The South Coast Writers Centre has unveiled an impressive lineup for its Writers Festival. Bringing together acclaimed authors, emerging talents and passionate readers, the festival provides a platform for meaningful conversations and a love of literature.

Robertson local Kylie Needham is an award-winning screenwriter. She holds a Bachelor of Arts/Communication (Theatre/Media) and both a Master of Arts (English Literature) and a Master of Creative Writing.

Kylie has won two AWGIE (Australian Writers’ Guild) Awards for television scriptwriting. Her credits include Fighting Season, Crownies and Offspring. Kylie’s work has been published in Meanjin, Better Read Than Dead Writing Anthology 2019 and 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart.

Ahead of the festival, Kylie shared what she has been working in 2023.

What is your latest project?

My debut novel, Girl in a Pink Dress, which was published by Penguin Random House earlier this year.

Why this work?

I’ve worked as a screenwriter for over two decades, mostly writing television drama, but I’ve always been a big reader and thought about writing a novel.

While I was recently completing a Masters in Creative Writing, I wrote a short story about a female artist who drives home across the mountains late one night in the fog to her wattle and daub cottage in a dilapidated old gold rush town. The story seemed to combine two things I wanted to write about: the challenges and sacrifices of a life devoted to art, and in particular the way, throughout history, female artists have been overlooked and overshadowed, often known better as muses or lovers to male artists than as artists in their own right; and also the strange, raw, majestic beauty of the Australian landscape.

When my short story was published, my friend Richard Flanagan read it and told me it had ‘the rumble of a novel’. When a writer like Richard Flanagan gives you advice, you take it! That’s when I started writing the book.

What do you love about it?

I would love to think that Girl in a Pink Dress sparks a conversation with readers about power and loss and love, womanhood and motherhood, and also fury.

While I was writing the book, I loved the opportunity I had to research Australian female artists of the early 20th century – painters like Clarice Beckett, Nora Heysen, Stella Bowen, Grace Cossington Smith and, of course, Margaret Olley, who I was lucky enough to know. I’m fascinated by the ways women have perceived their world through art, and I think my research helped me build the fictional artist character of Frances, the book’s protagonist and narrator – a landscape painter in her mid-40s who finds herself reflecting on a relationship she had 25 years earlier with an older male artist.

I also love the way the landscape becomes almost a character in the book. I live in Robertson in the Southern Highlands, on the edge of the escarpment, and while the mountain setting for Girl in a Pink Dress is somewhat different – inspired more by the town of Hill End in the western ranges of NSW – I feel very in touch here with the mountains and the sky, and the way a day can shift with a hundred different colours. Some of this feeling, I hope, lives there in the book; a sense of deep connection to place.

What challenges have you run into?

Just writing a book was a challenge! I’d never attempted one before and I wasn’t sure if I had the focus and stamina to pull it off. I was more accustomed to writing 90-page television scripts, so the prospect of writing an entire novel was intimidating, to say the least. There’s a lot of wrestling with self-doubt… but when the work is flowing there’s nothing more wonderful.

I also found it challenging to find the right ‘voice’ for the novel. When I first began writing, I was using third-person to tell the story. But something wasn’t working – I could feel it – and it wasn’t until a writer friend suggested I try switching to first person that I found the intimate and unguarded voice of the narrator, Frances, that I was after. Once Frances opened up her thoughts to me, I found she was frank, unsparing, fierce-hearted, and so full of emotion and insight. In many ways it was hard to say goodbye to writing her. I really loved her company.

What are you most excited about for your event at the South Coast Writers Festival?

My event is called 'In conversation: the writer at work' and I think I’d be coming along to it even if I wasn’t participating because I’m so excited to hear Fiona Kelly McGregor (Iris) and Catherine McKinnon (Storyland) speak about their books. Both Fiona and Catherine are acclaimed writers who have been shortlisted, among other prizes, for the Miles Franklin Award. Listening to what they have to say about the writing process and creating strong female protagonists will be a privilege.

I’m also very excited to meet readers! To me, a book is a lot like a piece of theatre – it only finally lives in that moment of exchange with the audience, or in a book’s case, with the reader. There’s a kind of magic that is only achieved when a book is being read. Perhaps it is the final part of the writing process.

Kylie is appearing at "In Conversation: The Writer at Work" at 12.30pm on 20 August and tickets are available here.