Melbourne University Publishing to Publish Sarah Ferguson's THE KILLING SEASON UNCUT

Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of The Killing Season Uncut by the ABC's Sarah Ferguson with Patricia Drum. The book, to be published in April, is based on the award-winning documentary series which aired in June this year amidst great critical acclaim.

Australians came to the ABC's The Killing Season in their droves, their fascination with the Rudd-Gillard struggle as unfinished as the saga itself. This book takes readers behind the scenes with new on-the-record material and telling insights into the key players of this dramatic period in Australian politics.

Rudd and Gillard dominate the drama as they both strive to claim the narrative of Labor's years in power. The journey to screen for each of their interviews is telling in itself. Kevin Rudd gives his painful account of the period and recalled in livid detail the events of losing the prime ministership. Julia Gillard is frank and unsparing of her colleagues.

More than a hundred people were interviewed for The Killing Season-ministers, backbenchers, staffers, party officials, pollsters and public servants-recording their vivid accounts of the public and private events that made the Rudd and Gillard governments and then brought them undone. It is a damning portrait of
a party at war with itself: the personal rivalries and the bitter defeats that have come to define the Rudd- Gillard era.

MUP's CEO, Louise Adler, says, 'The Killing Season Uncut is compulsory reading to understand the challenges confronting the Labor Party today. The leading protagonists in this riveting drama may have exited domestic politics but the aftershocks continue to influence the culture, policies and strategies of the party. As always, Sarah Ferguson's probing analysis is revelatory and disturbing for those of us who continue to believe integrity in politics matters.'

Sarah Ferguson says, 'The making of The Killing Season matched the drama on screen and that's a story we wanted to tell. And now we have a place for the episodes of rich material we could have put into a 5-part series.'

The Killing Season Uncut will be published on 1 April 2016.

Sarah Ferguson is an award-winning ABC journalist. In the same year that she worked on The Killing Season, she also wrote and presented Hitting Home, the landmark series on domestic violence. She has worked on the ABC's Four Corners and presented 7.30. She has recently been announced as the new host of Four Corners.

Patricia Drum has been a researcher for the ABC's Four Corners and Media Watch, and a producer at 7.30. She is also a solicitor and has worked in federal politics as an adviser. Patricia returned to the ABC in 2013 to research The Killing Season.

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