Debut Revisited - Anne Freeman breaks down her career from Returning to Adelaide to The Time After Now

Without further ado, let's not beat about the bush.

Let's dive straight into your bibliography.

At the time of us talking, we have three novels, and we will exclude your short story collection, but we might touch on it a little bit later.

But we'll start off with your 2022 debut novel, Returning to Adelaide, published by Hawkeye Publishing.

And for me, oh, hello.

I see

it down

there in the cover.

Yes, for everyone on the YouTube who's not listening to the audio version, we have this beautiful cover up on screen.

And it is a stunner.

And I will say that I think actually it's a great...

This is the perfect place to start because...

And the reason why I say that is not just because, of course, it's your debut, but it's because the topics and the subject matter and the things that Anne Freeman is interested in as a person is here clear as day.

You tell us exactly who you are about.

And I think, you know, you tackle...

I think it's a great way to frame this discussion today, because you tackle all of these topics and themes across your bibliography in different ways.

And that's one of the joys for me doing deep dives like this, because I get to be fascinated by what the author is fascinated by.

There is a strong love of heritage and family in your books.

Your stories are about female empowerment, about fraternity.

breaking down patriarchal structures the idea of the perfect life which i use perfect life in quotation marks on the surface versus the reality of and how suffocating that can be you talk about the value of happiness that kind of that journey in search for enlightenment finding strength in female friendships and perspectives your books talk about touch on love in many many forms But within that, you also don't sugarcoat.

Like, you examine the tug of war of self-determination and prioritizing yourself versus responsibility to family.

Consequences as well.

I guess it's such a general question to start off with, but talk to me about your interest in these themes, because they also come out very, very much in every release that you have done since this book.

Yes, they really do.

And I recently found a short story that I wrote while I was at school and even, or two actually, and even those tackled similar themes and I had forgotten about them and I unearthed them, you know, in the archives.