Karen Wyld

And so I never know what the story is going to be about until I'm really, really into it.

So with this particular book, I was...

It was during a time when I painted a lot.

So I was painting and listening to some blues and I was listening to Billie Holiday's song, Strange Fruit.

And while painting and listening, I was just thinking about racism and violence and injustice within that story.

And that then became part of the painting itself.

And that then led to some of the images that started off the book.

Well, I think it flows from listening to that particular song again that I think sometimes...

Australians know more about African-American history there, and they engage with that in horror more than what they do with the invasion and unsettling settlement of this continent.

So what I wanted to do was not piggyback on events that happened overseas, but to highlight some of the things that have happened here.

not only for First Nations peoples, but also settlers and refugees.

First up, I've never studied literature or English in any manner or even writing.

I'm self-taught.

But I think

It would fit definitely in magic realism.

Well, it's because I have used magic realism as a literary mode within it, as a device.

And like a lot of magic realists, it's used for truth telling, telling history from a different angle.

Yes.

And I'm glad you noticed there was two.

And both of them almost got deleted in the editing stage.