Brisbane-based writer, Mirandi Riwoe talks about issues that novels or history might ignore or elide, such as racism and gender bias, with Sisters in Crime convenor, Karina Kilmore, for this week’s Murder Mondays interview on the craft of crime writing.
(Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.)
Mirandi has a Masters’ degree and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies (both from Queensland University of Technology), and has tutored in literary studies and creative writing at QUT.
Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella V and was shortlisted for The Stella Prize.
Under the name M.J. Tjia, she has written three fascinating historical mysteries, She Be Damned, A Necessary Murder (both Pantera Press) and The Death of Me (Legend Press UK), all featuring the 1860s’ London courtesan sleuth, Heloise Chancey. Heloise, like Mirandi, is Eurasian.
Mirandi’s latest novel, Stone Sky Gold Mountain (UQP), is set on the Far North Queensland goldfields 150 years ago. Displaced siblings Ying and Lai Yue, forced to flee their home in China, soon find themselves abandoning work on the goldfields only to become embroiled in a community trying to make sense of a violent crime. Racial tension and suspicion quickly place all those considered outsiders at the centre of the story.
Mirandi’s work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories.
Click HERE for a review of She Be Damned by Kate Russell.
Click HERE for reviews of A Necessary Murder by Vikki Petraitis and Sandi Curtis.
Click HERE for Mirandi’s Q&A with Robyn Walton about the joys of writing a courtesan sleuth.
Click HERE for a report on the February 2019 Sisters in Crime Melbourne event, Mysteries with history: The pleasures – and many perils – of setting books in the past, at which Mirandi spoke.
Murders Mondays are available on Sisters in Crime YouTube channel at 6pm on Mondays. Previous guests include Kerry McGinnis Kathy Reichs, Ellie Marney, Katherine Kovacic, Candice Fox, Anne Buist, Val McDermid and Dervla McTiernan