Mykaela Saunders, author of Always Will Be, reflects on the importance of her book and writing.
What is the most important thing this book showed you about yourself and your writing practice?
I learned to write fiction by writing Always Will Be. Before writing this book I never written a short story and I had no clear idea about the mechanics of fiction. This book began its life as my doctoral project at the University of Sydney in 2017. I wrote my first and second short stories, Terranora and River Story, in fiction workshop classes, then the training wheels were off and I was left to my own devices and wrote the rest of the stories over the coming years. I learnt a few things about what makes a good short story (and even a not-so-good short story) in this time. The stories in this book are a record of my experiments with craft – point of view, voice, tense, shape and structure – and that’s why all of the stories in this book are written in such different styles. Through writing this book I learnt that I love writing fiction, particularly short stories, and that it’s a skill that can be learned and honed with dedication and practise.
Please tell us about your writing journey for Always Will Be.
I wrote this book for my community, the Tweed Goori community, on Minjungbal-Nganduwal Bundjalung land. This is where I grew up and where I’ll always return no matter what. As I wrote this book I thought about people from my community reading it – past, present and future, young and old and everyone in between – and that’s why there’s something in there for everyone. My guiding question throughout the project was What might my community look like in any given version of the future, and in any one of these worlds how might they assert their sovereignty? That question is important to me and to all Aboriginal peoples as survivors of genocide, thinking about what kind of world our young people will inherit if the powers that be refuse to budge on their dismal climate policy. My book answers this question in sixteen different ways – but in all of these stories, our people are alive in community, country and culture the way it always has been and the way it always will be.
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