1. Why do you write novels?

I didn’t set out to write a novel. It just kind of happened. I started off trying to tell the truth by writing short pieces of creative non-fiction. Then, I realised that I could tell a bigger truth if I slid over into short stories. That was good for a while. But then I had a short story that kept growing and growing. It was a truth that didn’t want to fit into 5000 words. It needed more space. And so I ended up writing a novel.

Now, I’ve become so enamoured of the flexibility that long form fiction offers that there’s no going back. At least not at present. To answer your question, I write novels because, so far, it’s the best way I have found for telling the truth.

2. Who inspired you?

Books, libraries, librarians. My mother, for setting me free in the library and letting me read whatever I wanted, for never saying something was too difficult or too grown up.

3. What’s the essence of your style? The part, if removed, is not your voice anymore?

What an interesting question. I’m not sure I’m the most qualified person to answer it, as I think writers sometimes suffer from a kind of myopia when looking at their own work. I will answer it aspirationally. This is what I hope is the essence of my style: Lyricism and unusual sentences. A reverence for place. Reserving judgement on my characters.

4. What was your dance-around-the-kitchen moment in writing?

Just one? I feel like I’ve had so many – I feel fortunate that way. From the first ‘almost, but not quite’ personalised rejection for a short story that meant a lot to me to signing with my agent to holding the first hard copy of my novel in my hands, there have been a lot of high points. That said, the high points are built on a strong foundation of rejections, low points, uncertainty, and vulnerability. I think that’s the thing about writing and publishing – to me, every small win is a dance-around-the-kitchen moment because nothing is a given.

5. What do you want to accomplish in your writing career?

Another great question! I don’t think anyone (except you) has asked me that. Peach Blossom Spring was incredibly important to me to write. In many ways, I feel like that is the book I was born to write. My current project, about which I will say very little, is also incredibly important to me. I’d say this unnamed project is the book I’m finally ready to write, that I’ve grown into writing. At the moment, if I can write this second book in a way that does justice to the story I’m hoping to tell, then I’ll have reached a writing career goal. After that? Who knows? We’ll see what kind of writer I have become by then. Ask me again after I finish this next book.

6. Can you ever envisage not writing novels - running out of ideas or energy?

Maybe. It’s not so much a matter of running out of ideas or energy, it’s that the idea, the story, must be compelling enough to me that I feel I have to write it. It has to be worth the commitment of time, energy and resources. It also has to be a story that only I can tell. And then, when I’m about to embark on a project, I’ll look at some beautiful trees and ask myself: Is this idea worthy of the trees that the paper will come from? If not, then I don’t need to write it.

7. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Worry less. Read more.

8. Away from writing, what are your passions, and what do they mean to you?

Good food, good conversations, good walks, good music. Being outside. I’m passionate about experiences that feel genuine, that are so encompassing that I’m lost in the moment. I feel most alive when I’m engaged in something that makes me forget that there’s a whole subworld via social media and the internet that mediates and dilutes our actual lived experiences. I guess my passions are being alive, not performing being alive.

9. How would your best friend describe you?

I don’t know. Maybe we should ask them.

10. What’s a significant question to ask you, that no other interview has to date, and what’s the answer, only for New2theScene?

No one has ever asked me what my superpower is. I think every writer has a superpower. It’s the behind-the-scenes thing that keeps them going. Maybe it’s related to a writer’s essence (like what you asked above), but it’s not something that appears on the page. For me, I think my writing superpower is my willingness to carry around an image or an experience for years and years, not knowing why I’m carrying it, until I’ve lived enough to make a story of it. It’s a kind of patience, a belief that if I just keep turning up at the page, again and again, with openness and curiosity, the meanings and significance of these things I carry will come clear.