That evening, as a bleak cold overtook Collingwood, we took refuge in an empty Thai restaurant. The stark emptiness inside made me indecisive over where to sit. I glanced at Jana to steer us to a table. She pointed to the one closest to the wall. I was glad—I never liked sitting in the middle like someone on display.

We ordered beers while flicking through the food menu. Jana is a fellow writer and current editor of Assemble Papers. We both studied creative writing at the University of Melbourne nine years ago and hadn’t seen each other since a chance encounter at a Lifted Brow party last year. Since then we’ve been seeing each other regularly. Being writers with migrant backgrounds isn’t the only thing we have in common though; we both stem from the same European region: the former Yugoslavia.