‘The brilliant thing about the process of writing a travel memoir is you get to experience your travels all over again, sharing the insights gained and the transformative nature of the journey.’

‘Rereading is an important mode of reading – taking in patterns until they become part of the fabric of your thoughts, learning how language and story and people’s minds work.’

‘There’s always a distinction between what is true and what is real – sometimes historical fiction needs to diverge from what is known (or suspected) to create something that feels true, that breathes and communicates something vital.’

‘Visual art generally aims to transcend language so an artwork can inspire a writer whether they have a technical understanding or not. Effective artworks don’t need to be explained in words to be understood, but visual literacy is a skill that can be developed and refined.’

‘The notion that we write simply from our minds is a myth. Our bodies hold our emotions and secrets and tensions and blocks. We need to engage the body, just as much as the mind, if we want to write with authenticity.’

‘The more you pitch, the more comfortable you become with rejection, with no response, and with pitching again. Editors want to hear from you, and rejection is never personal!’

‘I love it when I hear parents read with their kids and read what their kids are reading so they can chat about it. That warms my heart.’

‘I have so many lovely moments when readers have recognised themselves in my personal essays and felt like I was writing about their own lives. It is in these moments that I see the true power of memoir; we are writing our own personal truths and yet these are universal truths.’

‘As writers, we must consider questions of freedom of speech and expression as being inextricably linked to questions of responsibility, positionality and context. These are ethical questions but they are also questions of craft, skill and imaginative labour.’