Kay Kerr answers our Ten Terrifying Questions!

Kay Kerr is a former journalist and community newspaper editor from Brisbane, now living on the Sunshine Coast with her husband and daughter and working as a freelance writer. Kay was writing the first draft of Please Don’t Hug Me, her first book, when she received her own autism-spectrum diagnosis.

Today, Kay is on the blog to answer our Ten Terrifying Questions! Read on …

Kay Kerr

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 Brisbane and grew up mostly in the Redlands, which is about 30 minutes away on the bayside. My love of reading definitely came from my parents, and books were always a huge part of our lives. Stories were a treat and books were to be treasured.

We lived in Ireland for a little while, in Dublin where my mum is from, and I got to go to school there, which I loved. We lived near the most beautiful place, Phoenix Park, which is definitely home to fairies and other magical folk. I still visit Ireland to spend time with family as often as I can. I moved to Brisbane when I was 18 for university and stayed there for nearly 10 years. Now I live on the Sunshine Coast with my husband and our daughter. There are no fairies here but it is a lovely place to live.

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?

When I was 12 I wanted to be a writer. When I was 18 I wanted to be a journalist, because I was told that was the only way to get paid and make a living as a writer. I signed my book deal just before I turned 30, so I found my way back to the thing I’ve always wanted to do. In fairness, the advice I got was not wrong, although there isn’t a lot of money in journalism these days either.

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?

Oh, heaps. I had all kinds of internalised misogynistic ‘not like other girls’ nonsense I clung to, as well as believing I would be happy if I reached a certain ‘goal weight’. I listened to heaps of emo/pop punk/angsty guys singing about how their ex-girlfriends are awful, which definitely contributed to that, as did all the other ways society teaches women to hate themselves. I was tearing myself down from the inside, whereas now I like myself, so that’s nice.

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?

I grew up loving so many classic books, so to name one I’ll say Little Women for its female relationships. For more contemporary influences, I loved the way Ned Vizzini wrote the inside of his protagonist’s head in It’s Kind of a Funny Story. Hannah Gadsby’s most recent stand-up show Douglas was the first time I’ve seen an autistic woman stand in her power and completely own it, so I know that is going to be a big influence for me with publicity of Please Don’t Hug Me and in future work.

5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?

I can’t do any of the other ones! No, to be honest, in between wanting to be a writer as a child, and giving it another go as an adult, I used writing as a way to process my feelings, work through pain and to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. Writing has always been the thing, and even if I never had a novel published, that would still be the case.

6. Please tell us about your latest novel!

Please Don’t Hug Me is my debut novel. It’s a contemporary Young Adult coming-of-age story about an autistic girl called Erin who is about to finish high school and navigating all of the change that comes with that. She has lost her job, which means she needs to find another one to save enough money for Schoolies. There are also precarious female friendships to navigate, plus exams, formal and a driver’s licence test that goes awry. Erin is trying to make sense of all of the chaos by writing letters to her brother Rudy, so it’s an epistolary novel.

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?

Well I hope people like reading the book, to start with! It’s a big gift people give to writers when they commit however many hours to reading their book, so I hope I make it worth their while. I hope autistic people who read it feel seen and maybe a little more understood. I hope neurotypical people might take away how to better understand or support the autistic people in their lives, and open their minds to finding ways to be more inclusive.

8. Who do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?

I admire Carly Findlay for not only her writing, but also her tireless disability advocacy. I am a better writer and person because of her work. I admire so many #LoveOzYA authors, but to name a few I’d say Vikki Wakefield and Anna Spargo-Ryan. They write books I love to read. I also admire A.S. King for writing books so weird and so good I still think about them months and years later. I admire anyone pursuing their dreams of writing a book. It’s terrifying and exhilarating and exhausting and such a joy.

9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?

I definitely don’t have any ‘you must write X amount of words a day’ goals, because that just wouldn’t work for my life. I write when I can and I’d like to keep doing that. Ideally I’d like to keep publishing books and I’d like my work to get better. I’d like to help young autistic people to feel more connected through my writing, and perhaps as a flow-on from that, through their own writing as well.

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?

Keep rewriting until what’s on the page represents the idea that is in your head. My first draft of Please Don’t Hug Me (and it would be generous to call it that) had no discernible plot and was about half the length of an actual novel. It was a blob of feelings and not a lot else. I knew the idea had merit and I kept writing and rewriting until it started to look like an actual book. The other side of that advice is to read widely, both in and outside the genre you’re hoping to write. When I feel disheartened or lacking motivation, reading other Australian YA really inspires me to keep working at it.

Thank you for playing!

—Please Don’t Hug Me by Kay Kerr (Text Publishing) is out now.

Please Don't Hug Me

by Kay Kerr

Erin is looking forward to schoolies, at least she thinks she is. But her plans are going awry.

She's lost her job at Surf Shack after an incident that clearly was not her fault, and now she's not on track to have saved enough money. Her licence test went badly, which was also not her fault- she followed the instructor's directions perfectly. And she's missing her brother, Rudy, who left almost a year ago. But now that she's writing letters to him, some things are beginning to make sense...

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