Garry Discher

View Reviews of books by Garry Disher

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Garry Disher

Garry Disher grew up on a wheat and wool farm in the outback South Australia region, and although he’s not lived there since he was 18, when he left to study at university, the place continues to exert a pull on his imagination and features in several of his crime, general and children’s novels.  

A full-time writer for most of his professional life, he now lives along a dirt road a few minutes from the sea on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne, and when he’s not writing he likes to jar his bones on a ride-on lawnmower, read, walk on the nearest beach, hold curry nights or visit his student daughter in Melbourne.  

Otherwise solitary by nature, he was not overly troubled by the enforced social isolation of the Covid-19 lockdowns but certainly came to value being able to use a telephone and Zoom.  

He has a great fondness for the UK, having visited several times, including a year in London after university graduation and three months in Newcastle, where he was writer-in-residence at the University of Northumbria.

Interviewed 24 July 2021

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

A great deal of head-scratching, followed by some clumsy writing.

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

Smeared window glass, sun-warped garden table, banksia tree, rosellas in the birdbath, dirt driveway, lavender bed, dusty modem, dusty reading light, dusty phone.

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

Scrambled eggs with various chopped up leftovers in it.

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, John Sandford, Michael Robotham, Karin Slaughter, Michael Connelly and Stuart MacBride.

Six things you can't live without ...

A blue ballpoint pen, the blank side of used manuscript pages, HBO shows on TV, coffee percolator, books, my true love.

Five favourite words ...

Inconsolable, fuck, heartache, elation, love.

Four places you'd run away to ...

Tuscany, Tasmania, Noosa (Queensland), Daintree rainforest.

Three books you've bought recently ...

Michael Connelly – The Law of Innocence
Tana French – The Searcher
Jane Harper – The Survivors

Two things that make you rant ...

Donald Trump (still), the Australian Prime Minister.

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

Don’t fall in love so easily.