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Listen to Christos Tsiolkas on podcast.
Even as one of Australia's most celebrated authors, Christos Tsiolkas understands putting a piece of writing out there for critique is nerve-wracking. "Someone misunderstanding what you do, rejection; they sting." But as he explains on podcast, when it comes to writing, rejection is "actually a part of it. If you want to do this, you have to be prepared for that," he says.
As one of the judges of the 2022 SBS Emerging Writers' Competition, alongside fellow author Alice Pung, Tsiolkas appears on The New Writer's Room to share his advice for aspiring writers, his creative process, and how he went from the ESL class in primary school to being one of the country's most celebrated authors.
Tsiolkas speaks of his Greek immigrant father, who would bring home English-language books from his factory job that he couldn't read himself – a habit that sparked his lifelong passion for words and art. "Once I discovered reading and I discovered that you could disappear in the page, it's never really left me. Dad gave me the love of reading."
It was this love of reading that gave him the resolve to be a writer. "I was 10, and I looked up [at my mother] and said, 'Mama, I'm going to be a writer.' And her first thought was 'Oh my God, he's going to die penniless!'," Tsiolkas laughs. "I was aware that I wanted to do something with books really, really early on. I wanted to be around books for the rest of my life."
As the author of seven novels, including The Slap, Barracuda and 7 1/2, it has been a long time since Tsiolkas was a writer on the margins, but judging the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition is a responsibility he wears with "great lightness", he says, "because it's a joy that I come from a world and a background that facilitated me in being able to write in particular ways."
"I'm not going to pretend the experience of Christos Tsiolkas in 1997 is the same as the experience of a young writer writing now, but I do think there is something about wanting to honour the work that comes from spaces that are not the mainstream of Australian literature."
Tsiolkas' advice for aspiring writers is to simply do the work. "You learn what it is to write in the process of writing," he explains, but stresses it is a regular practice. "Try and write 1500 words a day. Sometimes it's a struggle to get to those words and you know that you're going to delete them all. The act of writing itself teaches you how to write."
He also acknowledges that sharing a personal story for other people to read takes courage. "It's a brave thing," he says, "to commit your thoughts, ideas, passion to the page. So don't forget that."
And if you're wracked with self-doubt? "Make sure you have really good people around you," he says. "I remember a cousin of mine, after my first book [Loaded] came out and there had been some negative reviews and he went, 'Christo, you've written, how many words are there? 65,000 words. I haven't written 200 words in my life. Be proud of that!'"
Listen to SBS Voices podcast, , in the , , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition is open for entries on August 16. Write a non-fiction memoir story on the theme of ‘Emergence’ for your chance to be awarded the $5000 first place prize, $3000 second place or two runners up prizes of $1000. The top entries will also be published in an anthology by Hardie Grant. Go to to register and find out more.
The anthology from the 2021 competition Between Two Worlds published by Hardie Grant is out on August 3.
More on the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition
Meet the judges of the 2022 SBS Emerging Writers' Competition
