Afternoon Tea with Megan Rogers

Absorbing, lyrical, vivid and compulsively readable - The Heart is a Star is beautiful storytelling from a talented new writer. A novel for fans of Holly Ringland, Jacqueline Maley, Hannah Richell.

Layla Byrnes is exhausted. She's juggling a demanding job as an anaesthetist, a disintegrating marriage, her young kids, and a needy lover. And most particularly she's managing her histrionically unstable mother, who repeatedly threatens to kill herself.

But this year, it's different. When her mother rings just before Christmas, she doesn't follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there's something she needs to tell her about her much-loved father. In response, Layla drops everything to rush to her childhood home on the wild west coast of Tasmania. She's determined to finally confront her mother - and find out what really happened to her father - and lay some demons to rest.

The Heart is a Star is an engrossing, lyrical and powerfully absorbing novel about the complicated and beautiful messiness of midlife; about the ways in which we navigate an intricate, complicated world; and about how we can uncover our true selves when we are forced to face the myths that make us.

Megan Rogers began her working life as an editorial assistant at Allen & Unwin, before moving to the State Library of Victoria, in Marketing. In 2014 Megan finished a PhD in Creative Writing at RMIT, which resulted in the book, Finding the Plot, A Maternal Approach to Madness in Literature published by feminist publisher Demeter Press. She also has a Bachelor of Arts/Science (Monash), a Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing (RMIT), a Graduate Diploma in Professional Communication (Deakin), and a Masters of Marketing (Monash). Megan lives in the Mornington Peninsula outside Melbourne. The Heart is a Star is her first novel.

Sean Szeps is the funniest dad in Oz. Well, at least that's what his mum says. A podcast host, writer and content creator, Sean is most well-known for his accidental advocacy that came from sharing his journey of raising boy-girl twin toddlers as a gay man. Originally from America, Sean moved to Australia and began hosting parenting podcasts like Spotify's The Dad Kit and Mamamia's The Baby Bubble, both of which quickly garnered a cult following. This opened doors, allowing him to write about the queer parenting experience for outlets such as the ABC, Mamamia, Kidspot, AdWeek and The Daily Telegraph. As a passionate advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, Sean launched Australia's first-ever coming out podcast, Come Out Wherever You Are, with Austereo's LISTNR, his guests including Brooke Blurton, Courtney Act, Grace Hyland and Patricia Karvelas. Sean lives in Sydney with his husband, Josh, and their boy and girl twin toddlers, Stella and Cooper.