Rhyll McMaster, author of Feather Man - winner of the inaugural Barabara Jefferis Award - is target=new>interviewed by Lauren Wilson in "The Australian".
McMaster's novel is certainly confronting: in the first chapter the young heroine is sexually assaulted by a trusted family friend in a chook pen. By the novel's close, she is still grappling with the psychological toll of the abuse. But McMaster is unapologetic for writing about issues deemed unpalatable by society. "I think writers by and large are interested in the dark side," she says, "in what's not acknowledged, what's under the surface; and the dark places we know exist but (that) are not polite to talk about."Consequently, she says, she knew she wasn't receiving the run-of-the-mill rejection letters from publishers, but that they found her manuscript genuinely scary. "So when I found a publisher (small publishing house Brandl & Schlesinger), that was really a great day."
