bestselling – “Wing is Lord of the Flies meets Picnic at Hanging Rock meets Promising Young Woman”.

Nikki Gemmell writes novels, memoirs, essays and columns. She is the bestselling author of some twenty books, including Shiver, The Bride Stripped Bare, After, The Ripping Tree, Dissolve and her latest, Wing. Her books have been translated into 22 languages. Her distinctive writing style, including her us of the second-person narrative.

In 2022 The Bride Stripped Bare was named as one of the 25 best Australian novels of the past 25 years - it is an explicit exploration of female sexuality, which was originally written and published anonymously. Nikki was identified publicly as the author of The Bride Stripped Bare before publication but original versions identify the author as “Anonymous”. The book went on to become a worldwide publishing sensation and the best-selling book by an Australian author in 2003. In the wake of the success of Fifty Shades of Grey it re-entered the fiction charts in the UK in the summer of 2012. Two follow-up novels complete The Bride Stripped Bare trilogy: With My Body and I Take You. In 2007, the French literary magazine Lire included Nikki in a list of what it called the fifty most important writers in the world – those it believed would have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century.

Nikki has also published two series of children’s books, the Kensington Reptilarium and Coco Banjo series. In 2014 The Kensington Reptilarium was shortlisted for an Australian Book Industry Award in the category of Book of the Year for Older Children. In 1999 Cleave was shortlisted in the Fiction category of the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Four books by Nikki, Shiver, Cleave, The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book of Rapture, made the longlist of "Favourite Australian Novels" as chosen by readers of the Australian Book Review.

Nikki won the 2022 Walkley award for commentary, analysis, opinion and critique for her weekly columns for The Weekend Australian newspaper.

Discover more about the Eumundi Writers Festival here: https://eumundiwritersfestival.com.au/