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I’m in a Austen, Brontë, Eliot phase. Probably Elizabeth Gaskell, though, because of North and South (1855): so topical given the way the digital revolution has impoverished so many and enriched so few.

I write to make sense of the world – or at least to ask better questions – and because words are powerful, transformative tools that can help bring into being a more just and life-giving world ...

I figure that with practice I might improve. Even if I don’t, I will persist. If in an entire book there is one sentence that works, I see it as proof of growth. Sometimes that sentence stares back at me as if it came from somewhere else ...

Nothing is more humbling and gratifying to a writer than meeting a reader who has read their work, and this is where writers meet them, sometimes more than one, but if only one, hooray.

I dislike the word ‘cunt’. I know that is has been appropriated by women and is often used for strong contextual effect, but the hard c at the beginning and the sharp t at the end set my teeth on edge. It is a scary word, an effective one no doubt, but I have never been able to stomach it.

Why do you write? Because I get enjoyment out of it, and so do other people.

I know I dream, but all I remember are my nightmares.

Why do you write? It’s a hopeful or optimistic thing, I think, to try to catch bits of life, large or small, and explore them, understand them, then offer them up to readers who might also connect with them or for whom they might make sense.

There’s no single film I could claim as favourite – among the films I’ve loved are The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation, Beetlejuice, Birdman, Blue Velvet, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Apocalypse Now, Doctor Strangelove, and All About Eve.

Why do you write? Because I have something to say – and not just to one person, but to as many people as I can reach. And when the writing goes well, I enjoy doing it ...