The brilliant author of worldwide sensation The Dressmaker is coming to Mudgee for this year's cracking Readers' Festival. Rosalie's novels have sold over 150,000 copies in Australia and around the world, with The Dressmaker becoming an award-winning film starring Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth. Her latest book is The Year of the Farmer.
Rosalie is the headline speaker at our Long Lazy Lunch on Sunday 18 August, hosted by Alice Grundy at The Cellar By Gilbert - a sell-out event if ever we saw one! You can also catch her at the From Page to Screen and Stage panel on Saturday 17 August.
We caught up with Rosalie to ask her all the important questions (and a few fun ones) ahead of her debut at MRF.
MEET ROSALIE HAM
What book/author has had the biggest impact on your career?
Most of them, but in particular Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s humour, wit and observant eye was a revelation to me as a young teenager. Also, her luminous female characters, the suspense, intrigue, love, hurt and the triumphs of everyday drama in a small community spoke of the universal. That story helped me understand the way I saw things.
How did you get into the writing business?
I’ve always written, for as long as I can remember, but it was the writing course at RMIT that galvanised all my writings and guided me towards the publishing industry.
What’s your ideal reading setup?
Flat on my back in bed, two specific head pillows in perfect place and a book resting on the other specific reading pillow on my chest, reading lamp just so.
Coffee or tea?
Coffee, double shot.
Kindle or Paperback?
Paperback
Early riser or night owl?
A night reader, late riser.
Favourite book of all time?
I usually cite All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy but of late I’ve been captured by Amy Bloom’s White Houses. And recently when I was asked that question someone responded, ‘Wouldn’t it be the first novel you published since it started it all?’ It’s a good question.
And most importantly, what are you reading right now?
I’m at a critical stage in my writing so I’m reading stories that won’t ‘sway’ my ‘emotional arc.’ I’m enjoying This is Shakespeare by Emma Smith and Uncommon Arrangements, Seven Marriages in Literary London, 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe.
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