For me, inspiration is everywhere, including in the ordinary. I don’t have a muse. I’m not sure if I quite believe they exist. The drive to write, for me, is not a mysterious existential urge. Inspiration is literally everywhere. It was in my preschool playground in suburban Sydney; in my parents’ migration to Australia in 1976; in the 2011 Tottenham riots, which spread like wildfire through the working-class suburbs of England; in the liner notes on the back of the records in my father’s collection; in a Test match played 60 years ago by the West Indian cricket team; in love; in laughter; in hatred; in art; in the writers who and the words that came before me; in the work of Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, J. California Cooper and Maya Angelou; in the song lyrics of the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert movie soundtrack, circa 1994.

Billy-Ray was a preacher’s son,