The Writer Laid Bare

After two-and-a-half years writing a memoir about my childhood and adolescence, I had what I can only describe as a ‘creative meltdown’. A sort of short-lived nervous breakdown induced by artistic failure. It happened during the Easter long-weekend in 2018 …

The idea that a writer must wait for inspiration is one I hear often, especially now that I mentor new writers, and it seems always to come as a shock to them when I tell them that writing—like any other …

In the autumn of 2006, while still quite new to Australia, I was doing my first ever writing residency – in a yellow house in the Blue Mountains called Varuna, which once belonged to the novelist Eleanor Dark. Every night …

The 22^nd of November 2018 was a good day. It was the day Allen &Unwin signed me up for my third novel, The Deceptions. Many years earlier, I had lived next door to Fred and Eva Perger, Czech-Jewish Holocaust …

Before I wrote my second memoir Darkfall, I didn’t think I’d ever write much about my adolescence in a country town in the eighties. My memories from that time were painful to think about. They included intense episodes of …

Literary influences are an odd thing, these nebulous depositories where we pick up random ideas and then mix them with our own flavour. My influences, when I write are a weird brew. For example, my collection of poetry, Turbulence, …