Bri Lee has been doing the work. Her debut book, Eggshell Skull (2018), won a slew of awards for its incisive — and all-too-timely — examination of how the Australian legal system fails victim-survivors of sexual abuse. Her follow up books, Beauty and Who Gets To Be Smart, applied her razor-sharp mind to the beauty and education industries respectively. In between releasing best-sellers, she’s guest lectured on media law (she’s a trained but non-practising lawyer), published essays and investigations, runs a Substack newsletter, and found time to write her first fiction book, The Work.
If Australia has a cool girl writer, it’s Bri Lee. It’s no wonder then that we named her our Litty Committee Young Writer of the Year at our inaugural PEDESTRIAN TELEVISION Awards, presented by Uber Pool
“It makes me so happy that there are more people reading and getting excited about books,” she told P.TV about her win. “Not this old ‘digital media versus literature’ fake binary bullshit.”
The Work, released earlier this year, follows NYC art gallery owner Lally and Sydney-based art dealer Pat, who — to paraphrase Bri — “fight and fuck and try not to fall in love”. It’s not about artists themselves, but about who gets to define what ‘good’ art is and the moral tradeoffs we make to get there.
“I am definitely am interested in the deliberately-invisibilised jobs in creative and media industries. And how the ugly parts of the creative sausage sort of come together. How things are positioned and described and priced and sold – and that’s true of visual art and literature and music and screen and all of it,” Bri said.
“The internet has FANTASTICALLY broadened the public appetite for more voices, and allowed those creative voices to bypass traditional (often racist, sexist, etc) gatekeepers. But the flipside of that great effect is the commodification of identity.”
Bri Lee nabbed the Litty Committee Young Writer of the Year award at our first ever PEDESTRIAN TELEVISION Awards, alongside winners / icons Tony Armstrong, Anna Paul, Sherry-Lee Watson, Kween Kong, Rachael Gunn, Barkaa and Lime Cordiale.
You can read our full interview with the icon below — including a teaser about her upcoming novel (!!!) and how she switches off from all that — ahem — work. (PS: if you haven’t already, you can pick up a copy of The Work here.)
