About this episode

Johanna Bell discusses her award-winning novel 'Department of the Vanishing' and its themes of extinction and personal discovery.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Johanna is an award winning author of fiction, poetry and children’s books. She’s joining us today with her new novel Department of the Vanishing which won the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. For more than twenty years Ava has toiled away at the Department of Vanishing cataloguing species as they go extinct. The pace of the work has been increasing and as is always the case there’s never enough hands. Birdsong is falling silent and people didn’t even notice. But now it’s Ava’s job to archive the remains, even as her personal life teeters. But in her dying mother’s confused words Ava finds something. Maybe hope. Maybe a clue to the mystery of her father, long missing, and a song that contains more than any might assume… ⁠Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople⁠ Want more great conversations with Australian authors? ⁠Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Pople

Guest: Johanna Bell

Topics covered

• Australian writing
• literary culture
• fiction
• poetry
• children's books
• extinction
• family mystery

Keywords

• Johanna Bell
• Department of the Vanishing
• Tasmanian Literary Award
• extinction
• family mystery
• Australian authors
• literary culture

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Department of the Vanishing

More episodes of Final Draft - Great Conversations

• Ilka Tampke’s How to Love the World · July 18, 2026 · 44 min
• Book Club - Johanna Bell’s Department of the Vanishing · July 14, 2026 · 3 min
• Book Club - Antoun Issa’s Rebirth · July 7, 2026 · 3 min
• Katherine Johnson’s Every Wild Soul · July 3, 2026 · 29 min
• Book Club - Y.M. Abdel-Magied’s At Sea · June 23, 2026 · 5 min
• Mary Colussi’s Touch Grass · June 19, 2026 · 30 min

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