Get to know our author of our book of the month for May, Michelle Wright. Michelle’s short stories and flash fiction have won and been shortlisted in numerous awards, including The Age Short Story Award, V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize and Bridport Prize. Her short story collection, Fine, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and published in 2016. Her first novel, Small Acts of Defiance, was published in Australia in 2021 and in the US in 2022. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.
1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born in and raised in a brick-veneer nineteen-sixties house in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I had a very happy childhood with loving parents, from whom I managed to hide all the smoking, shoplifting and fundraising fraud I was engaging in from the age of eleven. I went to the local primary and high school and, despite a complete lack of effort, managed to get very good grades.
After my dad died suddenly when I was sixteen, I went through a rough patch, but got through it thanks to my incredible friends and extended family.
I started a Behavioural Science degree at La Trobe Uni in 1982, but dropped out to do a play in Pentridge Prison and a few years later took off to live in France with the Frenchman I’d bumped into on a train station platform in Aberystwyth, Wales. I spent the next eleven years in Paris, where I did my tertiary studies in Literature and Comparative Linguistics, married the Frenchman and had two Franco-Australian kids.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
At twelve, I wanted to be a motor mechanic and racehorse trainer. Horses were my passion and cars were something that males seemed to consider their domain, but that I quickly figured out I could just as easily understand. I could name every part in a car and explain how it worked, and knew every Melbourne Cup winner from 1861 (Archer) to 1976 (Van Der Hum) as well as the form of every current trainer, jockey and horse.
At eighteen, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I’d dropped out of uni and was doing a play, so had a vague thought of being an actress. In reality, though, I was pretty lost and aimless at that age.
At thirty, I was living in Paris, teaching and had just had my second child. But that’s when I began seriously dreaming of being a writer. I was very keen on writing picture books to begin with, but also short stories (still my favourite form).
3. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
That’s a very hard question for someone like me, as I have an almost complete inability to recall or recount anything about almost all the things I’ve read, seen, heard and experienced. I remember the strong feelings pieces of art evoked, but none of the important details such as plot, setting, characters; or sometimes even the title and artist. So, I think I’ll just name a few works of art I remember as having a significant effect on me, and leave it up to the readers to go and discover for themselves why they’re so powerful.
I’ll start with the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. There are many, but the one I recall most vividly is ‘Everything that Rises Must Converge’. The unlikeable protagonist and the fraught relationship with her son are so skilfully handled.
Next, the recording of Maria Callas singing ‘Vissi d’Arte’ from Puccini’s Tosca at Covent Garden in 1964. The interplay of forcefulness and fragility is stunning. It knocks the air right out of me.
And finally, Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film The Bicycle Thief. I’ve seen it probably ten times and am moved to tears each time by the understated but absolute tragedy of the ending.
4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), Good Boy.
What a thrill to be BOTM!! Thank you, Booktopia. I’m honoured!
So, Good Boy is the story of Cookie, a prisoner in a minimum-security prison who’s just four months away from being up for parole after serving twenty years for murder. Cookie reluctantly signs up for a last chance rehabilitation program for rescue dogs and is assigned Nigel, who he somewhat optimistically renames Good Boy. Unfortunately Good Boy is extremely anxious, continually trying to gnaw his way out of his cage and through the walls. Cookie hopes the anti-anxiety medication he hides in his treats will be enough to keep his behaviour under control and get him over the line at the upcoming behavioural assessment. However when he realises that Good Boy is almost certain to fail the test, Cookie has to decide how far he’ll go to save his new buddy. In the process he reconnects with the people who shaped his past life, in ways both good and bad.
5. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
As a writer, I try not to have too many expectations of what readers will take away from my work. In fact, hearing from different readers about how they’ve responded to my writing is what I find most interesting—especially when they make meaning from it that I was not aware of myself. And I’ve learned that there are as many different meanings to be made as there are readers.
Thinking about Good Boy, if I had to specify one thing, it would be the hope that readers reflect on some of the complex and uncomfortable issues around crime and punishment. And that they ask themselves what we can really know about other people, that they question the often incorrect assumptions we make about what has led people to their current situation.
6. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Admiration is a strong term and one I’m reluctant to apply to a writer whose views may not always align with mine and whom I don’t know personally. I’m more comfortable naming authors whose work I admire. While the word ‘most’ is a high bar to set, one author that I keep coming back to is Chaim Potok. I don’t know why I find his writing so utterly fascinating and absorbing—and I’ve been trying to figure it out for decades!
7. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
I’m loathe to give writing advice, as I’m acutely aware that what works for one person might be disastrous for another person. So I guess the only advice I could give is to work out what works for you and do it. That might be writing every day—whether you feel inspired or not, or only writing when you feel inspired. It might be planning carefully before you start drafting, or making it up as you go along. It might be showing an early draft to a trusted reader, or not showing it to anyone until it’s completely done. You’ll eventually discover what works for you. And in the meantime, don’t listen to teachers or mentors or other authors who try to tell you what the one right way to approach your writing is!
Good Boy
Some bonds can't be broken
It's September 1997 and Cookie, an inmate in a minimum-security prison, is serving the last four months of his sentence when he signs up for a last-chance rehabilitation program for abandoned dogs.
He's assigned Nigel-whom he renames Good Boy-an anxious soul with a talent for gnawing his way through walls. Cookie has his work cut out preparing him for the upcoming behavioural assessment that will decide his fate: pass, and Good Boy will be up for adoption and the chance of finding a loving home for the first time in his life; fail, and he will be put down. When Cookie realises that Good Boy is almost certain to flunk the test, he must decide how far he'll go in his bid to save him.
As the friendship between them deepens, Cookie is forced to confront the past that shaped him, revealing truths he would rather have left behind.
Good Boy movingly explores the bonds between dogs and their humans, and how hope might move us beyond punishment and towards redemption.
Comments
No comments