{"id":176221,"date":"2025-10-29T14:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=176221"},"modified":"2025-11-27T13:12:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T03:12:43","slug":"get-to-know-heather-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2025\/10\/29\/get-to-know-heather-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to know Heather Rose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Get to know our author of our book of the month for November, Heather Rose<\/a>. Heather Rose is the Australian author of nine novels. Her most recent novel, Bruny,<\/a><\/em> won the 2020 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award and Davitt Award. Her seventh novel, The Museum of Modern Love<\/a><\/em>, won the 2017 Stella Prize. It also won the 2017 Christina Stead Prize and the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize. It has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. Both The Museum of Modern Love<\/a><\/em> and The Butterfly Man<\/a><\/em> were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. The Butterfly Man<\/a><\/em> won the Davitt Award in 2006, and in 2007 The River Wife<\/a><\/em> won the international Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Heather has also written for younger readers under the pen-name Angelica Banks with Danielle Woods. The series has been published internationally and shortlisted twice for the Aurealis Awards for best children’s fantasy. The memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here<\/a><\/em> was shortlisted for the nonfiction prize in the Indie Book Awards in 2022. Heather lives in Tasmania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
  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 was born in Hobart, Tasmania, the third of four children. I was raised within a colourful community of family and friends. We lived very close to the sea, and we had a shack by the sea, so ocean and sky, birds and breeze, sailing, fishing, and forest walks, reading, and being outdoors every chance we could get, that all raised me too. On balance I have spent more time in the public school system than private. And I don\u2019t have a university degree. Travel seemed so much more important when I was young.<\/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

    Ah, such a fascinating question. At twelve I wanted to be a writer. At eighteen a Buddhist nun. At thirty, cat woman. A novelist cat woman.<\/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

    Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Chris Isaak\u2019s music while driving across America in my 20\u2019s. (Road music dreaming is very useful for writing.) And Van Gogh\u2019s Sunflowers. Joy is always good. In truth, despite my love of art, music and literature, theatre and film\u2026 nature has been my greatest artistic influence. Clouds, seascapes, frogs singing, sunsets and sunrises, terrain, moonscapes and seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), A Great Act of Love.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A Great Act of Love travels from the French Revolution to colonial Australia. It\u2019s a novel of reinvention, Along the way we meet a young boy called Quill sold into servitude on a merchant vessel, Cornelius \u2013 a slave stolen from Africa to work in the Caribbean, Henriette \u2013 a rather spectacular thief, and a decorated military man from the British wars in India who becomes one of the most powerful men in the colony of Van Diemen\u2019s Land. It is history woven into fiction and fiction woven through history. Much of it is based on true events – and much of it is purely imagined. At its heart is Caroline, trained by her father to be an apothecarist in London, who loses everything in the course of a few short years \u2013 but travels to Van Diemen\u2019s Land to rebuild a life \u2013 only to discover that the past is always with us, inspiring us, haunting us, and drawing us back to the people we love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

    Life is an invention and is richest when inspired by love, courage and curiosity. This book invited me to understand that all humans are survivors of immense hardship and violence, if we look back far enough into history. It\u2019s good to understand that, to understand the cultural and social impact we have made, and to find a way to live with the difficult truths of the past. Courage is an act of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

    This could be a very long list. I am always discovering new writers and also revisiting favourite books. But here are a few \u2026

    Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner for dialogue and character.
    Maggie O\u2019Farrell and Virginia Woolf for the beauty of their craft.
    Tom Robbins for wondrous imagination and hilarity.
    Haruki Murakami for strange compelling worlds.
    The Bronte sisters, Jane Austen and George Eliot for audacious clever writing.
    Margaret Atwood for the breadth and scope of her books.
    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

    Before you can become a writer you must become a prolific reader.
    Pay attention to what terrifies you about writing.
    Find a question that compels you to discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Get to know our author of our book of the month for November, Heather Rose. Heather Rose is the Australian author of nine novels. Her most recent novel, Bruny, won the 2020 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award and Davitt Award. Her seventh novel, The Museum of Modern Love, won the 2017 Stella Prize. It also won the 2017 Christina Stead Prize and the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize. It has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. Both The Museum of Modern Love and The Butterfly Man were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. The Butterfly Man won the Davitt Award in 2006, and in 2007 The River Wife won the international Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Heather has also written for younger readers under the pen-name Angelica Banks with Danielle Woods. The series has been published internationally and shortlisted twice for the Aurealis Awards for best children’s fantasy. The memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here was shortlisted for the nonfiction prize in the Indie Book Awards in 2022. Heather lives in Tasmania. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself \u2013 where were you born, raised, schooled? I was born in Hobart, Tasmania, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,91,30,6676],"tags":[15122,2615],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176221"}],"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=176221"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176251,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176221\/revisions\/176251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}