Maybe we can start with a description, in your own words, of your novel Denizen and how such a devastating story came to take shape.

Denizen is a story about the unique and devastating manifestations mental illness takes in remote and regional Australia. On a remote property in Western NSW, nine-year-old Parker fears something is wrong with his brain, a fear seemingly confirmed when he commits an abhorrent act of violence. Years later, Parker, now a father himself, returns to the bushland he grew up in for a camping trip with old friends. When this reunion descends into chaos amid revelations of unresolved fear, guilt and violence, Parker is finally forced to address the consequences of his childhood actions.

Denizen was influenced by my upbringing in rural NSW. While my experiences took an entirely different form to anything described in the book, I suffered mental illness as a teenager – looking back as an adult, it's clear this was exacerbated by geographical remoteness and a lack of access to services. I moved to Sydney when I was eighteen and began writing Denizen when I was twenty-two. It was one of six manuscripts I wrote over three years, all of which were, in retrospect, me trying to process and understand my own adolescence. I left the country with a lot of guilt and grief for the role I felt the bush had played in my mental ill-health. The first draft of Denizen was a very raw and angry attempt to expunge that distress by attacking the reader with my tangled, unprocessed emotions. Seven years and many, many drafts later, it's hopefully a much more nuanced and sophisticated narrative, which is itself a reassuring comment on how much I've changed and grown up in that time.

I was struck by how profoundly compelling your voice is in the telling of Denizen. You have an amazing confidence in the storytelling particularly for a first-time author. Could you let our readers know about your creative writing journey?

Thank you so much – that's such an incredibly kind thing to say! Denizen was one of six novels I wrote between 2014 and 2017. I worked in isolation for a long time until I joined a Writing NSW writing group in 2017, when my writing improved significantly (that's the secret, by the way – join a writing group!). I wrote novels obsessively, built up a 'CV' of publications, and plugged away at manuscript and short story competitions until I was lucky enough to win the Penguin Literary Prize in 2021.

I fell in love with long-form writing because it's so incredibly therapeutic. Every novel I've written started out as me feeling upset about something – in this case, my own experiences of mental ill-health in the bush – and wanting to process it. The only way I know how to do that is with narrative – if you narrativise pain, you can give it a resolution. As a result, the manuscripts I write hopefully have strong emotional backbones, because in telling them, I'm challenging myself to lean as far as I possibly can into painful material for my own benefit. I want readers to feel the same heartache and gut punches as I feel – not because I'm a sadist, but because I think it's important to explore difficult material honestly and openly, even when it's confronting. We owe that to the people who've lived stories like this – they don't get the chance to have their histories 'toned down.'

Denizen has an amazing sense of place and fits well within the fairly new genre of rural noir in Australia. Was this a deliberate strategy?

It definitely wasn't deliberate! I don't think I'd ever even heard of rural noir when I first began Denizen in late 2015. I was writing to process my own thoughts and feelings – hopefully there's an authenticity in that that's translated to the page. I'm very lucky that I've got eighteen years lived experience of what's suddenly become a booming subgenre of Australian fiction!

Without giving any spoilers, did you play with any alternative endings while writing Denizen, or did it always have to end the way it does?

It's hard to talk about without spoiling anything, but I had this ending planned right from the start. It was one of the first things I decided on. I never considered any alternatives – as you say, to my mind, this was the only way it could be. I feel very passionately about my reasons for that and would love to be able to discuss them one day, but for now, it's impossible to do that without ruining the book!

How did you feel when you received the call to say you had won the Penguin Literary Prize?

I was so excited to be shortlisted and was genuinely content with that being the prize itself. It wasn't that I didn't let myself think I might win – it just seemed obvious I wouldn't! Incredibly, I got the phone call saying I'd won while my friend Ashley Kalagian Blunt and I were recording an episode of our podcast, James and Ashley Stay at Home. As a result, my excitement and disbelief is now forever preserved in episode 31.

For a long time, I was worried that in trying to write honestly about mental health in the bush, I'd written something too dark for a mass-market prize like this. The fact that Penguin are willing to share these kind of stories makes me so excited for all the other voices that have real, raw tales to tell about rural Australia.

What advice would you give aspiring writers in Australia? Would you have done anything differently?

Join a writing group. I'm a broken record – I give anyone who asks that the same answer! Having like-minded people critique your work, and learning how to do the same for theirs, is utterly invaluable. If I had my time again, I would have joined one sooner. The three years I spent writing novels before I joined a group in 2017 was excellent practice, but there's a limit to how much you can do alone. You need input from others to show you where you're going wrong, but also give your work context (how does it compare to other similar-stage writers? To the local, contemporary scene?)

An important caveat to that: the line between ‘aspiring’ and ‘emerging’ writers is perilously thin and an unbelievable amount of luck is required to punch through that membrane. My life would look very different if I was, for example, a single mum trying to work full time and raise young children while also writing. I have to stay forever aware of the luck, circumstance and privilege that has led me to this point – and with that said, I’d also like to offer advice to the other writers moving into the next stages of their careers: don’t forget to turn around and help the next person in line.

Was the pandemic a help or a horror with your own writing experience with this book?

I might be crucified for saying this, but I think it actually helped. I was an emergency department nurse throughout the pandemic, and despite how intense it was, I felt very lucky I could still leave the house to work. It meant I was seeing people, being stimulated, and generally not feeling the weight of prolonged lockdowns as severely as others. Writing was also an excellent way to distract from how much I missed seeing my family and friends.

Are you able to share three books that you've recently read and really enjoyed?

How to End a Story (Diaries Volume III) by Helen Garner –I'm addicted to the clarity and honesty in Helen Garner's writing. I wish I could write a single sentence as raw and cathartic as every line in this book is. I think the secret is in her vulnerability – she pours herself onto the page with a Knausgaard-ish level of abandon. It doesn't hurt that her prose is perfect too.

Love Stories by Trent Dalton – Love Stories is unlike anything I've ever read. A sort-of essay collection, sort-of short story collection, sort-of manifesto, sort-of instruction manual, sort-of meditation on life, longing and loss (and, of course, love). It's such a unique and beautiful idea that, in any other hands, could have fallen way off the deep end of cheesiness. Trent Dalton nails it. 

The Rabbits by Sophie Overett – The Rabbits won the 2020 Penguin Literary Prize. I read it while I was editing Denizen and thought 'good god, the bar is high.' I'm so proud to have won the same prize as this incredible book. I loved how rich and organic it feels – it unfolds and grows in strange directions, evolving with the natural ramble of something alive. It's such an achievement to make a book feel so utterly lived in before you've even turned the first page.

What is your next writing ambition?

I'd love to keep telling stories that aren’t necessarily easy to hear – stories that are difficult or taboo but need to be explored because people all over Australia are living them right now. I'm so thankful Penguin has given Denizen this incredible platform, because my genuine hope is that it probes different, deeper ground to the current mainstream conversation about mental illness and will contribute something to it as a result. It's something I want to explore further in future novels. I've got a new manuscript currently in its third draft – I suppose my next writing ambition involves it!

RRP $32.99