Writers we admire: Yvette Walker

One mark of a really good writer is concision: the ability to say a lot in a little. Henry was struck by Australian novelist Yvette Walker's ability to take the 140-character limitation of a Tweet, turning the Irish marriage referendum into a personal, profoundly human event:

Ireland you didn't just say yes; you said come in, sit by the fire, have a cup of tea, I'll just get the cake. #MarRef

— Yvette Walker (@ywalkerwriter) May 23, 2015

Now Walker is garnering wonderful reviews for her first novel. She discusses it, and her ways of working, in a new entry of a series of talks with women writers:

Meet Yvette Walker

By WordMothers ¶ Posted in Fiction, Interviews with Writers ¶ Tagged australian literature, author interview, fiction, letters to the end of love, novel, writer interview, yvette walker ¶ Leave a comment

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Yvette Walker lives and writes in Perth, Western Australia. Yvette has a BA (Honours) and a PhD from Curtin University. She was a writing fellow at Varuna (Australia’s National Writers Centre) in 2009 and again in 2011. Her first novel, Letters to the End of Love, was published by University of Queensland Press in 2013. Letters to the End of Love won a 2014 WA Premier’s Award (Emerging WA Writer) and was shortlisted for a 2014 NSW Premier’s Award (Glenda Adam’s Award for New Writing).

Facebook: Yvette Walker Author on Facebook

Twitter: Yvette Walker on Twitter

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?

When I was twenty-two years old I had the insane idea that I should become a writer. Where this plan came from I have no earthly idea. I grew up in a very working class suburb. We had a fantastic public library and a great Angus & Robertson [bookstore] but most people were more interested in AC/DC and a night out at the Speedway than they were in reading, let alone writing. So for reasons I still don’t quite understand, I took Creative Writing at University.

 WHAT IS YOUR LATEST BOOK OR CURRENT PROJECT?

Written across half a century, Letters to the End of Love intertwines three disparate stories of love and marriage through the art of love letters. The three stories are not overtly linked, but they each have a relationship to the painting Ad Marginem (1930-1936) by Paul Klee. Dmitri and Caithleen, living in the south-west of Cork in 1969, are writing letters to one another after forty years of marriage. Grace and Louise, living in Perth in 2011, are on the verge of breaking up after fifteen years together – they hope love letters might save them. John, living in Bournemouth in 1948, lost in grief after losing his lover David during the war, writes unsent love letters in the hope he might find his way to a future...

For the rest of the excellent interview, click here.

Klee, Ad Marginem