117 | Writing towards your greatest fear with Melanie Cheng, author of 'The Burrow'

Award-winning author Melanie Cheng joins James and Ashley to discuss her writing practice, her pet rabbit, and The Burrow, her 'most personal book' and its many parallels to her own life. 

She also shares her experience of writing toward her greatest fear, coming to terms with her cyclical writing process, and how teaching narrative to medical students can help increase communication between doctors and patients. 

Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2018. Room for a Stranger, her highly acclaimed first novel, was published in 2019. The Burrow was published in 2024, and has since been shortlisted for numerous major Australian prizes, including the Stella Prize, the Age Book of the Year and the Miles Franklin Award.

Read the Kill Your Darlings interview with Melanie discussed in this episode here. 

Books & authors discussed in this episode:

• The Burrow by Franz Kafka
• Tender Is the Flesh by Augustina Batzerrica 
• Helen Garner
• Maxine Beneba Clarke
• Tony Birch
• Alice Pung
• Hilton Koppe (from ep 70) 
• The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler 
• Sanchana Venkatesh (from ep 75) and #MyYearWithAnneTyler
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Oliver Ready
• Bat Eater (and other names for Cora Zheng) by Kylie Lee Baker, recommended by @EmilyEatsPages 
• Laura McClusky 
• Riley James
• Jacinta Dietrich

Upcoming events:

• Ashley is part of the Sisters in Crime – Death in a Cold Climate panel, Friday 27 June, 7-10pm, South Melbourne
• Ashley will be doing an in-conversation in Meeniyan with Jacinta Dietrich, Saturday 28 June, 6.30-7.30pm
• Ashley is speaking at Bendigo Library, Monday 30 June, 1-2pm
• Ashley is teaching a multi-day memoir masterclass as part of the Writers at the Woolshed Winter Writing Retreat in the Southern Highlands, 13-18 July
• Join Ashley and podcast fav Hayley Scrivenor for the Mystery and Mayhem Readers Retreat at the 5-star Tamborine Mountain Glades, 3-5 October
• James is launching Matt Rogers' highly anticipated debut thriller 'The Forsaken' at Harry Hartog Mosman, Wednesday July 9

Learn more about Ashley's thrillers, Dark Mode and Cold Truth, and get your copies from your local bookshop or your library. Plus check out Like, Follow, Die from Audible. 

Get in touch!

• ashleykalagianblunt.com
• jamesmckenziewatson.com
• Instagram: @akalagianblunt + @jamesmcwatson