In conversation

So Close to Home: Mick Cummins in conversation with Lucy Christopher

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So Close to Home is a pacey, gritty and captivating novel exploring homelessness, power dynamics and the ties that bind. Tasmanian-born social worker and winner of the prestigious VPLA for Unpublished Manuscript Mick Cummins has created a striking, emotionally complex and unnervingly tense narrative that poses one simple question: who can we ever truly rely on?

Eighteen-year-old Aaron is charismatic, resourceful and addicted to heroin. His mum has kicked him out of home in a last-ditch move to help him get straight, and he wanders the streets of South Melbourne, living on his wits and sleeping rough – all the while chasing drugs, dreams and love.

Desperate to fund his addiction, Aaron climbs into the car of The Man, a distinguished elderly gentleman willing to pay for a certain kind of relationship. This regular cash could be the lifeline Aaron needs to start again, but The Man keeps raising spectres from Aaron’s past that he’d rather forget. As Aaron gathers the courage to confront the events that derailed his life, his rage grows – and the consequences could be fatal.

Mick Cummins is an author, playwright and screenwriter who was born in Tasmania, later moving to Melbourne with his partner and two children. In 2001, he won the NSW Premier’s History Award for the documentary Thomson of Arnhem Land before co-writing the ABC docu-dramas, Monash: The Forgotten Anzac and Menzies and Churchill at War. He wrote and directed the documentary Portrait of a Distant Land and his latest screenplay, The Hut, is in pre-production. So Close to Home is his first novel.

Mick will be joined in conversation by Lucy Christopher, author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Tasmania.

Join them at the Afterword Cafe. You can purchase tickets below.