WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSIC?

I’m a classical music tragic: just now, Mendelssohn and Dvořák.

AND YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK?

If we’re talking veg-out-read-in-the-bath pleasure, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré.

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR?

Helen Garner. Oh, and Marilynne Robinson, and Saul Bellow, and Patrick White.

NAME AN EARLY LITERARY IDOL OR INFLUENCE WHOM YOU NO LONGER ADMIRE – OR VICE VERSA.

Captain W.E. Johns, author of about a hundred awful books about Biggles, World War II air ace. What was I thinking! But then, I was only ten.

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOUR FIRST BOOK APPEARED?

Thirty-two. Thank the Lord, the ones before that were rejected. Patrick White apparently had a standing order with secondhand bookshops to buy all the copies of his first book (poetry) so he could burn the lot. I’d feel the same if I’d been published earlier.

WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IMPEDES YOUR WRITING?

Being in a hurry to understand. Forcing the writing to make sense or add up to something before it’s ready. Thinking it has to be perfect on the first draft (or even the twenty-first). Talking about it too much.

HOW DO YOU REGARD PUBLISHERS?

Every book needs an outside eye that can see what the book is capable of being, more clearly than you can yourself while you’re in the middle of writing it. A good publisher (like mine, Text Publishing) can help you see the wood for the trees, give you a pep talk when it all seems hopeless, and help you kill your darlings in the nicest possible way.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE STATE OF CRITICISM?

I don’t read it.

IF YOU HAD YOUR TIME OVER AGAIN, WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE A WRITER?

I can’t think of anything I would rather have done – well, other than paint pictures, or sound like Yo-Yo Ma on the cello, or come up with something amazing in a science lab. I don’t know if that’s a yes or a no.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WRITERS’ FESTIVALS?

The writing life is like being a frog under a stone, croaking away to yourself. It’s great to come out now and then to meet readers (and other writers).

DO YOU FEEL ARTISTS ARE VALUED IN OUR SOCIETY?

Yes – the huge turnout for writers’ festivals and big art shows show a hunger for something other than the material. We’re all looking for a way to understand what our pasts and our presents are all about. Artists don’t have any answers but they give us a way to start thinking about the big puzzles.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

I’ve just finished a book about my mother’s life. She was typical of her times in some ways, remarkable and even eccentric in others. When she died ten years ago she left a mass of bits and pieces of memoir. I’ve used them to try to tell the story of a working-class woman riding the waves of change through the twentieth century.