{"id":176013,"date":"2025-05-01T14:55:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T04:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=176013"},"modified":"2025-05-01T14:55:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T04:55:30","slug":"get-to-know-holly-wainwright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2025\/05\/01\/get-to-know-holly-wainwright\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to know Holly Wainwright"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Meet our book of the month for May, Holly Wainwright<\/a>. She is a writer, editor and podcaster who lives on the south coast of New South Wales with her partner and their young family. She’s an Executive Editor at women’s media company Mamamia. He Would Never<\/a><\/em> is her fifth novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself \u2013 where were you born? Raised? Schooled?<\/strong><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I lived the first two decades of my life on the other side of the world \u2013 born in Wales but almost immediately moved to Manchester in the north-west of England, where I grew up. Manchester is a rich text in every way \u2013 an unpretentious city with an enormous amount of soul and deep vein of humour. My family all still live there. I moved to London at 19 to study journalism and got my first jobs there and then, aged 23, I decided to come backpacking to Australia, alone. And, look, I never really went back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At 12, a writer. I have always loved books, and to be honest, I wasn\u2019t good at a great deal else. At 18, I thought I wanted to be a serious reporter \u2013 even a war correspondent. I had neither the chops nor the nerve. At 30, a writer, again. I never really lost sight of the idea that creating a world – having your name on a book you had written – would just be the biggest thrill and achievement. It took me into my 40s, though, to actually do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    3. What were three works of art \u2013 book or painting or piece of music, etc \u2013 you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That\u2019s a very hard question. I love stories about \u201cordinary\u201d people. It might be the Manc in me, but I am much more interested in the big and small dramas of everyday lives than I am in the grand adventures of the literary classes. One of the first books that had an enormous impact on me – and I know this is a really weird answer for a little anglo girl from northern England – was I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, about her childhood in the American south. That she was this tiny girl enduring unbelievable hardship with all this grace and power and storytelling inside her, I just adored that, although of course I am not suggesting I could relate. My mum took me to hear her read at Manchester Town Hall and I will never forget the power Maya Angelou held in that room. I would have been about 12. Younger than that, I loved Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, and deeply related to this kid who was obsessed with spying on her neighbours\u2019 ordinarily extraordinary lives. I read It 10 times, at least. Then it was Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights \u2013 Imagine the Bronte sisters writing those books from the extreme isolation of being young females in the middle of an unforgiving northern English moor at an unforgiving time. Musically, I am from Manchester as I said, so the Doves and Elbow are close to my heart. But I love what my kids call \u201cstory songs\u201d so I love songwriters from Ben Lee to Sarah Blasko to Kasey Chambers. I think I\u2019ve broken all the rules there, sorry! Didn\u2019t even get to movies and art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), He Would Never.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So it begins with a body in the bush, but He Would Never is not a crime story. It\u2019s about a group of families who go camping together once a year every year to a very particular, beautiful place. The women met at mothers\u2019 group, and all they had in common was that their babies were born in the same postcode in the same month. But now those babies are 14 and over the years, their friendships have endured a lot, not least because of Lachy Short, who\u2019s married to the group\u2019s ringleader, and who refuses to play by anyone else\u2019s rules. It\u2019s a story about the power and limitations of female friendship, about being a relationship with a narcissist and also about what happens when little kids become big ones. It\u2019s been a big, ambitious project for me to write something that spans a long time with lots of characters and big themes and I\u2019m very proud of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    5. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That women\u2019s lives are endlessly interesting, surprising and full of stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    6. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Anne Tyler. I think I\u2019ve read everything she\u2019s ever written. Her books are quiet, and rarely about big showy voices, and yet somehow she captures so much by saying very little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    7. What advice do you give aspiring writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There\u2019s only one piece of advice worth giving and it\u2019s certainly not original: Just write. For most of us, it\u2019s our absolute favourite thing to do and yet for some reason, we\u2019ll do a great deal to avoid doing it. Just write and keep writing and shut out the endless feedback loop we\u2019re all part of these days. Your voice is your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Meet our book of the month for May, Holly Wainwright. She is a writer, editor and podcaster who lives on the south coast of New South Wales with her partner and their young family. She’s an Executive Editor at women’s media company Mamamia. He Would Never is her fifth novel. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself \u2013 where were you born? Raised? Schooled? I lived the first two decades of my life on the other side of the world \u2013 born in Wales but almost immediately moved to Manchester in the north-west of England, where I grew up. Manchester is a rich text in every way \u2013 an unpretentious city with an enormous amount of soul and deep vein of humour. My family all still live there. I moved to London at 19 to study journalism and got my first jobs there and then, aged 23, I decided to come backpacking to Australia, alone. And, look, I never really went back. 2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why? At 12, a writer. I have always loved books, and to be honest, I wasn\u2019t good at a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[24,62,73],"tags":[13722,15105,2615],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176040,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176013\/revisions\/176040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}