Irma and Karen chat about attending festivals as an interlocutor or as a panellist. Then Karen talks to Jock Serong about making the move from lawyer to novelist, why he dives into dark places, the fraught territory of navigating writing First Nations characters and history as a descendant of settler Australians, why he goes on writing excursions with his characters, a surreal green room experience with Ian Rankin, and an utterly disastrous panel event.