Short Fiction Q&As!

Jumaana Abdu

Your story features a visitor from outer space. Could you tell us how this story came about?

Initially, I wanted to write something around the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon in his glass palace. The image of an intelligent woman bewildered by this majestic, other-worldly figure sparked another image of a doctor travelling to study a celestial prisoner. This made me think of the doctors and nurses who visited Manus Island, placed in the impossible position of knowing the only way they could help their patients—treating them as human beings—was legally impossible. ‘Illegal alien’ is a legal term used by politicians to describe immigrants without a visa. But isn’t a human alien a paradox? Taking the paradox literally was both satirical and an experiment in philosophy: Is it possible to prove you are a human being?

You’re quite a prolific and eclectic writer. What advice do you have for writers about staying inspired?

A great meal requires not only quality ingredients but a well-stocked pantry, a curious palate, knowledge of your utensils and versatile technique. In other words: read! Read widely, actively, beyond your genre. It always surprises me when I meet writers who don’t read. I also draw a lot from films, plays and poetry though I have no intention of pursuing those mediums. What I’ve learnt about scene blocking, visual editing and language continually challenges my ideas of what I can do with prose.

Jumaana Abdu is the author of the novel Translations. She is a Dal Stivens Award winner and a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter alumnus. During the day, she is a medical doctor.

Dominic Amerena

‘A Dog’s Life’ features a surprising social media star. How did this story come about?

The story emerged out of my ambivalence around three things: social media, commodity fetishism and Adam Driver. I wanted to explore the way our culture invites us to make brands of ourselves and the creatures that love us.

Your upcoming novel, I Want Everything, is already getting some exciting buzz. What can readers expect?

My novel is a (I hope!) fun, funny literary mystery about ambition and authenticity. Mistaken identities, a slip of the tongue that can’t be taken back, a hoax and a fifty-year old mystery. It grapples with questions of our literary lineage, and asks what it means to fake and make it as a writer in Australia, now and in the past.

Dominic Amerena is a writer, researcher and educator. His debut novel, I Want Everything, will be released in 2025.

Alice Bishop

Could you tell us the backstory of your short story ‘Spur’? 

Without giving too much away, ‘Spur’ came from a story Dad told to me about a teaching colleague he once had. The man had once been a local tow truck driver but quit after being called to a particularly affecting accident site. I kept thinking about how that morning would have unfolded for him—the ordinariness so quickly turning to shock.

You evoke setting so vividly in your stories. How do you approach building a sense of place?

Lots of my stories are set in the Yarra Valley and its surrounds—where I grew up and still spend heaps of time. My connection to the area means the details I use—colours, wildlife, weather—are pretty specific. This (I hope!) builds a sense of trust and interest in the reader. I think, also, it’s about love; if you love a landscape, it’ll show.

Alice Bishop is the author of the short fiction collection A Constant Hum. In 2020, she was named a Best Young Australian Novelist by the Age/Sydney Morning Herald. She is currently completing a novel.

Behrouz Boochani

Could you tell us about the inspiration behind your story ‘Qobad’?

I heard the story of Qobad in the Manus prison camp in 2013. A detainee shared it with me while we were thinking about how to escape the prison and if it was possible to do that. The detainee shared the tale of this powerful man to inspire us. The story that I have written is very different from the true story.

What’s your favourite short story?

One of my favourite stories is ‘Theft in a Pastry Shop’ by Italo Calvino. I like this story because the characters remind me of people that I grew up with. I feel I know the characters, and that makes me sad because I know they are just fictional. I know them, and I’m sure many of them exist somewhere in a corner of the city.

Behrouz Boochani is an award-winning writer, journalist, filmmaker and human rights defender. He is the author of the memoir No Friend But the Mountains and the collection of political writing Freedom, Only Freedom.

Ennis Ćehić

‘Short Shorts and Other Short Stories’ includes some microfictions. What draws you to writing very short stories?

As stories shrink, the rules of writing shift. It’s challenging but also exhilarating—distilling a story to its bare minimum demands precision, focus, and creativity because you still have to tell a story. What I love most, though, is how it invites experimentation and playfulness. The constraints of the form aren’t limiting; they’re freeing, allowing me to explore new ways to tell stories—however I see fit.

Humour and playfulness feature throughout your writing. Why is levity important to you?

There’s always a sense of lightness to the way I write, even when I’m tackling serious subjects. I go heavy when I need to, but otherwise, I like to maintain a tone characterised by clarity, humour and hope. My writing often reflects an innate optimism—not a naive one, but a belief that even in darkness, there’s room for a bit of levity and connection. It’s a perspective that feels true to how I see the world.

Ennis Ćehić is the author of short story collection Sadvertising. He lives and works in Sarajevo.

Paige Clark

‘It’s Possible’ explores parental anxiety. Why did you feel compelled to explore this in fiction?

Luckily, or unluckily, I don’t really have much choice in what I write about. I write to untangle what I’m tangled up in. In this instance, it was being in the arms of early motherhood.

What draws you to writing short form fiction?

I’m not clever enough to be a poet. You do what you can do.

