You Imagine What You Desire. That was the slogan of this year’s Sydney Biennale.

I was a guest of the Sydney Writers Festival (which coincided with the Biennale) this May, fulfilling one of the myriad small ambitions I’d always had as a writer. I was on a panel at the Town Hall with world-famous authors I admired; I stayed at a hotel on the harbour, with a view of the bridge from my window. Each morning, I ate my complimentary breakfast overlooking the water, my table adjacent to ‘peers’ like Christos Tsiolkas, A.M. Homes or Tara Moss. It felt like a school camp for writers, and I was there.