The Readings Teen Advisory Board was fortunate enough to be given advanced reading copies of A Flash in the Dust, Meg Caddy's new queer historical thriller for young adults. After they read the book, they also had the opportunity to interview the author! Here is an edited version of their conversation:
Lia: What inspired you to write this book? Or rather, what was your first idea of what this book was going to look like, and how much has it deviated?
Meg: A Flash in the Dust was written for my PhD, which was focused on writing ‘against the grain’ of history to highlight marginalised voices. My initial ideas were very vague – though some of them stuck around (the first note I ever wrote for the book was ‘A horse called “That Bastard”’).
I started by looking at unsolved historical crimes in Australia; my first few drafted pages included a gay policeman called Iggy, and I was planning to have him team up with Norah to solve a murder. But as I wrote I became more and more interested in the role of the asylum in containing and controlling queer bodies, so my focus shifted. I also decided – with a lot of anxiety – that I wanted this book to be an OwnVoices novel, and so things changed again there.
Amelia: What was your process for researching Australian queer history?
Meg: I read. I read so much! More than I have since high school, I think. For the four years of the PhD, every February was dedicated entirely to reading, sometimes two books a day. I was reasonably strict about what I was reading, too. I started by reading as much Australian historical fiction as I could, and then queer Australian YA fiction: I wanted to get a solid idea of what already existed in the fictional space.
After that I started looking on Trove and in archives. Once I learned to decode 19th century coded language for queerness ('abomination', 'unnatural', 'impersonation of sex', for example), I found that there was a really rich colonial history of queerness in the country, and I followed as many threads as I could. I went to the State Library and hunted down admissions records for the Fremantle Asylum, had documents delivered from interstate, and spent a lot of time wading through old newspapers and legal records.
Faith: What was your favourite aspect of the research you did?
Meg: It was really healing, in a way, to find such a written record of Australia’s queer history. We were never taught in school, you see, or at uni. Reading the Moonlite letters in particular was very emotional. I think my favourite thing was reading a 1908 autobiography of a pansexual genderqueer thief called Marion-Bill Edwards. It was so full of joy and humour, so unrestrained and unashamed.
Jacob: This is your third historical fiction novel – is there anything in particular that draws you to writing historical fiction?
Meg: I’ve always been a huge history nerd, because it’s all just stories. I’m particularly interested in the history that gets overlooked, and I’m obviously drawn to queer history (my next novel is queer historical fantasy). There’s something really beautiful about connecting with people from hundreds of years ago – knowing that they had some of the same joys and fears that we do, that we can learn from their lives.
Amanda: Gil and Norah are both outsiders in different ways. How does that shape their decisions throughout the novel?
Meg: Gil is really stifled by that 'outsider' status. It drags down every decision and causes a lot of anxiety and depression. At the beginning of the book, Gil would do anything to be able to be absorbed back into society and essentially be forgotten.
For Norah, being an outsider has given her a deep ability to empathise and connect, particularly with other people who find themselves on the margins. She is curious and warm and very insightful, and I think many of her decisions are intuitive in a way that serves her, while Gil tends to overthink to a detriment.
Lia: Reading the author's note, I noticed that you wrote 'the bad should not go forgotten or unacknowledged' – what was a particular moment in the book that you think, though damaging, 'should not go forgotten or unacknowledged'? Conversely, what is a more witty or uplifting line that you think 'should not go forgotten or unacknowledged'?
Meg: I approached the racism in the book very carefully. I’m not a First Nations person, and the last thing I wanted to do was inflict harm through careless representation. At the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that Gil and Norah move through the world with particular privileges, and they have their own blind spots and ignorance. I worked with two excellent sensitivity readers at different stages of the novel to try to minimise harm there, and to make sure that instances of racism did not come across as gratuitous.
Conversely, I really connected with an observation Gil makes about two women in the asylum: that they are committed to their malady, and have no interest in self-improvement. It speaks to a powerful thread of defiance that we see throughout queer history in people who defied society and the authorities in thousands of small and enormous ways to find love and community and self-acceptance.
Clodagh: Norah and Gil act as a representation of the LGBTQIA+ community, creating a voice for those forgotten and not accepted. Do you think these characters will help more people realise the prominence of this community in history? And why do you believe these stories should be shared?
Meg: I hope so. The narrative that queerness is a modern 'trend' is really pervasive and really damaging. I think it’s immensely valuable and validating for queer people to look back at those who have gone before us, because we’ve existed in every community, in every chapter of history.
Queerphobia is on the rise, particularly transphobia. It’s useful to look back at our history so we can learn strategies for our own safety and wellbeing, and so that we can remember our own resilience and resourcefulness.
Miles: A Flash in the Dust brings a part of our reality that society tries to hide into the spotlight. What is the most vital message unique to your book that you want readers to take away from it?
Meg: Both Gil and Norah talk of themselves as being 'little bits of nothing' because they don’t have the language to describe what they are. They are both afraid that they are anomalous, and that this means they will never have normal or happy lives and experiences. That’s a fear I carried for a long time.
I hope readers – in particular young readers – take away the message that they are not alone. That even if they don’t have a queer community in their lives yet, they will one day. That they walk in the footsteps of so many other people. That they have a history, and that means they have a future too. One that is worth fighting for, and sticking around for.
Meg Caddy (she/they) is an Australian author of historical fiction for young adults. Their fantasy novel Waer was shortlisted for the 2013 Text Prize and the 2017 CBCA Book of the Year Award, and their historical fiction Devil’s Ballast was shortlisted for The Readings Young Adult Prize in 2020. Slipping the Noose, a sequel to Devil’s Ballast, was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize in 2022. Meg’s fourth YA novel, A Flash in the Dust, was released on 2 June 2026.
The Readings Teen Advisory Board is a volunteer group for Australian teenagers interesting in reading, publishing and Australian books. You can find out more about the board here.
