In Conversation with Kirstyn McDermott

Join us for an evening with Ballarat author Kirstyn McDermott to celebrate the release of her debut novel ‘What the Bones Know’.

We are delighted to be hosting local Ballarat author Kirstyn McDermott for the release of her debut book - a contemporary gothic tale of guilt, grief and redemption called 'What The Bones Know'.

ABOUT 'WHAT THE BONES KNOW'

A child’s bones, a lost girl, a mind adrift - sometimes what is lost comes back to haunt you…from an award-winning author comes a contemporary gothic tale of guilt, grief and redemption.

In the village of Kiln Creek in the Victorian Highlands, a ghost gum falls in a storm. Tangled in its roots are the bones of a small child and the tattered remains of her clothing, including a pair of bright-red sneakers.

Single mum Jude Mees is in her early forties and struggling to get her business off the ground while raising her ten-year-old daughter, Katie, and managing a fractious relationship with her controlling ex-husband. But when Jude learns that her mother, Nance, who still lives alone on the family property at Kiln Creek, is showing troubling signs of dementia, she has no option other than to return and check on her.

And indeed, all is not well at the farm. Nance is slowly drifting off into her own world, and there are other disturbing occurrences. Strange smells, inexplicably wet footprints, a voice in the night. As her daughter starts to sleepwalk and Jude’s nightmares take over her days, she begins to wonder whether her imagination is out of control or if something more sinister is happening …

A taut, claustrophobic exploration of what it means to be haunted - by our past, by fractured relationships, by a place we thought we knew and by our own unreliable memories.

ABOUT KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT

Kirstyn McDermott is an Australian author of two award-winning novels, Madigan Mine and Perfections, along with numerous pieces of short fiction and poetry. Her most recent works are Winterbloom (winner of 2023 Aurealis Award for best fantasy novella), Hard Places, a collection of short fiction, and Never Afters, a novella series of retold fairy tales now collected in an omnibus edition. Kirstyn holds a PhD in creative writing and lives in Ballarat, Australia, with fellow writer Jason Nahrung and two distinctly non-literary felines.