Soft Serve

A gem of a debut novel by award-winning playwright George Kemp, about small-town lives and the search for genuine sustenance in a fast-food world.

Stuck in a regional McDonald's, as bushfires close in, three twenty-somethings and their dead friend's mum all face a reckoning. Fern longs for Ethan, Ethan longs for Jacob, and Jacob struggles to long for anything. Meanwhile, Pat just wants her grief to ease up.

Soft Serve proves that small-town lives are huge, and that anyone can get stuck in limbo between their past and their hoped-for future. From celebrated playwright and actor George Kemp comes this charming and poignant novel- it's drive-thru Chekhov ... full of wit and heart.

About the Author

George Kemp is based on Gadigal land in Sydney. He was selected to be part of the Faber Academy in 2023–24, during which he completed the first draft of Soft Serve. His award-winning play Shack has been performed frequently around the country and internationally. Shack will be included on the new 2026 NSW Drama Curriculum and is in the early stages of development for television. George is also an experienced and passionate educator, having worked for Bell Shakespeare and NIDA, and is currently Resident Artist at Australian Theatre for Young People.

After completing his master’s degree at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, he had a successful career as an actor across Australia and England, in productions such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Cyrano de Bergerac (Sydney Theatre Company), Longing (Hampstead Theatre) and national and international tours of The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong.