'Stella Prize long-listed author Sonya Voumard’s Skin in the Game is original, incisive, and hugely entertaining.
'The daughter of a European refugee mother and a journalist father, Voumard recounts with aplomb her passionate but questioning relationship with journalism and the nature of the interview. There’s a disastrous 1980 university encounter with Helen Garner which forms the seed for her fascination with the dynamics of the interview and culminates in her connecting again with Garner more than three decades later to work out what went so wrong.
'There are the insights of a career played out against the changing nature of journalism including the author’s time as a Canberra correspondent. And there are revealing and tender portraits of Kings Cross, of growing up in suburban Melbourne, her father’s love of journalism, and a family journey to the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre where her mother’s Australian life began.
'Throughout it all Voumard is a sharpshooter, never afraid to hold a mirror up to her own life and practices as a journalist, to dig deep into the ethics of journalism and the use of power, and to sensitively explore the intertwined nature of life and work and personal relationships. The writing is at turns sharp, funny, direct, strong, and affectionate.' (Publication summary)
[Review] Skin in the Game : The Pleasure and Pain of Telling True Stories
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2018
14402065
2018
single work
interview
'Skin in the Game sets a high bar for itself. The blurb promises to explore the nature and ethics of journalism, reveal what the notoriously private Helen Garner thinks about the art of the interview, and mediate on the ‘pleasure and pain’ of stories by looking at those in Voumard’s own life.' (Introduction)
'The centrepiece of Skin in the Game is an account of an interview with Helen Garner almost 40 years ago. Sonya Voumard, then an 18-year-old cadet journalist, chose Garner as her subject for a university assignment. The interview was convivial and frank – so frank that Garner was shocked when she read the finished piece. “It is always traumatic to see the way another person has perceived you,” she wrote to Voumard, “especially when you feel you have talked a little too freely …” If Garner “learnt a lesson” from the experience, so did her interviewer – although it would take more than 30 years and a second interview with Garner, reappraising the first, to grasp fully the ways in which the disjunct between journalist and subject can leave the latter “slightly pulled askew” (and not just on the page).' (Introduction)
[Review] Skin in the Game : The Pleasure and Pain of Telling True Stories
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2018
14402065
2018
single work
interview
'Skin in the Game sets a high bar for itself. The blurb promises to explore the nature and ethics of journalism, reveal what the notoriously private Helen Garner thinks about the art of the interview, and mediate on the ‘pleasure and pain’ of stories by looking at those in Voumard’s own life.' (Introduction)
'The centrepiece of Skin in the Game is an account of an interview with Helen Garner almost 40 years ago. Sonya Voumard, then an 18-year-old cadet journalist, chose Garner as her subject for a university assignment. The interview was convivial and frank – so frank that Garner was shocked when she read the finished piece. “It is always traumatic to see the way another person has perceived you,” she wrote to Voumard, “especially when you feel you have talked a little too freely …” If Garner “learnt a lesson” from the experience, so did her interviewer – although it would take more than 30 years and a second interview with Garner, reappraising the first, to grasp fully the ways in which the disjunct between journalist and subject can leave the latter “slightly pulled askew” (and not just on the page).' (Introduction)
