You found this story almost by accident — what was it about that file of letters that made you stop and dig deeper?

Buried in that bundle of hundred-and-fifty-year-old papers was a letter that absolutely blazed with anger - it hurled abuse at the teacher of the one-room school in little Currabubula.  Extreme emotion is always interesting. It’s impossible not to want to know the story behind it.  For a novelist it’s irresistible.  Who was so angry?  Why?   

As you pieced together Joseph Connor’s story, how challenging was it to remain unbiased in your portrayal of him?

I came to the story with a bias in his favour – I think because I was such a nightmare to my own schoolteachers, I felt sorry for him. But each letter gradually unfolded a different view of him and I found myself flip-flopping – was he a good man being persecuted, or was he a bit of a monster?  I was fascinated by Connor, but I also became intrigued by the way I kept changing my mind about him. 

Given your background in both biography and fiction, did this project feel like it belonged more to one tradition, or did it ask you to invent a form of its own?

For most of the time I was writing I didn’t think of it as a book, just a private obsession, so I let myself go wild and mix biography and fiction in whatever way seemed to lead further into the story. The book has ended up as a hybrid – real letters, with fictional imaginings between them. That gives readers the chance to read the letters for themselves and make up their own minds about Connor. I picture plenty of heated discussions at book groups…

Would you encourage other writers and creatives to explore the archives for creative or historical inspiration?

Any kind of archive is an absolute goldmine – it gives you a slice of reality that you could never make up. Wherever you look there are stories crying out to be uncovered mysteries waiting to be explored. Archives lead you from one question to another and there often aren’t clear answers, so it’s an endless compelling exploration.  Be warned, though, it’s highly addictive. 

What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

It’s a glimpse into what life was really like back in the days of our great-grandparents -  rather than the cleaned-up version we usually get in books and movies.  It’s a human mystery – Connor reveals aspects of himself in his letters, but who was he really? It’s the picture of a writer struggling to find a story, trying out different ways to find it and tell it.  And it’s about how we make up our minds when all we have is partial and ambiguous information. I hope it’s an invitation to think about the judgements we make as we move through the world, and how we’ve arrived at them.