Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Brooke Davis grew up in Bellbrae, Victoria, and now lives in Perth, where she works as a bookseller. She holds an Honours degree from the University of Canberra and a PhD from Curtin University, both in the field of creative writing. In 2015, Lost & Found, her first novel, received the ABIA Award for General Fiction Book of the Year, the ABIA Award for New Writer, and the iBooks Fiction Book of the Year. It was also short-listed for the Indie Awards Debut and the ABA Awards Book of the Year, and long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award. Lost & Found will be published in twenty-eight countries.

Facebook: /brookedavisauthor
Twitter: @thisisbrooked
Instagram: @thisisbrooked

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?

I’ve kept journals since I was quite young, and there’s a line in one when I was eight years old that says, pretty precociously, ‘I’m determined to become a…

One day I realised
That you were no longer
A real person,
But words on a page.
I had written
A new version of you.
With these words
As your hands
And your face
And your heart
You were somebody
Who could love me
In a way
That I shouldn’t have
To ask for;
You just did it
As naturally
As taking off your shoes,
Or stepping off a curb.

Well, it was a great day for the Irish at the Oscars evn if it didn’t work out quite as planned.

Brooklyn‘s Saoirse Ronan didn’t win Best Actress, but won the red carpet with her distinctly Irish-coloured Calvin Klein sequined dress.

I thought perhaps she couldn’t make up her mind about the jewellery and then forgot about it, but the odd earrings were deliberate.

Also in green was Room‘s writer, Emma Donoghue, who lost out on the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

We did have one winner, though.

Writer/director Ben Cleary won Best Live Action Short for STUTTERER.

“Every day is a proud day to be Irish but today more so than usual so everyone for all the support back home thank you so much” Cleary said in his acceptance speech.

Room director Lenny Abrahamson (sorry, couldn’t find a photo of him from last night) went home…

I have a new publication out this month. It’s a picture book. It’s nothing at all like a picture book.

Allow me to explain.

Back in 2003, I was an aspiring children’s writer. My aspirations took me regularly to the local library, where I would comb review magazines such as Magpies and Viewpoint – to see what was being published, and by whom, to find reading recommendations, and – let’s be honest – to torture myself with little frissons of envy

One such frisson – more of a seismic tremor, really – occurred when, scanning the review columns, I happened upon the title How to Make a Bird, by Martine Murray.

Instantly, I was a mix of excitement and regret. For I knew exactly what this book must be – a slightly weird, lyrical picture book about someone trying to build a bird from raw materials, about the tangible…