Author chat with Natasha Sholl and Jessie Stephens

About Natasha

Natasha Sholl is a Melbourne-based writer and lapsed lawyer. Her writing has appeared in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend magazine, SBS Voices, Mamamia and elsewhere. She graduated from the University of Melbourne, majoring in Creative Writing. In 2020 she completed the KYD Mentors Program. Found, Wanting is her debut book.

About Found, Wanting.

On Valentine’s Day, after a night of red wine and pasta and planning for their future, Natasha Sholl and her partner Rob went to bed. A few hours later, at the age of 27, his heart stopped.

Found, Wanting tells the story of Natasha’s attempt to rebuild her life in the wake of Rob’s sudden death, stumbling through the grief landscape and colliding with the cultural assumptions about the ‘right way’ to grieve.

It is a memoir about falling in love in the aftermath of loss, and what it means to build a life in the space that death leaves.

Furious and passionate, bracingly honest and beautiful, Found, Wanting is above all, a memoir about living and making sense of the multitude of lives within us.

About Jessie

Jessie Stephens is the author of internationally best selling book Heartsick. She is an executive editor at Mamamia, and co-host podcasts Mamamia Out Loud and Cancelled. She is a regular on ABC radio and television, and her work has appeared in Body and Soul, Vogue, and LitHub.

About Heartsick

'Heartbreak does not seem to be a brand of grief we respect. And so we are left in the middle of the ocean, floating in a dinghy with no anchor, while the world waits for us to be okay again.' Claire has returned from London to the dust and familiarity of her childhood home, only to realise something is wrong with her partner Maggie. Patrick is a lonely uni student, until he meets Caitlin - but does she feel as connected as he does? Ana is happily married with three children. Then, one night, she falls in love with someone else. Based on three true stories, Heartsick is a compelling narrative nonfiction account of the many lows and occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. Bruising, beautiful, achingly specific but wholeheartedly universal, it reminds us that emotional pain can make us as it breaks us, and that storytelling has the ultimate healing power.