I read that you wrote Translations while attending medical school and hospital placements. Firstly – wow. Secondly, what was that like? What inspired you to write it?

I’ve been writing novels since I was little. The times in my life I haven’t been writing were like the canary in the coal mine. So it wasn’t really ‘extra’ work for me in medical school, it’s just what I do for companionship, understanding; I love it. And not to be flippant about the pandemic, but for someone who didn’t have a social life to begin with, quarantine was just an enforcement of my lifestyle. I wasn’t seeing anyone or going anywhere, I had no connection whatsoever to publishing and didn’t think I ever would. Outside of studying, all I did was write, or read and watch things to help me write. My inspiration for Translations was born in that isolation. I had a flash of a woman longing to be left alone, cut all ties, annihilate herself. What brings a person to that point? I worked backwards from there.

Between her shifts as a nurse, central character, Aliyah, works on transforming the run-down property in rural NSW she has moved to with her daughter. Do you have any personal experience with farming? What research did you conduct to portray the setting so vividly?

I grew up ten-minutes from rural land. My parents would take us into the valley on long drives to help us fall sleep. Once I got my licence, I drove out more often, heading deeper, down to the great rivers. That landscape – the rolling farmlands, the dense, winding passages where I was dwarfed by gums – is like medicine for me. I wanted to set Translations in a place like that so I could spend time there in my mind.

My mum’s a green thumb and my dad’s a hobbyist handyman, so I’ve always been engaged in productive gardening, carpentry, mechanics. Summer holidays as a kid, I would throw myself into my veggie patch, reading up and watching kitchen garden shows. Later, I went to an agricultural high school. That gave me a good five years of structured study. We covered animal husbandry, horticulture, hydroponics, farm equipment, et cetera. We visited abattoirs, nurseries, sheep farms.

After high school, I developed an interest in permaculture, which is a more intuitive and sustainable form of cultivation. But even that paled in comparison to the knowledge and beauty of indigenous farming, not only First Nations practices on this continent but those of other indigenous communities globally. It was a gift to discover literature on these traditions; they articulated philosophies I had always felt subconsciously. I learned to write about land cultivation as more than science or commerce. As Aliyah discovers, it’s about community, responsibility, the labour of love.

All this to say I didn’t really do additional research. My wonderful editor, Melissa Lane, was alert to factual slip-ups around Aliyah’s harvests being in season, and that was it.