New Australian Fiction shortlist spotlight: She is Haunted by Paige Clarke

She is Haunted is one of the six books shortlisted for this year’s Readings New Australian Fiction Prize. This debut collection of short stories is full of wit, humour, and moving moments of empathy and connection.

Our 2021 judges described Clarke’s short stories as a, ‘cohesive and tantalisingly interlinked collection’. Staff reviewer, Stella Charls, also said of the collection: ‘The 18 stories in this collection gently blend the surreal with the all-too-real. Clark’s protagonists are almost all women: witty, raging and devastatingly relatable. These characters are all navigating the intimacy and messiness of relationships in strange and surprising ways.’ You can read the full review here.

We asked author Paige Clarke about writing inspiration, advice and what she hopes readers may take away from her book.


What was the initial inspiration for this story?

She Is Haunted began as a way for me to understand my complicated relationship with my mother through the possibilities of the short story form. I needed to make sense of the world, my world. But while writing these stories, a lot of life kept happening that I needed to grapple with too. Though at times the book goes to speculative, surreal and hyperreal places, at the heart of it, it is a book about processing loss and trauma. It is about learning how to live with the hand you are dealt.


What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

I hope readers will take away from the book whatever they need to take away from it. Perhaps it is a way through grief. A fleeting glimmer of hope. Or even just a single laugh! As a reader myself, getting to know an author through their sentences – learning how they see and understand the world – is why I keep reading. She Is Haunted is an invitation for the reader to get to know me; here I am on the page.


What has been the best writing advice you’ve received?

Fiction writer and poet Jocelyn Richardson once told me, ‘Everything is writing.’ It’s easy, especially as an emerging writer, to get bogged down in the belief that you are not doing enough, not achieving enough. This self-critique is counterproductive to the goal of writing itself. Richardson’s advice helped me to conceptualise all the labour that went into my writing – inspiration, contemplation, writing, editing, more editing, rest – as writing, as work. When you aren’t beating yourself up about how much you’re accomplishing, it’s a lot easier to write. Go figure.


You can read more about the 2021 Readings New Fiction Prize shortlist here. We’ll be announcing the winner during the month of October.

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Cover image for She Is Haunted

She Is Haunted

Paige Clark

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