THREE THINGS I LEARNED AT VARUNA

23rd-30th November 2020: The best week of my writing life.

I packed my bags and made the hour-and-a-bit drive from Western Sydney to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains to take my residency at Varuna, the National Writer’s House. I’d won the Copyright Agency First Nations Fellowship shortly after landing my first book deal in what was a string of good fortune. Of course, then the bushfires happened and Covid happened and the residency was pushed back to November 2020. Somehow, this worked out positiv...