Katherine Scholes is the author of several award-winning international bestsellers including The Rain Queen, Make Me An Idol, The Stone Angel, The Hunter’s Wife, The Lioness, The Perfect Wife and Congo Dawn. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages, and includes children’s titles as well as novels for adults. Her latest novel is The Beautiful Mother, an unforgettable exploration of what it really means to be a member of the human family, revealing the deep need we all have to find our own tribe.
Today, Katherine Scholes is on the blog to answer our Ten Terrifying Questions. Read on!
Katherine Scholes
1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born in Tanzania, and started school there. My family eventually settled in Tasmania – which was rather confusing because many people mix those two places up!
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
At twelve I wanted to be a journalist, reporting from faraway places. At eighteen I decided to be an artist like my mother, even though I had no talent to base this idea on. By the age of thirty I had discovered that writing was what I knew how to do.
3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?
At eighteen I thought the answers to the big philosophical questions in life had all been worked out, and if I read the right books and listened to the right people I’d soon have the facts down too! Now I think it’s a lot more complicated – and simpler.
4. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles influenced me early on, with its unpredictable plot and powerful setting in the Sahara Desert.
These days I often listen to film soundtracks as I write; favourites include themes from Gladiator and Out of Africa.
I really admire the powerful female figures in Kathe Kollwitz’s woodblock prints, created in 1920s Germany.
5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?
My first published work was a children’s book and after that each story just got longer and longer. The readership grew older as well. Eventually I found myself writing adult novels. I try to stop at about 120,000 words.
6. Please tell us about your latest novel!
The Beautiful Mother explores a woman’s relationship with a baby who is not her own. It’s set in an archaeologist’s camp in remote Tanzania, where academic knowledge about the evolution of the human species provides a background to a journey that is intensely personal. It’s a story about the revolutionary nature of love.
7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
To be inspired by the idea of being brave enough to take on a challenge that could change everything.
8. Who do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Ann Patchett – each of her novels evokes a completely different world, yet she seems at home in them all.
9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
I never look beyond the novel I’m working on – it fills my horizon. My ambition is to keep on being inspired by my own life journey, and to translate that into storytelling.
10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
Write the book you’d most like to read, and the one that only you can write.
Thank you for playing!
—The Beautiful Mother by Katherine Scholes (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.
The Beautiful Mother
'You are her mother in this moment. The future is another time.'
In a remote part of Tanzania known as the Cradle of Humankind,Essie Lawrence lives with her husband in an archaeologist's camp. One morning a chance encounter with two strangers out in the field sees her making a rash promise - one she has no idea how she can keep. When she returns home, she has a black baby in her arms, a motherless infant, too young even to have a name...
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