In an interview with OUTinPerth Holden Sheppard shares he’s working on a sequel to Invisible Boys, and telling us the title of the new book, and where the story began.
Western Australian author Holden Sheppard has been named as the winner of the Minderoo Artist Award. A prize that comes with $50,000 cheque to assist creatives to develop their artistic visions.
The award was announced at an intimate ceremony in Perth on Wednesday night where the charitable foundation gave out a series of artist grants supporting a diverse range of arts practitioners.
From an electronic music album recorded on country in the Kimberley to a Wheatbelt community creating a major sculpture and puppetry event led by artists, to scientists and Indigenous custodians, nine mid-career artists from across WA will tackle ambitious new projects with the Minderoo Artist Fund.
But the biggest award of the night went to Holden Sheppard.
Established in 2020 to support mid-career artists, the Minderoo Artist Fund plays a key role in supporting Minderoo’s vision for vibrant, connected and cohesive communities.
The 2025 Minderoo Artist Fund cohort includes dance artist and choreographer Laura Boynes, Broome actor and musician Mark Coles Smith, dance artist Emma Fishwick, author and poet Alan Fyfe, Jaru/Noongar/Japanese writer, director and filmmaker Gary Hamaguchi, visual artist Hiroshi Kobayashi, performer and theatre-maker Sarah Nelson, composer and producer Elise Reitze-Swensen and ceramicist and installation artist Fleur Schell.
Nicola Forrest, the co-founder of Minderoo, said she was excited to see the inspiration and impact the new cohort would bring to WA communities with the Artist Fund’s support.
“The Minderoo Artist Fund’s 2025 cohort is a stunning group of creatives who devote their lives to the arts and the positive impact it has on our communities,” she said.
“I’m proud that the program has grown to support such a diverse cohort of high-quality artists who have proposed bold new work that will help develop their careers while inspiring audiences and engaging communities.
“I am delighted to see this new group of nine artists take this opportunity and I can’t wait to see where it takes them.”
Each artist within the Artist Fund cohort will receive either a $35,000 grant or a six-week residency at Forrest Hall in Perth to support them as they pursue a new artistic project that will further develop their career and artistic practice.
Minderoo Foundation CEO John Hartman said the Artist Fund was a vital part of Minderoo’s commitment to the arts sector in WA.
“At Minderoo we understand and value the vital role that artists and arts organisations play in creating vibrant and connected communities where people and families can reach their full potential,” he said.
“Art has the power to bring people together, inspire change and create the sense of belonging and meaning that our communities need to thrive.”
Holden Sheppard was a recipient of the previous round of awards. As a member of the Artist Fund cohort, he began developing the sequel to his award-winning novel, Invisible Boys, which explores the challenges faced by a group of gay teens in the regional WA coastal town of Geraldton.
Now he’s been awarded an extra $50,000 to continue his writing. The author sat down with OUTinPerth to chat about his work on a sequel, sharing its title, while also reflecting on what it’s been like to see his novel adapted for the screen.
Sheppard shares his huge appreciation for the support of the Minderoo team and explains that people often have a huge lack of knowledge about how hard it is to make a living as an author.
“I don’t think any artist does it for the money. I think we do it because we love spending our time creating something. It makes us happy. It’s what we were born to do. But it is a hard, hard slog, and there’s a lot of hard work and perseverance, plus good timing and good luck.
“The average author in Australia, according to the Australian Society of Author’s survey, says we earn on average about $18,000 per annum. It’s way below the poverty line. We’re a small business, each of us, so one you end up covering your business costs, you’re left with a tiny amount of money, which is not enough to live off.
“It’s a very hard industry. I’ve been a fulltime writer for a couple of years, but it is a very, very hard industry to make money out of in Australia, so something like $50,000 from the Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund, is genuinely life changing.”
As he picked up his award though, Sheppard had a clear message for anyone considering a career in the arts, whatever form of creativity you embrace – go do it!
Since releasing Invisible Boys to wide acclaim in 2019, Sheppard’s gone on to write two more novels. The Brink arrived in 2022, and later this year his third novel King of Dirt.
Last month the 10-part television adaptation of Invisible Boys arrived on streaming service Stan, and it’s brought him a whole new cohort of fans who have embraced the story of a group of gay teenage boys growing up in the Western Australian regional town of Geraldton.
Now Sheppard is returning to the story of the friends a little later in their lives, and he shares that it’s the story he initially set out to write many years ago.
“The sequel is the book I’ve always wanted to write, and that was the plan. I wrote an honors thesis at university in 2012 when I was at ECU, and that was about an adult gay football player who is kind of like an early prototype of Hammer, and my plan was always to write a full-length novel about him.
“What happened was in 2017 I wrote a short story because I thought I just need to get into this guy’s head, I’d been writing him as an adult and it didn’t make sense that he was suddenly realising as an adult that he was gay, because he would have realized as a teenager.
What started as a writing exercise to visit the character as a teenager, grew into an entire book of its own.
“I wrote this little thing about Hammer at 16 and then it just kept going. It kept going till it was 100,000 words and it was a book. Invisible Boys grew out of that, and it was just a really happy mistake. My plan was always to write this book that I’ve now won the award for; it’s literally over a decade in the making.” Shepard shared.
The author says seeing his characters move from page to screen was a surreal experience. He says that Zeke is the character that’s closest to his own teenage experience.
“I was most like Zeke. I was a good Catholic boy, a high achiever, well behaved and Italian. Watching a lot of Zeke’s scenes, it’s like I’m leaving my body because I’m watching my own teenage years play out in front of me.”
Sheppard explains his approach to writing, saying he takes inspiration from Ernest Hemmingway’s approach.
“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” he said, sharing his mantra for tackling tough topics. “At the start of every book, I’m like, ‘What hurts? What is it within my own life and my own feelings that I would like to express and dive into?’ Every single book comes from me a very real place, and then I’ve spin fiction out of it. The characters are made up, events and the plots in my books are made up.”
While some of the characters in Invisible Boys are desperate to leave Geraldton and head to the city to explore their dreams and aspirations, Sheppard actually has a lot of love for the town he grew up in, and it’s also the setting of his upcoming novel King of Dirt.
“I really loved Geraldton. I love being a country boy. I love where I came from. I love the life that I had there when I was there.” he said.
“As much as Invisible Boys is about how hard it was to be gay growing up there, I have a bulk of affection for the town, to the point where my next book King of Dirt is actually it’s about a man in his thirties returning to Geraldton and facing his past and wanting to build a life in his hometown that he ran away from many years ago. So that that book is kind of a love letter to Gero!” Sheppard said.
With fans eagerly awaiting his next book, and then the sequel to Invisible Boys, Sheppard shares that the follow up will be titled Yeah the Boys.
Holden Sheppard explains the thinking behind the name, aside from the repetition of the word Boys in the title.
“It’s a passionate fired up defense of gay men in era where we’re facing all kinds of bullshit. It’s also about masculinity and manhood, being an Aussie bloke, male camaraderie, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, the Boys just hits the sweet spot. I’m really stoked about it!”
OUTinPerth Co-Editor Graeme Watson is also an employee of Edith Cowan University. Speirins Media, the publisher of OUTinPerth, has a business relationship with Minderoo Foundation.
