Francesca de Tores (credit Andrew North)Francesca de Tores is a novelist, poet, and academic. Saltblood is her first historical novel. Writing as Francesca Haig, she is the author of four previous novels, published in more than twenty languages. In addition to a collection of poems, her poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies. She grew up in lutruwita/Tasmania and, after fifteen years in England, is now living in Naarm/Melbourne.

If you could go anywhere tomorrow, where would it be, and why?

Ithaka, the most perfect Greek island, to float in the turquoise water. At least Ithaka has literary links, so I could pretend that I was going there as a Homeric pilgrimage and not to drink wine in the sun.

What’s your idea of hell?

While the burning refugee tents of Rafah are an all-too-literal hell on earth, I can’t summon a jocular answer about shopping malls or a Young Liberals meeting.

What do you consider the most specious virtue?

Civility. I’m tired of people who do real harm, but do it politely, judging those who suffer for daring to be angry. Anger is the very least that they’re entitled to.

What’s your favourite film?

I adored Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Kindergarten Teacher (2018).

And your favourite book?

Toni Morrison’s Beloved; Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces; and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Another I’ve returned to repeatedly since I started writing historical fiction: Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End.

Name the three people with whom you would most like to dine.

Mary Read, the eighteenth-century pirate whose extraordinary life is the subject of Saltblood. I’d love to hear her tell me all the ways I got it wrong. Toni Morrison, for her incisive and expansive mind, and her sense of humour. Katherine Rundell, a magician of words, who seems to manage that rare feat: being principled without being boring.

Which word do you most dislike, and which one would you like to see back in public usage?

I do mourn the conflation of ‘disinterested’ with ‘uninterested’, because it seems to have meant the death of the useful concept of ‘disinterest’.

Who is your favourite author?

I think John Glenday is less well known than he deserves. There are lines by Czesław Miłosz and Victoria Chang that I will carry forever. I suspect that loving Mary Oliver might make me what young people would call ‘basic’, but when she says, ‘You do not have to be good’, my heart still answers: Yes!

And your favourite literary hero or heroine?

Crow, from Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. Merricat, from Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Stephen Maturin, from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander novels.

Which quality do you most admire in a writer?

Boldness. Writing that makes you think: ‘I didn’t realise we were allowed to do that!’

Which book influenced you most in your youth?

Fugitive Pieces. I’d previously only been interested in writing poetry, but this novel blew the doors of prose right off their hinges for me. I’d never realised that prose could be so lyrical.

Do you have a favourite podcast?

If Books Could Kill, which dissects popular non-fiction bestsellers (usually self-help, or right-wing political tomes) with a delicious balance of research and sheer, joyous snark.

What, if anything, impedes your writing?

The pathetic truth: dog videos on the internet.

What qualities do you look for in critics, and which ones do you enjoy reading?

I love critics who meet the work on its own ground and can admire risks being taken, even when they don’t necessarily work. I’m also drawn to critics who situate themselves (their own preferences; their own political beliefs) in their writing, shattering the facile illusion of objectivity. And I love a sense of humour. On film, I enjoy Caspar Salmon; on philosophy, Amia Srinivasan; on popular culture, Rebecca Shaw.

How do you find working with editors?

A joy. A good editor is a bridge between reader and writer. And when an editor points out something wrong with my work, it’s rarely a revelation – almost without exception it’s been something that I knew I wasn’t nailing, but which I was trying to get away with. The best editors force you to admit these failings to yourself. I’m grateful for it.

What do you think of writers’ festivals?

I love them, of course. But because I love them, I also want them to be more than just a nice day out for middle-class people, so I welcome recent moves towards inclusivity, affordability, and transparency about sponsorship.

Are artists valued in our society?

I think they’re both over- and under-valued. We cling to a romanticised view of artists as mystical, inspired creatures, which also allows us to continue to underfund them – as though the muse pays the bills.