Favel Parrett - My Super Power Is Day Dreaming

There's something I want to ask you about in regards to cultural cringe and being Australians we have that and you've also talked about writing for Tasmania and not wanting to write about Tasmania.

Talk to me about your thoughts on cultural cringe and overcoming it.

Oh, man, that's a hard one.

One thing that's helped me with this is – The way Australian books are kind of treated in the UK has made me angry.

So here's an example.

Pastor Shallows had a great cover, fantastic cover.

My second book had a great cover in Australia, third book, fantastic cover.

All of the UK covers, they won't use the Australian one.

They just won't.

You know, we're the colony still.

It doesn't matter how good the cover is and they'll – Just terrible covers and the books then don't do well.

Covers do matter.

Yeah.

But

there's this that we're second.

I just got this feeling that like we're like still the colony to them and it's so probably not true but it spurs me on for Australian writers to write about Australia and sell more.

than they would in the UK here, and that's great.

I've been reading recently about art world in the 20s and 30s in Australia and how everybody would buy, most people would buy art from Europe and England because there was no duty on the art.

So they could buy it for cheap, bring it to Australia, and no one was buying Australian art or hiring Australian portrait artists And luckily some artists got together and lobbied the government and that was changed and it created art in Australia really where people could make a living and it happened very quickly.

And I guess that's cultural cringe, isn't it? Like you can't have an Australian painting in your house.

You have to have something from the masters in England or Europe and that changed it and I feel really excited about that.

I feel like Australian writing is at a peak.

Like I just feel like there's so much talent.

You know, it won't be long until it's regular that there's Australian writers in the Booker Prize and all of those.

Are we overcoming it?