The Writer Laid Bare

As a child I only ever had two ambitions.

Being a writer wasn’t one of them.

Firstly, I wanted to be an artist, I’ve always loved drawing. And secondly, I wanted to ‘go to England’ as I’ve always been fascinated …

I am the kind of a writer who writes for sentences. It’s not because narrative isn’t important to me, but rather because I believe the shape and texture of sentences affect our narratives. The structure, rhythm and details of each …

During the writing of my new tragicomic novel, Never Look Desperate, I took the first draft of my completed manuscript away for a dirty weekend. To love it again and rediscover the connection. We stayed in a hotel with …

I began thinking about my fourth novel, Resistance – a novel about the craziness and steadfastness of family life – when I was undertaking a Masters in Family Therapy. Early in our training, we, the students, watched from behind a …

My latest book, When Ghosts Call Us Home, is a novel about being haunted by memory and possessed by art. It’s also about complicated families and an unravelling bond between two sisters. I used there literary devices – embedded …

For about two years, at the peak of my pursuit of publication, I received approximately 10 rejection emails daily from both Australian and international journals.

Months of relentless submissions had thickened my skin, making it tougher than a rhino’s and …