Shannon Molloy is an award-winning journalist with more than a decade of experience working for major media outlets spanning print and digital, covering business, entertainment, celebrity and human interest. His first book is Fourteen, a moving coming-of-age memoir about a young man’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school.
We had Shannon in for a visit a few weeks back to sign some copies of Fourteen (available here while stocks last!), but his book tour has unfortunately been cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So, we have Shannon on the blog today to answer some of our questions about his memoir. Read on!
Shannon Molloy
Tell us about your memoir, Fourteen.
SM: It’s about me when I was 14 at the start of the century, growing up in a small regional Queensland town and trying to come to terms with my sexuality while trapped at a tortuous, NRL-mad boys’ school. It was a relentlessly hellish experience full of severe physical and emotional torment–and it was an experience I nearly didn’t survive. But with the love of a wonderful family, a few great friends and some very bad late ’90s pop, I did survive.
This is a book for gays and those who love them, but it’s also for anyone who never fit in, who struggled at school, who grew up in a small town or the ‘burbs, who came from a broken home, who felt let down by society or who grappled with deep uncertainty. And it’s for anyone who thinks S Club 7 was one of the greatest musical groups of a generation.
You’ve been a journalist writing stories about other people for over a decade now. What inspired you to start writing your own story?
SM: It was early 2016 when the Safe Schools debate was in full swing. I found myself on the train on the way home reading a news story about an MP who stood in parliament and described the anti-bullying program as a way for gay men to ‘groom’ children. I was enraged and deeply saddened. Almost beside myself at the comparison of people like me to a pedophile. I wondered, if a well-adjusted and happy 30-something with a great life is so deeply affected, imagine what 14-year-old me might’ve felt. I got home and wrote a first-person piece about my horrific schooling experience, explaining why we need a program like Safe Schools and included a story about trying to kill myself when I was 14. The response was huge. Among all of the lovely messages from friends, family and strangers were far too many from men like me who’d experienced something similar, from boys like I was who still do live through that same hell, and from mothers whose boys who didn’t survive. So, I understood there was a story here that could maybe give people hope and remind people of where we’ve come from and how far we still have to go.
Memoir-writing always involves a great deal of introspection, which must be painful when you’re looking back on traumatic memories. You mention in the blurb that you found solace in your writing – can you expand on that a little?
SM: It was like free therapy! Many of the events captured in this book are things I’ve never told anyone. My own mum didn’t know a lot of it and she’s my bestie. I ran away from the horror as it happened to me when I was a kid–and then I kept running for the next 20 odd years from the trauma that it inflicted on me. I was freeing to finally stop running. I took the lid off that little box of sadness, shame and anger and let everything out. It was hard, I’m not going to lie, but it was hugely cathartic.
Has writing this book substantially changed your perspective of the things that happened to you when you were fourteen?
SM: It really crystallised how terrible we are at raising young men in Australia. It’s terrifying. There’s a point when little boys must suddenly be tough all the time, show no vulnerability or weakness, suck it up and be men. Stoicism is a valuable trait. It not being OK to feel things is dangerous. I don’t think many people are simply inherently evil. I don’t think the boys that made my life a living hell were evil. They were a little broken perhaps. They were awful to me because that’s what society had modelled for them. Boys like me were bad and wrong and worth being ridiculed and stamped out. Things have changed … but not a huge amount. Look at the mental health and suicide statistics for men–significantly over-represented, particularly in young age groups. We need to do better at supporting boys and young men.
How does memoir writing compare to journalism? Did anything surprise you during the writing process?
SM: My friends will scoff at this, but I really don’t really like talking about myself. It’s true though! Turning the focus onto me for a piece of writing was daunting at first. I was surprised how much. It gives me renewed respect for the people who agree to talk to me for stories and to share their own lived experiences with a broad audience.
Are there any writers that have particularly inspired you?
SM: Trent Dalton. I’ve loved his feature writing work for years and have always been struck by how utterly engaging he is. What an extraordinary talent. I’ve met him a bunch of times too, having lived in Brisbane for so long, and he’s also the nicest guy around. How annoying.
What have you been reading lately?
SM: God, this is embarrassing. I’ve been so focused on this for so long that I haven’t read much in a little while. It’s shameful to even write that down. I did love Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. I also just finished Self Compassion by Kristin Neff. I’m very much looking forward to tackling a precariously balanced pile of books, starting with Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales.
What is the one thing that you want readers of Fourteen to take away with them?
SM: There’s extraordinary power in kindness. I lived it and I tried to inject it in this book. There are some heavy and dark parts, but the light is there because of the people who cared about me. A little bit of love can go a long, long way. It can even save someone’s life.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
SM: I have no idea. The coronavirus has forced the cancellation of my book tour, which is very disappointing. It also means that what I do in my day job as a journalist is pretty certain now–we’ll be talking about this for a very long time, I think.
Thanks Shannon!
—Fourteen by Shannon Molloy (Simon & Schuster Australia) is out on the 1st of April. Listen to our podcast with Shannon below!
Fourteen
Limited Signed Copies Available!
Fourteen is this generation’s Holding the Man – a moving coming-of-age memoir about a young man’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school.
This is a story about my fourteenth year of life as a gay kid at an all-boys rugby-mad Catholic school in regional Queensland. It was a year in which I started to discover who I was, and deeply hated what was revealed. It was a year in which I had my first crush and first devastating heartbreak. It was a year of torment, bullying and...
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