News Club Interview: Trent Dalton

If you’ve followed the Aussie book scene in the last 10 years, chances are you’ll know of Trent Dalton. The journo-turned-novelist is a bestselling author, two-time Walkley winner, and the mind behind one of Netflix’s biggest Aussie hits. So I wanted to ask him… how did it all happen? What does it feel like to hit those kinds of highs? And when you’ve achieved everything you ever dreamed of, what do you do next?

Trent Dalton has sold over 1.3 million books…

There are few contemporary Australian authors who are better known - or more widely loved - than Brisbane’s-own Trent Dalton. The tabloid journo turned world-conquering author is not only one of the most successful Aussie writers of his generation, he’s also one of the nicest people on the planet. 

When he was growing up, his brothers called him Blinky Bill because of his tendency to burst into tears at the slightest provocation. 

But that sensitivity is now his super-power. And it’s one he’s parlayed into a career’s worth of award-winning journalism, a succession of best-selling books, a box-office busting play and - in the shape of Boy Swallows Universe -  the most-watched Aussie TV series ever to stream on Netflix.

Trent and I started our journalism careers at the same media company around the same time back in the early 90s. And having (barely) survived the gruff, macho world of a newspaper newsroom of that era, I wanted to know how Blinky Bill had prevailed in his early days as a tabloid journo. 

How and where does he now write? Does he have a process? And how does the most unlikely pairing of Pearl Jam and Charles Darwin inspire him? 

Why does he think he’s attracted to darkness? What does the former housing commission kid make of the incredible success he’s had? And why has he only ever been able to watch Boy Swallows Universe once? 

With a new book due out later this year, Trent talks candidly about his failings as a husband and father and the double-edged sword that ambition has been in his life.

It’s a wide-ranging chat, as you’d fully expect, with a man who loves a yarn. So find yourself somewhere comfy, settle in and enjoy this foray inside the mind of one of Australia’s master storytellers.

You can listen to the conversation here or tune in on YouTube - and hit subscribe while you’re at it. And scroll on for my highlights of our conversation.

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Interview Highlights

Highlight 1: On being drawn to the darkness

Trent Dalton: I am not interested in Danish furniture. I'm not interested in real estate. I'm not interested in the brand of the vase that's sitting on the table. I'm interested in your sorrow. I'm interested in your heartbreaks, and I'm interested in the people you've lost … I absolutely learned my best lessons in dark times. Darkness has absolutely shaped who I am, so I'm deeply fascinated by it.

Highlight 2: On the trickiness of keeping balance in his life as a writer

Trent: This is what I'm writing about in my latest book, ‘Gravity Let Me Go’. It’s the same thing that heroin users talk about. And it's the same thing that gamblers talk about. When you get into the flow state. And the danger is that you stay in your flow state when you go up in the kitchen. And my wife Fi is telling me something really important about parent-teacher night. And I'm nodding,  saying ‘Yep. Got that.’ And then you walk away and you didn't get it. And she's like, “What is wrong with you? You're driving me crazy!

Highlight 3: On the fear of losing it all tomorrow …

Trent: You climb to the top of the mountain and you realise the meaning you were looking for was way down in the cabin at the base of the mountain where you just said goodbye to your wife..  but it's all that ambition and all this sort of need and also this weird storytelling addiction I've got that does get in the way of these incredibly beautiful things.

…and that scares me. And I wonder what's driving that? I'm still trying to work it out almost. I think it's to do with my past. It's like if I got a clean break, I'm going to make the most of it because someone's going to come along and take it all away.”

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