‘A good opening sentence is simple, raises questions or is surprising in some way. It is an invitation to the reader to enter the story; how you present that invitation is important.’

“We writers need to be near-virtuosic in our language because it’s a matter of how a story is told as much as what the story is.”

‘It’s exciting to encounter, through a memoir, a life lived in a way completely different to our own. It’s also reassuring to see our own experiences shared and reflected by others.’

‘Interior Australia is awash with fragmented perspectives and competing narratives that could only exist there. The best rural Australian novels embrace this by making the landscape more than just setting – they make it as vital to the book as character or plot.’

‘The interplay between the desire for brevity and longer forms has always been something poets have been able to play with…poetry is infinitely flexible, it gives us so many ways to reach out to the reader.’

“Myths are the foundations of all storytelling. They are the DNA of what we do as writers…From myth we see not just how we as humans interacted with the natural world, or the hierarchies of men, but how we communicated to each other. Without myth there would be no societies, no literature, no art.”

“I tell myself to forget about the potential audience/publication for a moment, and remember ultimately I write first and foremost for myself – then I find it becomes easier to let go, to let myself loose and see where that boldness and vulnerability takes me. The poem knows when you are holding back.”

“As writers we fool ourselves into thinking that the world wants to read our words – and even that readers owe us their attention. ISBNDB estimates that there are 158,464,880 books in the world. How will readers find yours? And why should they buy or read yours ahead of all the others? That’s where marketing skills come in.”

‘Individual words on their own are rarely enough to tell you anything meaningful. They need to be grouped together to convey a message. Putting words into a sentence gives you context, insight, nuance, sometimes an introduction to a whole new world.’