Melissa Lucashenko

So, you know, if it didn't have fetlocks and a mane and tail, it was of limited interest.

The Narnia books were really important to me.

I'm not a fantasy reader by any means as an adult, but the fantasy world of Narnia where the animals could talk and children had power, that was very seductive as a kid.

No, see, I didn't understand that that was an option until I was probably into my 20s.

I had no concept of there being a publishing industry, really.

It was, I mean, for most of my childhood books, just not all of my childhood books, just existed in the same way that apples and oranges and cars existed.

The idea of

how they got produced or who produced them was completely a mystery to me.

And I've spoken before on air about the first time I ever read a book that was set in Brisbane.

It mentioned the suburb of Acacia Ridge, this particular book.

I can't remember what it was.

And I felt a physical shock go through my body because there was something on the page in front of me that related to the world I really knew in Brisbane.

And it was such an absolute...

Shock.

You know, that's how big the disconnect was between myself and the idea of being a writer.

I think I related to lots of the British children and the Enid Blyton and all different kinds of characters growing up because that's what literature does.

It allows us to enter other worlds.

But the first book that I truly felt connected to in a really deep way was a book I found in my early 20s, a book that was handed to me in my early 20s, I should say, which is The Bone People by Kerry Hume, the Maori writer.

Well, The Bone People is the story of a Maori woman, Kerowin, a Maori man, Joe, and Joe's adoptive son, who is probably autistic, whose name is Simon or Himona.

Kerry Hume says that she wrote this book as a deliberate attempt to create a national myth for New Zealand, a modern mythology of nation.