{"id":176471,"date":"2026-04-30T08:15:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=176471"},"modified":"2026-04-30T08:15:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T22:15:28","slug":"get-to-know-michelle-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2026\/04\/30\/get-to-know-michelle-wright\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to know Michelle Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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 Her short story collection, Fine, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and published in 2016.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<\/em>, was published in Australia in 2021 and in the US in 2022. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.<\/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><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019d 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.<\/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 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At eighteen, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At thirty, I was living in Paris, teaching and had just had my second child. But that\u2019s 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).<\/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 for someone like me, as I have an almost complete inability to recall or recount anything about almost all the things I\u2019ve 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\u2019ll 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\u2019re so powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll start with the short stories of Flannery O\u2019Connor. There are many, but the one I recall most vividly is \u2018Everything that Rises Must Converge\u2019. The unlikeable protagonist and the fraught relationship with her son are so skilfully handled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, the recording of Maria Callas singing \u2018Vissi d\u2019Arte\u2019 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, Vittorio De Sica\u2019s 1948 film The Bicycle Thief. I\u2019ve seen it probably ten times and am moved to tears each time by the understated but absolute tragedy of the ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), Good Boy<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a thrill to be BOTM!! Thank you, Booktopia. I\u2019m honoured!

So, Good Boy is the story of Cookie, a prisoner in a minimum-security prison who\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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.<\/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

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\u2019ve responded to my writing is what I find most interesting\u2014especially when they make meaning from it that I was not aware of myself. And I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Admiration is a strong term and one I\u2019m reluctant to apply to a writer whose views may not always align with mine and whom I don\u2019t know personally. I\u2019m more comfortable naming authors whose work I admire. While the word \u2018most\u2019 is a high bar to set, one author that I keep coming back to is Chaim Potok. I don\u2019t know why I find his writing so utterly fascinating and absorbing\u2014and I\u2019ve been trying to figure it out for decades!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I\u2019m loathe to give writing advice, as I\u2019m 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\u2014whether 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\u2019s completely done. You\u2019ll eventually discover what works for you. And in the meantime, don\u2019t listen to teachers or mentors or other authors who try to tell you what the one right way to approach your writing is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself \u2013 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[9,24,6676],"tags":[15122,2615,6836],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176471"}],"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=176471"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176495,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176471\/revisions\/176495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}