Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome's not quite right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda.
We are here at Words on the Waves 2026 and we're speaking to Kate Holden,
who is the author of The Ruin of Magic.
And we chatted about the horrors basically of the world and,
and maybe a little bit of hope in amongst all of that and,
and how we move towards a life that's sort of full of joy.
And I think that's a conversation that we all need to have at the moment.
So in these trying times.
So here's our discussion with Kate Holden.
So we are here at Words on the Waves with Kate Holden.
How are you, Kate?
I'm really well as wordy.
Thank you.
So tell us about what brings you to Words on the Waves this year.
Oh, well, this is my first time.
I have not been here before, but I am very impressed with it.
And I'm here because I've, we've got a new book called The Ruin of
Magic, which is my 4th book and it's called
Longing and Belonging in Strange times.
And I, I thought if I came up with that title,
I thought that pretty much hits it.
It's a little bit hard to describe because it's six different essays cover a
bit of ground, but it's all about being in this,
you know, strange modern world of ours and how do
we find our place.
So what is it that you would like people to know about your book?
Well, I am on a panel in shortly with one other
author, Jennifer Mills, who's been writing a book of the Earth,
the Divisorski, which is on a similar theme.
And I guess we'll be talking about what is very germane to the the subject of my
book, which is the how to bring enchantment
back into the kind of the dreary grey of modern life.
And I in my book, it's not a 15 ways to re enchant your
life kind of mystical thing, but it's just a look at how maybe we
don't even notice how grey and drab and and kind of silenced our lives have
become sometimes.
And I think noticing is a really good place to start.
And then once you've noticed things, not getting stuck in the in the despair,
but then moving through and remembering that we've always known ways to be
enchanted.
We were actually just talking before we were recording about, I guess,
lack of connection and things in the modern world.
What kind of things do you think are missing from the modern experience?
Well, I speak as one of myself, I suppose, but I'm struck by the narcissism that we,
you know, we live amongst, which is that people are forgetting that
other people are other people.
And I think that's, you know, you really do have to remember that when
you're working in society, because if you see every other person as
an impediment or something to get past or something to beat or something to race
towards, you know, race against towards something else,
then you live in a lonely world, right?
And other people are all your enemy.
I think our society is tending to squish us towards that conclusion because it's
quite, there's quite a lot of kind of predatory
behaviour out there, either from kind of the commercial world
trying to like get stuff off you and invading your space or really other
people.
But that embattled kind of mentality, I think it's so perilous because you
start forgetting how wonderful other people are and that they're also your
allies.
And I think as well, we live in that commercial world 24/7 now
because we spend a lot of time online, whereas previously we may have been more
social and more spending time in actual real world groups.
So I don't know.
What do you think is the antidote to that?
I don't know.
I mean, I think there's a lot of fear about other
people.
The contagion of other people maybe is something that we're afraid of it
contagion literally in terms of viruses, but contagion more kind of psychically
that you might be somehow infected with the wrong view by someone else or the
wrong association.
There's a paranoia I think in a lot of circles.
And then also people are just not got enough time or energy to socialise.
I know I'm terribly guilty of this.
I go home and I think, well, I could go out and see people,
but I could just stay home.
And being of a kind of introverted nature in the 1st place, the,
the scales tip pretty fast to the, to the couch.
And I, I really, I don't know that everyone has to go out
and madly, you know, gallivanting.
But remembering that seeking of a people's company is not a trial or an
ordeal.
It's supposed to be joyful and also sometimes a surprise because you just
don't always know what you're actually going to get, do you?
Yeah, there's probably that underlying anxiety
that precedes any kind of social interaction,
and it only gets worse when you feed it by avoiding the social interaction.
But I think it's interesting that writing in particular is one of those fields
where you don't necessarily compete against each other.
You know, there's always more readers, you know, then there are books really,
because it takes so long to produce a book.
And so you can see each other more as contemporaries rather than like your
competition.
Whereas in some fields it's maybe not the case.
I think we all feel we're in the trenches together.
Yeah, yeah.
In Battlefield.
Yeah, definitely.
I've I've always really enjoyed the writing world because it's been very
embracing from my debut, which was 20 years ago.
People went out of their way to guide me and help me and encourage me.
I was really lucky before I did my very first ever big public appearance,
which was a big one, and I was very shy.
And someone said go and talk to Christos Cholkos.
He's lovely.
He's gonna be on the panel with you.
He's really nice with new writers.
And he was.
He took me out for a coffee.
He posed me down.
He said nice things.
He said you know, you'll be fine.
And it was true.
Everyone's always been really lovely and the social life of it is great.
