What’s your favourite recent read?
I’ve been incredibly impressed by a recent debut, The Morbids by Ewa Ramsey. It was such a brilliant, moving, honest, life-affirming read, I can’t recommend it enough.
A literary dinner party guest? Who and why?
Assuming I’m allowed to exhume and revivify: Miles Franklin, Oscar Wilde, Toni Morrison, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, and Kurt Vonnegut. I’d probably slow bake a wild marlin snared that morning by Hemingway, served with a side of organic vegetables grown by EB White.
A book that has influenced/inspired you?
Lean On Pete by Willy Vlautin.
Describe your new book (your elevator pitch).
Honeybee tells the story of a teenager called Sam and an old man called Vic, who fatefully meet late one night on an overpass, where both have arrived to end their lives. Honeybee, among other things, is about the unlikely friendship that blooms between them, and their private efforts to save each other.
One moment from your book that will hook readers in?
There’s a chapter called Cinderella, which largely takes place at a drag show, that, if I can be so humble as to declare, stands apart as one of the best things I have ever written.