Author In-Conversation: Josh Kemp

Join multi-award winning writer of Australian gothic crime fiction, Josh Kemp, in a conversation about his latest novel, Jasper Cliff.

Josh Kemp is an author of Australian gothic fiction. His debut novel Banjawarn won the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award, the 2022 Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Prize for Best Emerging Writer. He lives in the South West of WA but finds himself drawn over and over again to the red dirt of the state’s north.

In Josh’s new book, Jasper Cliff, when Toby Bowman vanishes, his brother Lachlan retraces a road trip to the last place Toby phoned from – a remote northern town called Jasper Cliff. There, Lachlan finds himself marooned at the dying town’s pub, and soon learns that his brother is just one of many to have gone missing in recent years. Like Toby, his brother becomes obsessed with finding the Rift, a deep hole in a ravine somewhere in the hills. But what will Lachlan learn, and what will he see, if he stares into the Rift too?