Why do you write?

Like most writers, I started off fuelled by egotism and neurosis as much as by creativity. (I believe there's a very fine line between those qualities anyway). Once I'd gotten over that a bit, I think I wrote in order to show people that there is a living breathing Aboriginal culture in Australia, and also to satisfy the urge to create interesting work. Tell stories. These days the impulse is more towards writing the best work I can possibly put out. Maybe that's why I write more slowly…the political element is still strong though.

Are your books 'true'? Are they about you?

Steam Pigs is about fifty per cent autobiographical, but certainly no more than that. I've never lived in Townsville, for example, and my mother isn't an alcoholic, and so on. The Logan City bits are closer to reality, but all characters are composites. You take one person's appearance, and someone else's laugh, and a bad habit from a third person and chuck it all in the blender. That's how characters form. My other novels are hardly about me at all. I try to be true to the Australia I know, but they don't reflect myself or my family. Occasionally a friend might slip into a book, but even that's rare.

Do you consider yourself primarily a writer, or an Aboriginal writer?

I would normally say an Aboriginal writer. The trouble with that is, the word "Aboriginal" means something different to outsiders. When I say 'Aboriginal' I automatically assume things like being of mixed race, being literate, and having a wide appreciation of Australian culture and so on. But to most white people, 'Aboriginal' implies something different, usually something much more restricted and restrictive. So the question runs into a difficulty of semantics. I think that doesn't happen so much with say, Indian or Caribbean writers, because there is more familiarity with their subculture on the part of white readers.

Why do you say you are Aboriginal when you have white blood too?

Being Aboriginal is about culture and family links, not just about race. My blood is mixed, but my life (and my writing) is more influenced by Aboriginal thinking and Aboriginal culture than by any other. I know almost nothing about my Russian/Ukrainian forebears, for instance. One day I'll correct that ignorance. But the essence of who I am is far more about being Indigenous than about being white. You also have to remember there was an official government policy of assimilation for many, many decades. That was intended to wipe out the Aboriginal culture and people by 'breeding out the colour'. We were forced to marry whites. Mixed-race children were stolen up until the 1970s (that's not a misprint) and placed in institutions, to grow up white. So many, many of us have fair skin. There are plenty of blond, blue-eyed Aborigines out there as well as all shades of brown and black. But you do have to know the culture before you call yourself Aboriginal.

How long does it take to write a book?

How long is a piece of string? Steam Pigs took nine months, and came very easily. Killing Darcy I wrote in six weeks after thinking about it for a couple of months when my computer was broken. (I work by laptop computer usually - I have slight RSI and can't write fast enough with pen and paper). I wrote the first draft of Hard Yards in Tonga in about six months, then it needed another twelve or so months work back in Brisbane. And my latest book Too Flash has taken about two and a half years to complete - but it needed more drafts than the others, and I moved three times during that two and a half years.

Do you get writer's block?

Rarely. When I do, its usually because I have nothing useful to say. That's a sign that its time to go back out into the world, or else do some more reading, until you do have something worth saying.

Do you have any advice for beginning writers?

Read a lot. Work hard. Take your craft seriously. Don't be boring. Tell the truth. (If the truth you're trying to tell is boring, find some different material to work with).

What's your favourite book of your own?

Ummm, that's a hard one. I like aspects of all my books. Usually I like my most recent book best, because that reflects where I am at the time. But Steam Pigs will always be special, I guess.

Who are your influences?

I'd say Keri Hulme's The Bone People was important in shaping me, as was Helen Garner's Monkeygrip. The Australian poets Lawson and Paterson were what I read as a child and would have been formative. I remember sitting in a Darwin shopping centre when I was twenty three, obsessing over Judith Wright's collected works, and thinking 'I'll never be able to write as well as this', but loving her power with language. Ruth Park, Peter Carey. I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven, is a brilliant book of indigeneity. Also the U.S. writers Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie. In terms of Aboriginal writing there are lots, but in particular I am a great admirer of Kim Scott's True Country , the novelist Annie Cleven, and the poetry of Romaine Moreton. Also the travel writer Paul Theroux, and the U.S. environmental writer Barry Lopez. Theroux's Fong and the Indians is brilliant as well as extremely funny, I think.

You haven't mentioned any Black American writers?

I like a lot of Alice Walker's stuff. bell hooks influenced me politically and there is a book called Black Like Coffee, but overall the Black experience is not the Aboriginal experience - indigeneity shifts everything for me. Redbirds by the journalist Rick Bragg comes closer to my writing than most of the Black U.S. writing I've encountered. (Bragg is part-Cherokee but identifies as White).

What's next?

I am currently attempting to write a play about the place of Indigenous tradition in modern black life, and about the way that affects our kids. That's coming along, albeit very slowly. I think if I'd tried to write it as a novel it'd be finished by now! Otherwise, I'm kind of tending to work more in my immediate community, giving small workshops and mentoring at schools and so on. I've got a farm to run these days, and its hard to get away to festivals. Anyway there are dozens of other Indigenous writers with something urgent to say at those forums Time for me to step aside and just write for a while.