Pip Finkemeyer in-conversation with Diana Reid

A young woman tries to figure out if she’s the best (a creative genius) or if she’s maybe just the worst (completely delusional).

I’d be in heaven but on the edge of a deeper misery than ever, I’d be on top of the world and then they’d ask me, did you make the right choice Kim? Are you currently, still, making the right choices Kimberley Mueller?

Over the course of a year in Berlin, an aspiring novelist, Kim, and her historian best friend, Bel, confront their twin acts of creation. Kim is becoming a writer, and is determined to write a bestseller. Meanwhile Bel is becoming a mother, and gives birth to a baby, certain it will fulfil her in ways her career does not seem to. Kim and Bel support and deceive each other as only the best of friends can.

In the face of probable failure, how do we convince ourselves to try and become something anyway? And how do we live with the choices we make?

Pip Finkemeyer's fiction has been listed for the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, the Disquiet Literary Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She co-founded the Berlin-based zine Nothing To See Here, and completed a Masters in Publishing and Editing at RMIT. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne and Sad Girl Novel is her first novel.

Diana Reid is a Sydney-based writer. Her debut novel, Love & Virtue, was an Australian bestseller and winner of the ABIA Book of the Year Award, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award, the ABA Booksellers' Choice Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the MUD Literary Prize. Love & Virtue was also shortlisted for the Indie Debut Fiction Award, the ABIA Matt Richell New Writer Award, and Highly Commended at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Diana was also named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist in 2022. Seeing Other People is her second novel.