What drove you to write your memoir Piano Lessons, and how did it come to be acquired by Black Inc.?

I believe I’m not alone amongst Australian writers in saying I wrote my first book because publisher Chris Feik asked me to. I had contributed several pieces to The Monthly when one day (my birthday actually) he sent me an email asking ‘have you ever considered writing a book on the piano-playing life?’ The email’s subject was ‘Piano Lessons’. Chris is a type of shaman who can divine a book before it’s there. And I’m a swot who likes to be given an assignment.

More recently, you wrote a novel, Melting Moments. What’s the difference between writing fiction and truth for you?

I’m a notorious exaggerator so being able to write fiction is an enormous delinquent pleasure for me: I can make all the things up without compunction. At the same time, I've always thought the two genres do not exist in binary opposition but upon a spectrum: that the greatest fiction contains the deepest truths, and can only draw on what the author knows, while the  most compelling memoirs often deploy techniques imported from fiction.

You’re not only an author, but an acclaimed classical pianist, academic, playwright and librettist. Do you approach each of your creative pursuits differently, or do you find that your method is much the same between mediums?

The largest difference is probably that between being an interpretive artist as a pianist and a creative artist as a writer, but even these processes feel similar. So many of the concerns are the same: the attention to the granular alongside the larger picture; the importance of technique; the demands of style and rhythm and cadence and modulation.

Is there a particular part of the publishing process that you love or hate the most?

Once the book is out and I have subdued some of my anxiety, I enjoy taking it on the road, because writing is such a solitary experience and I miss that communion with audiences. But if the vaudeville act goes on too long it comes to feel creatively fallow, as if you are stalling in a previous version of yourself when you are hungry to get into the next.

What’s one book you think everyone should read?

Middlemarch. Because it's so delightful and wise and funny and human and perfect.

To read our previous Author Spotlight, an interview with Joëlle Gergis, click here. 

To stay in the loop with Author Spotlight, join the Friends of Black Inc. mailing list.