Barry Divola - Driving Stevie Fracasso

About the Event

Join #1 bestselling author and Better Read Than Dead favourite Trent Dalton in conversation with journalist and author Barry Divola about Barry’s new novel, Driving Stevie Fracasso.

This event will take place on Zoom. The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration. 

About the Book

Driving Stevie Fracasso is a glorious, music-infused, rollicking road-trip novel about two brothers who haven’t seen each other in almost 30 years, trying to reconnect on a road trip from Austin, Texas to New York City in the days leading up to 9/11. Jaded music journalist Rick McLennan knows his life is going south when he loses his job, his apartment and his long-term girlfriend all on the same day. But then he is thrown a lifeline – a paying gig to drive his ex-rock-star brother, Stevie, from Austin, Texas, to New York to get his story and play one final gig.

Rick knows it’s a bad idea. But he’s out of choices. In September 2001, he gets behind the wheel of a beaten-up 1985 Nissan Stanza and drives towards his destiny. He’s about to find everything he didn’t know he was missing.

A smart, funny and wholly endearing story about how, though we may at times lose ourselves along

the way, the road always leads back to family and the things that bring us joy.

ADVANCE PRASE FOR DRIVING STEVIE FRACASSO:

‘Of course this road trip comes with a top-quality mix-tape – it’s by Barry Divola – but it’s the layers to this story, and its humour and its heart, that make this journey irresistible.’ – Nick Earls

‘If I could go back in time and take a different fork in the road, I would have lived like Barry Divola. But poor choices can’t be unmade, and if Driving Stevie Fracasso is the only ride available I’ll take it. Damn you, Barry Divola, you’ve been having everyone else’s fun.’ – Malcolm Knox

‘Driving Stevie Fracasso reads as great as the fifth Replacements album sounds. It’s a New York–centric, music-obsessive tale of humour and poignancy, the literary equivalent of hanging with folks who think going to church is finding a record fair. A+.’ – Stuart Coupe

‘An interpreter of the listening experience forced to listen to experience? This novel will be read in between flippin’ records. Go for the ride. You’ll be spent, you’ll be grateful.’ – Tim Rogers

‘This book is the super f***ing gnarly lead break of rock-lit novels.’ – John Birmingham

About the Author

Barry Divola is a journalist and author born and bred in Sydney, currently living in Perth. He writes regularly for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and Qantas Magazine. He was a senior writer for Rolling Stone (Australia), the long‐time music critic for Who, and his work has appeared internationally in Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Monocle and other magazines. Driving Stevie Fracasso is his first novel, but he has published eight other books – four non‐fiction books, three children’s books and a book of short fiction (Nineteen Seventysomething). He has won the Margaret River Short Story Prize, the FAW Jennifer Burbidge Award, the Cowley Literary Award and the Banjo Paterson Award for Short Fiction (three times). Although he plays in three bands in two cities, he has been informed not to give up his day job.

About the Moderator

Trent Dalton is a staff writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine and a former assistant editor of The Courier Mail. He’s a two-time winner of a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a four-time winner of a Kennedy Award for Excellence in NSW Journalism and a four-time winner of the national News Awards Features Journalist of the Year. Since its publication in June 2018, Trent’s critically acclaimed debut novel Boy Swallows Universe has become one of the most loved Australian novels of all time. Dalton’s uniquely Australian voice has also been embraced by readers overseas, with rights sold to 34 English language and translation territories. His most recent book, All Our Shimmering Skies,was released late 2020.