Stella: How do you relax?

Cate: As C.S. Lewis once said, you can’t find a book long enough or a cup of tea big enough for me, so usually just the luxury of being able to read during the day is a great pleasure. To really relax I like everything on my ‘to-do’ list ticked off, something slow-cooking in the oven, a hammock, a cold beer and a good book waiting on the verandah.

Is there a writer you aspire to be like?

I love Alice Munro’s stubborn resolve to always write using the same basic, simple materials but use them to revelatory effect time after time. I think the body of work she’s built up over years will be a legacy of this virtuosity – I love this slow and careful consideration of subject matter and honouring of form.

What book would you take with you to a desert island?

I’d take To Kill a Mockingbird. This is a book I return to all the time, and I’m sure I could amuse myself on the island for many weeks, cutting up the narrative and rearranging it, making it into a libretto for an opera, pondering which of Harper Lee’s decisions were deliberate and which were instinctive – you name it.

What’s the most beautiful word in the English (or any other) language?

In English, I think luminous is perfectly onomatopoeic. It’s a word I use far too much, according to my editor. I also love esperar in Spanish, which means both to wait and to hope, and sounds, when spoken aloud, like an exhaled breath or a sigh – to sit breathing, waiting and hoping for something.