Paige Clark is the author of the short fiction collection, She Is Haunted. Her debut was longlisted for the 2022 Stella Prize and highly commended for the 2022 Barbara Jefferis Award.

Ceridwen Dovey

‘Rocklands Road’ is a bit different in style to your other short fiction. Where did the inspiration come from?

This is a story that I’ve been working on for a few years, with its roots in real life and memory, but I never had quite the right way to frame and fictionalise aspects of lived experience. I knew that a certain amount of time had to pass before I would know how to write the ending. Time passed…and the material began to accumulate in layers, and suddenly I had a way of making sense of it.

What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

The advice that I’ve found has turned out to be most helpful over time, through all the ups and downs of a writing life, is that at some level you can’t help the way you write. What comes out of your head is not your fault! There is something fundamentally comforting to me about accepting that I’m not fully in control of the things I write or why. I write them. It’s not a choice, at some level. That makes it a little easier to forgive yourself when you start to feel the self-disgust welling up in the wake of a new creation.

Ceridwen Dovey writes fiction and creative non-fiction, and has received an Australian Museum Eureka Award for science writing. Her most recent book of short stories is Only the Astronauts.

Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker

‘The Station’ is set at a community radio station. Where did inspiration for this story come from?

The building at the heart of ‘The Station’ came from a few places. I wrote this piece while working on a Hot Desk fellowship at the Centre for Stories in Boorloo, Perth, which is a beautiful library and cultural space. At the same time, I took a presenter training course at our local community radio station RTRFM. I love how both of those buildings act as archives and gathering places for communities. I also do a lot of work in archives and Indigenous Data Sovereignty, so I wanted to depict a building that felt like a good example of a modern, sovereign-keeping place that was dynamic and cultural, and engaged thoughtfully with different types of technologies.

You’re currently working on a collection of speculative fiction. Why are you drawn to this genre?

I often write speculative and science fiction as an extension of activism. I work in tech policy, but legislation moves very slowly, so I write fiction as a way to imagine the kinds of worlds I want to live in or as a thought experiment to show what could go poorly. For Indigenous peoples, imagining ourselves in the future can be a very radical thing to do, and even more so to imagine ourselves as thriving, flourishing people, because it asserts our presence in a country that was determined to breed us out.

Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker is a Nyungar technologist, writer and digital rights activist. Their creative practice uses poetry, speculative fiction and digital tools to explore our relationship with machines.

Erin Gough

‘Dinner Scene’ takes us into the Howard-era 90s. How did this story come about?

In the late 90s I was a closeted queer kid at university developing a political awareness for the first time. What I saw in the public sphere—the dynamics of a socially regressive government resisting gender equity and racial and ethnic diversity—was playing out in the private sphere as well. A dinner party scene felt like an ideal way to explore this.

Your latest book, Into the Mouth of the Wolf, is a blend of genres, including mystery, YA and romance. Do you have any advice for writers who want to experiment with genrebending?

I never start with a genre. I always start by thinking about the story I want to tell. Bend the genre, or genres, to your purpose, not the other way around.

Erin Gough writes short stories and novels and has been published internationally. The Flywheel won the Ampersand Prize and Amelia Westlake won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Young Adult Fiction.

Lee Hana

‘Bushfire’ features a dystopian future where history and books are at risk. How did this story come about?

I rely on my subconscious. Bushfire was typical of this. I start with a surreal image, often from a dream, in this case I saw the sun visible through smoke. Then, with a blank mind (often when I should be asleep) I can ‘see’ the story around this image, and I ‘look around’ without expectation. People emerge; I don’t even like to call them characters. The structure is usually there when I write it out the next day, and then it becomes a matter of balancing this for a reader; where the weight goes, how to increase pressure, etc. It’s important even as I push the surrealism that it stays plausible—to place, to human nature, to the other stories in the book. Often I only see a deeper theme after the story is finished, and it can be some issue I’ve been thinking about for a while.

You are currently writing your third book of short stories, ‘Discharge’. Do you have any tips for finding inspiration?

For me, inspiration is all about making space for my subconscious to emerge. So one important thing is to carve out some space and time. Boredom can be a precious commodity! My best tip is avoiding social media, which narrows receptivity to the world. For me, the more dimensions I can access the better. In both fiction and life I want to meet people who are very different to me, so, for example, in writing stories I’ll often argue against my own values in order to reach new perspectives.

Lee Hana has worked in communications for electoral and peace-building projects throughout Asia. He has written two historical thrillers set in Timor-Leste and a story collection of post-punk science fiction.

Tracey Lien

‘Goodbye, Blinky Bill’ may surprise your readers. Could you tell us how this speculative story came about?

I’m used to hearing about bushfires, but the fires in the summer of 2019–2020 hit differently. I couldn’t stop thinking about them—the scale of the devastation, the likelihood of it happening again, how much more we’d lose next time around. I imagined the koalas going, ‘Peace out, we’ve had enough.’ What would happen if they did that?

Your fiction, while literary, always has a compelling plot. Do you have any advice for writers on how to approach structure?

