Sarah Konoski

Your dad used to read the newspaper with a cockatoo.

Was that something your dad would say?

Applicable in so many situations.

What kind of jobs did you have to do on the farm as a kid?

Farm kids always have to do a lot.

And did you carry that independence of mind into the classroom, Kate?

Have you seen him since?

You yourself, Kate, have had some great losses in your family, including the drowning of your brother when you were just children.

Yeah.

How did that tragedy shape you, do you think, looking back?

There can be a kind of fearlessness that people develop after facing horrible losses like that because it's like, well, the worst almost has happened.

What can life throw at me that I haven't faced already and endured?

And I say, oh, no, no, not in the slightest.

Well, you studied English literature at university.

You're a great reader.

And I wonder if those great novels can sort of help make sense of lives and loss and gain and fate and meaning.

I mean, they kind of can give a different structure to experience.

I think that's one of the things we turn to fiction for.

I can do Eddie Obeid.

So when you were studying at university, Kate, you came up with a very innovative way of making money.