In our first guest interview for Season 2 of the podcast, Jenny chats with Jock Serong on a chilly Victorian night. They talk diaries, rituals, the writing life, and what Jock does with his old Blundstones.

Jock was one of five writers who read at the second-ever Bad Diaries Salon, back in September 2017 in Melbourne, and in this interview Jenny and Jock look back at that salon. The theme was TRIPS, and Jock read from a travel journal he kept in his 20s; in this episode of the podcast, Jock reads again from his travel journal, and it’s beautiful and unmissable.

Jock Serong is a prolific writer, multiple award winner and a thoroughly nice man. He is the founding editor of Great Ocean Quarterly – a journal of art, ideas and the sea – and a director of Melbourne’s The Wheeler Centre . He lives in Port Fairy in far western Victoria.

Jock has six novels published and the seventh – Cherrywood – is a ‘history of things that never happened’ and will be published in September 2024.

Find full show notes for this episode on the Bad Diaries Salon website baddiariessalon.com, or get in touch via Instagram or Facebook – we're @baddiariessalon everywhere.

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Bad Diaries Podcast is recorded and produced in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation; and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.