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Martin McKenzie-Murray
Martin McKenzie-Murray was The Saturday Paper’s chief correspondent,…
DiscoverThe Speechwriter shortlisted for the Russell Prize for Humour Writing
We are pleased to share that The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray has been shortlisted for the 2023 Russell Prize for Humour Writing, an award that recognises the most amusing Australian books published in the last two years.
Chair of the judging panel, journalist, author, and comedian Wendy Harmer described this year’s record number of entries as a ‘bumper crop of literary excellence!’
‘During the COVID-19 lockdown, many of our best creative talents looked inward and tapped a wellspring of imagination,’ she said. ‘The judges were treated to the bleak, bittersweet, wry and absurd. The expression of our home-grown humour is irrepressible. How lucky (and funny) we are!’
Congratulations to Martin for his shorlisting.
The Speechwriter
In his fiction debut, erstwhile speechwriter Martin McKenzie-Murray takes us on a frantic, funny, and surreal journey through the corridors of power.
Toby, former speechwriter to the PM, has reached a new low: locked behind bars in a high-security prison, with sentient PlayStations storming the city outside, and the worst of Australia’s criminals forcing him to ghost-write letters to their loved ones or have his spine repurposed as a coat-rack. How did he get here? From the vantage point of his prison cell, Toby pens his memoir, trying to piece together how he fell so far, all the while fielding the…
