First Chapters Q&A with Angela Meyer

Angela Meyer's writing has been widely published, including in Best Australian Stories, Island, The Big Issue, The Australian, The Lifted Brow and Killings.  She has previously published a book of flash fiction.
Angela has worked in bookstores, as a book reviewer, in a whisky bar and for the past few years has published a range of Australian authors for Echo Publishing, including award-winners and an international bestseller (The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris).  She grew up in Northern NSW and lives in Melbourne.

Angela will be reading from her debut novel A Superior Spectre.

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?

I hope it will transport you in time and space, while also making you feel completely present in your body…

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

Literary-genre blends. I hope they come across as inquisitive, open-minded, emotive, layered.

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

I remember when my Year 3 teacher Mrs Grant read Say Cheese and Die by R.L. Stine to the class and I had this palpable feeling of: ‘Oh, this is what a story is.’ I was addicted to reading after that.

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

I think they should question people’s answers.

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

I have never really had it! I have the opposite problem: too many ideas, too little time. Maybe that’s the answer: be so busy in your ‘other’ life, and then when you sit down to write the floodgates will open.

6.      What is your favourite word or phrase?

Currently, I love the word ‘officious’. It’s a ticklish word.

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

Editor.

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

‘What is the point?’ (Only because we ask ourselves anyway.)

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

‘How do you create mood in writing?’ (It’s something I’ve been thinking about – is it imagery, tension, rhythm, a combination?)

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

Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water. It’s not exactly underrated but I find so often people I know have not read it, or any of her work. One of the greatest modernist writers, and this book is a slim masterpiece.

You can find out more about the First Chapters event series on the Brunswick Bound website.