This story is one I started a few years ago during a writing week at Varuna National Writer’s House. Some writer friends and I organised a week together there for focused writing and writerly conversations. The bush surroundings, the quiet of the place, and the more meditative experience of time passing really helped with the first drafts of the story ‘We Were Already Deep in the Song’, that I wrote during that week— and published this May. The story remained in draft form for a few years more while I focused on other works. I’d return to it every now and then, getting to know it slowly. What was it really about? What was the tone I was reaching for? The jacarandas stayed, but other elements changed. Then this year I thought, it’s done. It’s written with the sound of memoir, but it’s a fiction.
This year I’ve also been exploring the vast and diverse world of literary journals within and beyond Australia. The Bangalore Review is one of my new international favourites and I’m very pleased to have been published in it.
“Many times, he held her so, as she grew out of his hands and into his arms and onto his lap and beyond it.” How beautiful.