You know when you ask a little kid what they thought of a movie, and they recount the whole thing to you? ’She wanted this thing, but then the bad guy stopped her, so she tried this other thing, but then this other character was like you can’t do that, so…’ One approach to plot is to see if you can do that for your story. Do you have characters who want things? What obstacles do they encounter? How do they overcome them? This doesn’t work for every kind of story, but I find that if I can’t pitch my story to someone, it usually means the plot’s not there yet.

Tracey Lien was born and raised in south-western Sydney. She earned her MFA at the University of Kansas and was previously a reporter for the LA Times. She is the author of the internationally bestselling novel All That’s Left Unsaid.

Lucy Nelson

How did ‘You Think I Can’t Do Hard Things’ come about?

This story came from conversations with both childless and child-rearing friends and from asking: Is the body of a woman who hasn’t had children less storied a document than the body of a mother?

You have a short story collection forthcoming. What do you love about working in short form?

Short fiction is a great teacher. I write short fiction because I want to learn more about how pace and structure and voice and all narrative elements impact one another. Watching these mechanisms at work feels (slightly) more manageable when you’re playing with six thousand words as opposed to sixty-thousand.

Lucy Nelson’s work has appeared in Meanjin, the Sydney Morning Herald, Southword and others. Her first collection of short stories, Wait Here, will be published by Summit Books.

Daley Rangi

The kiwi bird features strongly in ‘Black Sand’. What inspired you to bring this animal into your story?

In the basement of my grandmother’s house, there is a stuffed kiwi—it haunts me for reasons unclear. The kiwi is greatly treasured (for reasons other than tedious touristic veneer), as within our old stories it is said to have made a great sacrifice. Tangentially, I distinctly remember, a few years ago, standing on the shores of Taranaki, watching and smelling the smoke from the bushfires roll across the ocean. It’s saddening that our terrestrial ancestors continue to be sacrificed in the march of ‘progress’. What will wash up on the shore next? The idea of ‘apocalypse’ is rather mundane, don’t let it fool us into apathy. It’s occured before, it’s occuring now, it’s an act of rebirth. What will rise from the ash?

Your writing is marked by the poetic nature of your prose. Do you have any advice for writers who are looking for the right style or voice?

Don’t force a form—rather let the story, and its context, inform. Instinct will guide you, as will your ancestors. We all have ancestors, what have they passed onto you? Honour them, offer your voice up without shame or censorship. It’s vital to acknowledge that everything we write, explore, dream or uncover has likely been done so before by many of those ancestors and kin. But while something still needs to be said, say it. Pass it on—remember it, witness it. Ka mua, ka muri—walk backwards into the future. Embrace time as an endless river; what was, what is, and what could be, all woven together.

Daley Rangi is a shapeshifter, a Te Ātiawa Māori artist at large. Joyfully unpredictable, they generate anti-disciplinary works investigating language, memory and injustice.

Josephine Rowe

How did your story ‘Tamanu’ come about?

The story—and the larger context of the novel it sits within—came about through the gradual fusion of a few things over time, including that opening image of a child saint being delivered by horse float in the Kimberley. (I couldn’t tell you exactly where that image came from.)

Also, further back, disgust about the absurd inhumanity of the Pacific Solution, and Australia’s treatment of these islands as oubliettes for people seeking asylum. I’m not exactly sure when and how these elements became interrelated and kind of synergised to set the story in motion.

It features in your highly anticipated upcoming novel Little World. What can readers expect from your new book?

I suppose Little World could be called magic realist—its central narrative viewpoint comes from a girl who’s stranded somewhere between life as we know it and whatever comes after. But for the most part, its weirdnesses have real-world precedents. Zooming out a bit, it’s a book that very much shaped by ideas of relationally, our inherent interdependency and obligation to one another, and to place.

Josephine Rowe is the author of several story collections, including Tarcutta Wake and Here Until August. She is the author of the award-winning novel A Loving, Faithful Animal and Little World, out April 2025.

Aisling Smith

Like your novel, After the Rain, family plays a big part of ‘Strangler Fig’. What draws you to writing about familial relationships?

The complexity and uniqueness of family dynamics is fascinating and rich fodder for stories. I’m interested in both dysfunction and connection, and writing about families provides a way to explore both. I come from a very small family—I’m an only child of a single mother—so perhaps writing about larger families is also a way to creatively explore something that I didn’t really experience.

The story features someone experiencing a block in creativity. Is there anything that you do to help you find creative inspiration?

Reading is probably my number one way to feel inspired. Seeing the way that other people construct sentences and characters often makes me feel humbled, but also makes me itch to pick up my own pen. People-watching and eavesdropping on strangers generally works too! I love cafe-hopping and observing whatever is going on around me. Plus, I think there can be a lot of hidden inspiration in the small moments of life that we often dismiss as mundane. When I’m doing chores or routine daily tasks, for example, I like trying to think about how I could capture the moment with words in a way that makes it shine and sparkle.

Aisling Smith won the 2020 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. Her debut novel, After the Rain, was longlisted for this year’s Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.

Purchase a copy of New Australian Fiction 2024 here.