Two things have happened to me in the last six months that have affected my reading: I finished a novel that was acquired by a publisher, and my mother died. I am now working on edits of the novel and so, at the moment, ‘what I’m reading’ seems even more pointedly about my own work than usual. At the same time, and while I come to terms with doing everything for the first time in a world that no longer contains my mother, ‘what I’m reading’ feels even more pointedly about her too.

The first people to read my manuscript in its entirety were the judges of the Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript (UMA). One friend had read an earlier version of it, when it was a novella, as had the judges of a novella prize for which it was not shortlisted. That friend gave me notes that helped me write another 40,000 words and turn it into a novel. By the time it was highly-commended for the UMA, nine months later, two other friends were reading it. I told them to hurry up— publishers wanted to read it now too.