My guest in this episode is award winning author and playwright Gabriel Bergmoser. 

Gabriel is one of my youngest guests at 32 but, as you will hear, he has packed a lot into those years and he describes himself as ‘crime author, playwright, podcaster, actor, dog lover and massive Springsteen fan’. 

He was born in New Zealand but moved to Australia when he was a few months old and that has been home over since. He now lives in Melbourne but does a great job of painting a picture of what growing up in rural Australia was like for a creative, non-sporty boy who was an aggressively average student (his phrase not mine!) 

A visit to the cinema to see ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ lit his creative spark and it has stayed with him ever since. A quick glance at his Wiki page (Gabriel Bergmoser - Wikipedia) will show how prodigious and successful he has been over the past 10 years. 

Highlights include winning the Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award in 2015 and four years later signing a two-book deal with Harper Collins. The first of the books was ‘The Hunted’ which was a worldwide success and resulted in a book deal with Faber in the UK and a subsequent film deal. 

Despite all that success Gabriel is clear eyed about the reality of being a creative in 2023 and the fact that there will always be ups and downs whoever you are. Similarly, he delivers a strong message about hard work and application being more important than talent and the need at times to ‘Just Do It’. 

As you would expect he tells a great story around each of his song selection which were: 

90’s        Kiss Me                                Sixpence None the Richer

00’s        Mr. Brightside                  The Killers

10’s        Unbelievers                       Vampire Weekend

20’s        Dorothea                            Taylor Swift