In Conversation with Laura Jean McKay - Listening to the Animals: What are they saying to us?

Award-winning author Laura Jean McKay talks with Gillian Wills about the mind-bending joys and pitfalls of environmental writing and animal characters in The Animals in That Country and Gunflower. Join us in wonder, bafflement and endless curiosity to ask, 'What are the animals saying?!'

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020) - winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. The Animals in That Country has been shortlisted for The Kitschies, The Stella Prize, The Readings Prize and the ASL Gold Medal and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The novel is one of Readings Best Australian Books of the 21st Century. The French edition, Les animaux de ce pays (éditions Dalva 2025, translated by Lise Garond), won the 2025 Prix Gargantua and was shortlisted for the Prix 30 millions d’amis and the 2026 Prix Maya. 

Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc., 2013) and an Adjunct Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University. She was awarded the NZSA Waitangi Day Literary Honours in 2022. Her latest collection is Gunflower (Scribe 2023), shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and named one of The Guardian’s best books of 2023. Laura was the 2025 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow to Cork, Ireland.  

Gillian Wills writes for ABR, Limelight and InReview. Gillian is the author of Big Music, a novel set in a music conservatorium which was inspired by her 9-year term as the first female dean of music at the Victorian College of the Arts. Big Music was featured as a notable book in The Australian in 2024 and won the Golden Able Award for Best Fiction in 2025. This year a revised edition of her memoir Elvis and Me: How a musician and a broken racehorse rescued each other (Hawkeye Publishing) was released on the 1 August. Gillian has held several senior roles in Australia and overseas. She is an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. 

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