First Chapters Q&A with Kate O'Donnell

Kate O'Donnell is a writer, editor and bookseller specialising in children's and young adult literature.  She has a BA in History and French from the University of Melbourne and studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT.

Kate will be reading from her YA novel Untidy Towns at First Chapters on Friday 5 October.

1. Brunswick Bound has asked you to read a chapter from your published work. Tell us what we can expect from the chapter you have chosen?

An eighteenth birthday party on a farm, implied inebriation and perhaps one count of accidental electrocution.

2. How would you describe the kind of books that you write?

Quiet Australian young adult fiction about girls who have something to say (even if they’re not sure what it is just yet) and written with an excess of strange detail, as well as comedy so subtle you might miss it.

3. What was the first book that you read (or had read to you) that left an impression on you?

We had a little first-reader picture book called Dog and Cat that was a big favourite, filled with call and response: Who walks pitter-patter along the garden wall? Cat!

But it was the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories, which were the first books I read by myself, that set my mind creating quiet little parochial stories of my own and of course sparked a life-long need to map every town and neighbourhood I lived in (or wrote about) marking all the places of significance. Nadia Wheatley’s My Place fed that love of maps, too.

4. Do you believe that books should answer life’s big questions?

My favourite books are the ones that circle around life’s little problems and that consider and celebrate the minutiae within the big questions.

5. What’s your go-to solution for writer’s block?

One late, late night fuelled by coffee and desperate adrenalin, typing all the words that come into my mind until some half decent ones come.

6. What is your favourite word or phrase?

It’s so pleasing to say ‘Doris Lessing’ out loud.

7. What do you put down as your occupation when asked?

These days, after many years of debating between ‘retail assistant’ (easy to understand) and ‘bookseller’ (less well understood, apparently), I write EDITOR on the forms.

8. What is the question that you hope never to be asked in an author Q&A?

‘Do you ever think you’ll stop writing for teenagers and work on a real book?’

9. What question do you hope you will be asked and why?

‘So just how autobiographical is it?’ I just want to be able to shout: I made it all up! I didn’t steal tiny bits from all the people and places I have ever known why would you ask that?!

10. Which book that you have read do you think should be better known or more widely read?

My Candlelight Novel by Joanne Horniman. Published by Allen & Unwin ten years ago (September 2008) it’s the story of Sophie: a lover of books, a single mother, a resident of Lismore. It’s so beautifully written – all tender and sensuous prose. I feel that if it were republished today so many readers (YA and adult) would devour it and celebrate the writing and the politics and the heart.

You can find out more about First Chapters on the Brunswick Bound website.  Bookings via Eventbrite.