Represent: Paul Daley and Jack Latimore on Black Stories and Media

Jack Latimore and Paul Daley

How do we write about race in Australia today? Does the race of the writer affect the way stories are written, received and interpreted? And what does it mean when a white person writes about Indigenous Australia?

Two writers from different backgrounds, Paul Daley and Jack Latimore, pose and tackle these questions. The pair, who admire each other’s work, both write about issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Daley is an award-winning Guardian journalist whose work frequently covers Indigenous issues, history and national identity from a non-Indigenous perspective. Latimore’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Koori Mail, Overland, and IndigenousX; he’s also a researcher with the Centre for Advancing Journalism.

Besides journalism, both men are accomplished writers of fiction – Daley a novelist and playwright, and Latimore a short story author. Together, they talk about their different fields and genres of writing, and the broader sphere of media as it relates to Indigenous Australians in a wide-ranging conversation about reality, representation and vision.