Ideas Behind the Book, Interviews & More
Homecoming
ESSAY: Picnics, Pandemics, and Coming Home
Read about the particular circumstances – global and personal – that led Kate Morton to set aside the manuscript for her planned seventh novel and begin, instead, to write the scenes that became Homecoming.
INTERVIEW: Kate Morton in conversation for BorrowBox
Kate Morton speaks with Natasha Boyd for BorrowBox about her writing practice and novels, with a particular focus on Homecoming. Event details: 9 April 2024
Kate Morton speaks with Sarah Martin about her new novel, Homecoming, and explains her fascination with secrets and their impact, and the way it has shaped her writing. Event details: Thursday 7 March 2024
GALLERY: Homecoming was inspired, in part, by the landscape and buildings of South Australia
Images include: Martindale Hall in the Clare Valley (approaching the front entrance; ‘researching’ in the Martindale Hall library; a sample of wallpaper from the nursery) ; one of the many gum-tree-lined lanes that wind through the Adelaide Hills; and the willow and the waterhole so central to Percy’s prologue and the events of that ill-fated Christmas Eve in 1959.
INTERVIEW: Kate Morton event with the Bookaccino Live Book Group
Kate Morton speaks with Carol Fitzgerald – and answers reader questions – for the Bookaccino Live Book Group Series, 24 April 2024. Topics covered include writing process (developing multiple story threads, juggling timelines, writing during a pandemic), and the importance of houses and landscapes in Kate’s novels.
Kate Morton discusses the role of the Australian gothic in her new novel, Homecoming. Broadcast date: Thursday 18 May 2023
PODCAST: Kate Morton in conversation for Miranda’s Notebook.
Kate Morton speaks with Miranda Mills for Miranda’s Notebook across a range of topics including the real life house that inspired the layout of Halcyon. Interview date: 16 February 2024
INTERVIEW: Kate Morton in conversation for Bookreporter
Kate Morton speaks with Carol Fitzgerald about the genesis of the story that would become Homecoming and the way the novel took shape during the first year of the pandemic. 9 May 2023
Did you know?
Many aspects of the garden surrounding the Turner family’s home, Halcyon, are drawn from Kate’s own garden: the Hen Hilton, the Flower Pot Man in the vegetable patch, and Isabel’s Rose Garden beneath the Walnut Tree (with its greedy black cockatoos) are all based on fact.
INTERVIEW: Kate Morton featured in the New York Times by Elizabeth Egan, 20 April 2023
FEATURE: Melanie Kembrey for the Sydney Morning Herald, 25 March 2023
INTERVIEW: Emma Harcourt for The Weekend Australian Review, 22-23 April 2023
ARTICLE: Homecoming was the AWW Book of the Month, March 2023
Kate Morton on The Importance of Storytelling, apropos Homecoming
INTERVIEW: Kate Morton in conversation for BookHampton and RJ Julia