What inspired you to write Salonika Burning?

I came across the story of a Sydney woman, Olive King, who had been an ambulance driver in WW1. She worked for a group known as the Scottish Women’s Hospital, run by suffragettes and staffed entirely by women, many of whom were volunteers. As I investigated Olive’s story I became moved and involved in the drama of these extraordinary women. I discovered that two other historical figures who interested me, the writer Miles Franklin and the surrealist painter (and surgeon and psychoanalyst) Grace Pailthorpe, were also at the same field hospital.

What were the most challenging and enlightening aspects of writing your book?

I wanted to write obliquely of the war and put women medicos at the centre of the narrative. This meant refusing historical omniscience and the generic trench scenes that showed masculine suffering and bravery, for a more interior narrative and one that considered the psychological effects of war on non-combatant carers. One male character, based on the English painter Stanley Spencer, cared for mules and was also a medical orderly. I also wanted to write something very short, compressed and poetically vivid, so that the pressure and urgency of circumstances would find a form. 

In what ways do you think the protagonists in Salonika Burning might be empowering figures for women and young girls?

My protagonists are involved in the arts, as well as in service. This is a powerful combination: to imagine that modest forms of labour, helping others, combined with artistic vision, a wish for imaginative vivacity, might form the basis for a meaningful life. 

How do you think literature helps to shape our understanding of ourselves and others?

Literature has always seemed to me a space of imaginative, moral and civic contemplation. How do others live? How do feelings matter? What are the invisible spaces of life that might be revealed only by inner exploration? Writing matters to me as one of the means by which the ineluctable complexity of other people is recognised and honoured.  

What was the most recent book you’ve read about women or girls that moved you?

The most recent book is one due out in a few months’ time. It’s Nightingale by Australian writer Laura Elvery. It considers the life of Florence Nightingale and the struggle by women for respect, education, and the need to be ‘useful’ in a world that suggests prettiness and passivity is more important. It’s deeply moving and beautifully written.