When we sat around the table, the food was the least important thing, it was all about stories. I thought telling stories was how people behaved. She was a terrific humourist and one of the many people in our family, who, if she’d gone to school and got a qualification, would have risen to the top because she was so smart. Us kids, we never realised that half of it was rubbish. She made up a lot of it and just kept it going. My Aunty Faith could make a story last over three weekends. My uncle, mother and father were also great storytellers. I was very influenced by my Aunty Faith because she was such a great storyteller. I knew I’d never run out of stories and I also knew there was a way of telling those stories which was my family’s voice.

I quickly developed my own style and I resisted attempts by editors to make my writing conform to the post-modern fashion of the time. Not just rural, by country I mean Australia. My writing was to do with my identity and it was always country based. I liked Russian writers as well and they had an enormous influence on how I wrote. William Faulkner was probably one of the best writers in the world. I was very moved by Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner, Judith Wright, Steinbeck, Ruth Park people like that.

I started writing to express my admiration of women. I was always writing as kid, right through university and when I became a teacher. I write full time I don’t have another job. I’ve written 35 books and now I’m writing films. “I’m a fiction writer, adult fiction is my thing. He shares his perspective in our Stories of Indigenous Engineering series. Revisiting history to create a better futureĪuthor Bruce Pascoe’s book, Dark Emu, challenges prevailing views of Australian history and opens our eyes to Aboriginal farming, fishing and land management.

Bruce pascoe website