Selling Fast
In conversation with Matthew Condon
Boy Swallows Universe
The Edge, State Library of Queensland
Contemporary Storytelling
425
#Performances
#About the event
Duration: 60 minutes
Trent Dalton bends his own horrific story of a chaotic youth in the heroin-drenched suburbs that Brisbane forgot into a bright and brilliant phantasmagoria - an instant classic of Australian storytelling.
#Artist
Trent Dalton
Trent Dalton is a two-time Walkley Award–winning journalist and the international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, All Our Shimmering Skies, Love Stories and Lola in the Mirror.
Lola in the Mirror was the winner of the 2024 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the 2023 QBD Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Dymocks 2023 Book of the Year, the 2024 Indie Book Awards, the 2024 Book People Fiction Book of the Year and the 2024 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award. It has sold over 320,000 copies across all formats since publication in October 2023.
The Boy Swallows Universe television series, which aired in January 2024, was Netflix’s most successful Australian-made show to date. It ranked in the top 10 in 52 countries and reached the number one spot in Australia, number four in the UK and number six in the US.
Following standing ovations and glowing reviews at the Brisbane Festival in 2024, the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s Love Stories is set for a four-city national tour in September 2025.
#Moderators
David Kelly
David Kelly is a multi Walkley-nominated photographer, and winner of the Clarion Award for best Photo-Essay, News, Sport and Multicultural work. One of the original photographers for the Courier Mail Qweekend Magazine (2005 - 2017), he has also worked with Queensland Ballet for the past 20 years, producing From the Wings, a book on their production of Swan Lake. He co-produced Love Stories, a documentary about homeless love, and a book, Detours (Stories From the Street).
He has travelled extensively throughout Australia, the Pacific, and Asia on assignment, and immersed himself in the culture and stories of Indigenous Australia, a world he has entered with care, respect, and a soft footprint.
Matthew Condon
Matthew Condon is a prize-winning Australian novelist and journalist. He began his journalism career with the Gold Coast Bulletin in 1984 and subsequently worked for leading newspapers and journals including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun-Herald, Melbourne’s Sunday Age and The Courier-Mail. He has written ten books of fiction, including The Trout Opera and is the author of the bestselling true-crime trilogy about Queensland crime and corruption – Three Crooked Kings (2013), Jacks and Jokers (2014), All Fall Down (2015) and Little Fish are Sweet (2016). His most recent book is The Night Dragon (2019). He is the host of two true crime podcasts – Ghost Gate Road and Dig: Sirens Are Coming.
