Episode 5 | Kirsty Iltners
Meet my guest.
Kirsty Iltners is a writer and freelance photographer living on Jagera and Turrbal Country, Meanjin, with her two daughters, her border collie and four axolotls.
She has worked for publications such as Brisbane Times and Broadsheet, runs her own photography business, and has previously been shortlisted for the National Portrait Prize. She has a degree in psychology and is currently studying law at QUT. Her debut novel, Depth of Field was the winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award.
What we talk about: Kirsty and I chat about how being an author doesn’t feel like an ‘acceptable’ career plan A, writing a book with ADHD and the tools that made it doable, and how for writers with perfectionist tendencies, it’s better to do something, even if it’s not perfect, than to not do it at all.
(And remember, objectively perfect books do not exist!)
Meet the debut book.
In photography, you don’t get to have it all. You are always making choices, always making sacrifices.
To capture the light.
Tom’s longest-standing commitment is his run-down house Mayfield, which hasn’t been the same since Adeline. He’s stuck in the past drowning his sorrows in too many bottles of wine and an unfulfilling photography business. Unable to move on, Tom is treading water in a low-commitment relationship. The only problem—she isn’t Adeline.
Lottie is living with her baby, Coral, in a cramped flat above a fish and chip shop. Struggling to make ends meet, all she wants is to find connection—with her distant mother, the parent’s group, her old school friends, but Lottie straddles too many different worlds to quite fit into any of them. She doesn’t have much, but at least her and Coral have each other.
Told through alternating perspectives, Kirsty Iltners’ debut novel examines the lives of two isolated individuals to reveal the fragility of life and the fallibility of our memories.
Winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, Depth of Field is a gripping novel where the mechanisms of photography are allowed to falter just enough to expose how selective and unreliable our memories are, especially when parts of the truth are left out of the frame.
What was the last book that you read and loved? The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp
Website: kirstyiltners.com.au
Instagram: instagram.com/kirstyiltners
Depth of Field by Kirsty Iltners is available to purchase wherever you buy your books. Alternatively, check in with your local library. If they don’t have a copy yet, put in a request!
For more debut Australian books, check out The Australian Debut Author Book List, curated by yours truly!
