Eavesdrop On Experts

“When I get an idea, it comes to me as a still image,” says Dr Laura Jean McKay, winner of the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for her debut novel ‘The Animals In That Country.’ Dr McKay is now a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University in New Zealand, after completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies. “This novel took seven years to write, but that image is very, very clear and stays very, very true the whole way and it really keeps me going through the whole writing process,” she says. Dr McKay says her initial inspiration was, what would happen if we could finally understand what other animals were saying? “Not with their mouths but really saying with their bodies and the way they are in the world, what are they saying to us and what are they saying to each other?” she adds. Her novel is an eerily-timed tale about a world in the throes of a pandemic, exploring other consciousnesses, and the limits of language. “It’s been a very, very strange time t