The Full Catastrophe

by Rebecca Huntley

  RICHARD GLOVER is the author of a weekly humour column that has been published in the Sydney Morning Herald for more than twenty years. He also writes regularly for The Washington Post, and presents the top-rating Drive show on ABC Radio in Sydney. In December 2011, he and Peter Fitzsimons achieved a record for the world’s longest radio interview, supervised by the Guinness Book of Records. Richard is the author of numerous books including Flesh Wounds (HarperCollins, 2015) and The Land Before Avocado (HarperCollins, 2018).

  RICK MORTON, an author and award-winning reporter, has covered social policy for The Australian since 2013. He also writes a column in The Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ section. Rick is the author of One Hundred Years of Dirt (MUP, 2018), a family memoir about trauma, poverty and the isolation of the Queensland outback. And he once almost found a dinosaur.

  ROBBIE BUCK is a broadcaster on ABC Radio Sydney. He sets his alarm for an ungodly hour and co-hosts Breakfast with Wendy Harmer. He began his broadcasting career at the ripe old age of ten, when he was introduced to community radio in Lismore. For the past two decades he’s presented programs across the gamut of the broadcast spectrum. He’s well known for his thirteen-year stint hosting for the Australian youth broadcasting network Triple J. Robbie lives in Sydney with his wife and two children, and continues to pursue his love of music and photography.

  SALLY RUGG is an LGBTQI activist and Executive Director of Change.org. As Campaign Director and Creative Director at GetUp, 2013–2018, she worked at the forefront of Australia’s marriage equality campaign. In 2018, Sally received the Fbi Radio SMAC of the Year Award; was named Pedestrian.tv’s Strayan of the Year; and was a Hero of the Year finalist at the Australian LGBTI Awards. In 2017, she was named among Harper’s Bazaar’s Five Women of the Year; by Cosmopolitan magazine as one of Australia’s Most Influential LGBTQI people; Amnesty International’s Top 15 Women Championing Human Rights in Australia; and topped Mamamia’s Most Powerful LGBTQI Women list. Sally’s first book, How Powerful We Are (Hachette Australia, 2019), will tell the real story of how Australia got marriage equality.

  SANTILLA CHINGAIPE is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker. Working for SBS World News for nearly a decade, she reported from across Africa and interviewed some of the continent’s most prominent leaders. She created and curated the Africa Talks series, and Australia’s first all-day, anti-racism festival, Not Racist, But … in partnership with the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne. She also founded the annual Behind the Screens initiative, which aims to increase the representation of people from underrepresented groups in the Australian screen industry. Her latest film, Black As Me, explores perceptions of beauty and race in Australia. She writes for The Saturday Paper and is a member of the federal government’s Advisory Group on Australia–Africa Relations.

  STEVE LUCAS is best known as frontman for seminal punk band X and gained notoriety as lead singer for hard-rocking outfit Bigger Than Jesus. Hailed as a ‘Living Legend’ by Australia’s Rolling Stone, and as ‘The Elderly Stateman of Rock and Roll’, he has toured as far afield as Nepal and the USA. Steve’s solo career has extended more than forty years, and he still plays regularly with blues-based band The Heinous Hounds. His music has been included in TV series and films such as The Idiot Box and The Boys, and he has guested on Rockwizz and hosted RAGE. Steve is known for his charitable works raising money and awareness for the prevention of child sex abuse and exploitation. He is happily married to Joey Bedlam, with whom he collaborates on music projects with artists from all over the world.

  SUSAN CARLAND is an Australian academic, author and social commentator. She is the director of the Bachelor of Global Studies at Monash University, the same university from which she received her PhD in Sociology. She is the host of SBS’s Child Genius, and author of Fighting Hislam: Women, faith and sexism (MUP, 2017). Susan is an ambassador for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, and also a certified scuba diver.

  WENDY HARMER, in a career spanning four decades, has found success as a journalist, columnist, radio broadcaster, TV host, author, playwright and comic performer. A former political journalist, Wendy forged a career in comedy in the 1980s at the Edinburgh Festival, London’s West End and on stages in Ireland, the US and all over Australia. She has been a pioneer for women in media as MC of ABC TV’s The Big Gig, headliner in radio 2Day FM’s Morning Crew, and as the first female host of the Logies TV awards, in 2002. The author of some thirty books, she has also written plays, an opera libretto and been a columnist for many magazines and newspapers. These days she is co-host of ABC Sydney’s Breakfast with Robbie Buck. Wendy is married to Brendan Donohoe, they have two children and live on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

  ZACK MCDERMOTT is the author of Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother’s Love. He worked as a public defender for the Legal Aid Society of New York for six years. His work has appeared in the New York Times, This American Life, Morning Edition, Gawker, Deadspin and SplitSider, among others. He is from Wichita, Kansas, and is a graduate of the University of Kansas and the University of Virginia School of Law. Zack lives in New York and Los Angeles.

  Acknowledgements

  WE’D LIKE TO thank Julian Morrow for supporting the idea of The Full Catastrophe as a live show and podcast, which has led to this book. And the great team at Giant Dwarf, especially Nikita Agzarian, Dave Harmon, Bryce Halliday and Beth McMullen.

  Thanks to all the generous storytellers and writers. We owe you all a gin and tonic.

  Thanks to our agent, Jeanne Ryckmans, from Camerons Management.

  Thanks to our kids – Georgie, Gus, Sofia, Sadie and Stella.

  And thanks to the wonderful women at Hardie Grant for believing in this project so much, Arwen Summers, Marg Bowman and Bernadette Foley.

  The story Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott was drawn from his book of the same name, published in the UK in 2017 by Little, Brown Book Group.

  Published in 2019 by Hardie Grant Books, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

  Hardie Grant Books (Melbourne)

  Building 1, 658 Church Street

  Richmond, Victoria 3121

  Hardie Grant Books (London)

  5th & 6th Floors

  52–54 Southwark Street

  London SE1 1UN

  hardiegrantbooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

  Copyright © Rebecca Huntley and Sarah Macdonald 2019

  Copyright in individual stories © individual storywriters 2017, 2018, 2019

  The Full Catastrophe

  eISBN 9781743586198

  Cover design by Alissa Dinallo