Alice Pung - On John Marsden with Bruno Lettieri

In her book, On John Marsden, Alice Pung writes about one of her biggest influences – the much-loved and highly successful writer, John Marsden. Alice and John talk to Bruno Lettieri and shed new light on the craft of writing. Talking about the book Alice writes: ‘I keep coming back to John Marsden. What makes him so fascinating to me is, that as a young adult writer, he comes at it with a whole philosophy of what it means to be a teenager. It is embedded in his two schools, but also his early experiences with mental illness and hospitalisation. It brings interesting questions for an author of YA fiction about how much darkness is allowed, before you are considered a “bad influence’.