First Chapters Q&A with Amra Pajalic

Amra Pajalić is a Melbourne-based author of Bosnian background. Her debut novel The Good Daughter (Text Publishing, 2009) won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award. Amra has appeared on panels at conferences and literary festivals including at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne Writers Festival, Williamstown Literary Festival, Reading Matters Conference Panel, and the VicTESOL Conference. She was funded by Artists in Schools to be an Artist in Residence in 2010, 2011 and 2012 in high schools, and in 2014 received funding from Creative Victoria to be mentored by Alice Pung to work on her memoir. She works as a high school teacher and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at La Trobe University.

Amra will be reading from her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me at First Chapters on Friday 4 October.

1. Brunswick Bound has asked you to read a piece from your published work.  Tell us what we can expect from what you will be reading?

I will read the prologue of my memoir ThingsNobody Knows But Me which describes a moment when a teacher changed my life.

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

The words people keep using when talking about my books are raw, gritty and honest. I keep coming back to writing young adult and my memoir is mostly written from my point of view as a young person-there’s something about my adolescence that seems to have imprinted itself on my heart and I keep wrestling with those times and emotions.

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

I loved reading Anne of Green Gables as a child because I could relate so much to Anne being an outsider in the community. I felt like this as we were on the fringes of our Bosnian community because of my mother’s Bi Polar.

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

I think books should give us the opportunity to explore life’s big questions. They might not answer them, but they can at least give us a glimpse of other perspectives to help guide us in our journey in life.

5. Do you have any writing quirks?

I have to write to music so I listen to movie soundtracks because there are no lyrics to distract me or insert themselves into my writing.

6.  What is your favourite word or phrase?

It’s not what you do, it’s what you get done.

7. What have you found most surprising about publishing a book?

The number of people who have a family member who is a Bi Polar sufferer and how they were able to connect to my book because of this shared experience.

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

If I was asked to reveal the real names of some of the characters in my memoir that I changed to protect their privacy.

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

Why did I write my memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me? Because I wrote it in order to educate readers about Bi Polar and to help understand others who have family members who are sufferers and to clarify the myths about this illness.

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

Authors from the Western Suburbs like Alice Pung and her amazing young adult novel Laurinda set in a selective school and dealing with the pressure that children of migrants are placed under. Enza Gandolfo author of The Bridge about the West Gate bridge accident and the effects of post traumatic shock. Demet Divaroren and her beautiful novel Livingon Hope Street that deals with family conflict and domestic abuse. 

Find out more about the First Chapters event series on the Brunswick Bound website.