They often get people who are a little bit nervous.
So there's sometimes a bit of like nervous Jabba.
Yeah.
But, you know, I, I really do think that there's a very
collegial atmosphere.
And also a lot of us teach writing as well.
So we're also bringing up new, new voices, not seeing them as a threat,
but thinking that, you know, there's plenty of room,
even though publishing is in such a, you know, tight squeeze these days.
Yeah, we're, we're all very much of A particular type,
I guess writers, but again, like we were very varied as well.
So we can enjoy each other's company and exploring the differences that we have.
So coming to a writers festival is great for facts,
to hear everyone else's opinions and experience.
Yes, absolutely.
And I mean, you've made a career out of writing now.
So if you look back 20 years ago, is that a goal that you had or did you
kind of fall into it?
Oh, well, I, I, I set myself towards the Cliff age and I
chunked myself over it.
OK.
I was out of position in my life.
I hadn't no other options apart from to do the extremely impractical one of
signing up to a graduate diploma in creative writing and editing,
which was not the most vocationally kind of likely thing that I knew I'd be OK.
I knew that was where I was going to find my people.
And I did an out of that programme.
I got my first book published and so I've been professional writer ever since and
I'm I'm very glad because I honestly don't know what else I would have done.
Yeah.
Hard to look back now and imagine it any, any other way.
Yeah, yeah.
But I had good instincts.
I think I took 3, three tries tries to get into that
programme and I kept trying and eventually they they let me in.
And I've just actually this week I signed up to go back and do an author talk at
the programme, which is a nice, you know, go back and as the,
as the adult kind of thing.
That's it.
So The Ruin of Magic is your latest book.
How the themes that you're tackling, are they consistent across your writing
or have you previously explored other ideas?
This is a new direction for you.
It does seem like a bit of a change in direction for me because this is a book
of 6 essays, kind of literary essays I suppose you'd
call them.
And my first two books were memoirs.
And then my third book was a very different thing,
which was a kind of a combined history, true crime, cultural critique,
a discussion about a whole lot of things that centring on environmentally based
murder, and a review of kind of Australia's
colonial history.
So it was a bit of a lot of different things, and this seems very different.
This is again, kind of quite personal, personal essays,
but I feel like it relates to all of them because it's got the kind of the personal
perspective that I had in my first two books.
It's got my kind of questing curiosity and well,
I should say Bamboozlement the World.
And my first two books were partly about my naivety.
And then it's got this interest in reviewing where we've come from and why
we are as we are now, which I was working through in my third
book, The Winter Rd.
And it's also just I guess about legacies like the like the other ones,
which is that we have set up a whole lot of things in our world and, you know,
through history of colonisation and Western mentalities,
philosophies and literature.
I'm tracing partly where have we come through and why have we ended up here
with the mix that we've got?
And in fact, what could we maybe ****** back from the
past?
Having said that, I've got to just mentioned that my book
is also a little bit of a critique of nostalgia because as soon as I go, oh,
it was so much nicer in the past, I think.
Ohh.
But was it really, Yeah.
Or, or who am I getting, you know, into a, onto a couch with if I start saying those
kind of things?
So it's it's a book which is really about me questioning why do I feel so lonely
and alienated in this world?
And am I the only one?
I think not.
And then how have we got here and what can we maybe do about that?
I mean, it's an interesting way to approach that
problem.
If you realise you're feeling lonely and disconnected,
to then go on your own and write a book about it.
It was kind of like get out of, you know, like,
like getting out of the situation 'cause I could say, ah,
I'm lonely and alienated because I'm writing a book and I simply must sit here
at my cafes reading, you know, German poetry look like,
in like a lunatic.
And I live in a, in a community, which is not unlike here,
here in the Central Coast.
So there's lots of Beachy people in, you know, leisure wear And there's me,
you know, in my Edwardian blouses reading, you know, the German romantics.
So what do I expect?
Of course, I, I'm a bit, you know, of a weirdo.
But I guess that's the, the privilege of being a writer is that
you get to go in and out, You know, I can go out and look at the world and
noticing is something obviously writers do.
And I'm a good noticer and then go back in and digest it and write, you know.
So I had a great time for, you know, about 10 weeks,
just borrowed in a way study, you know, with piles of books.
But then I had to come out.
And part of the coming out is coming to do festivals and promotion stuff,
which is also really cool.
I really less, I forget.
Yeah.
Thank you.
It's very nice to meet you.
OK, Thank you and best of luck on your panel.
Thank you, Thank you.
Looking forward to it.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right Podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Writers Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.
Something doesn't seem quite right.