Release

Brought to you by the brush turkey (Alectura lathami)

This month, I released my second novel BIRD. I could have said, ‘This month, my second novel BIRD was released’. But I want to restore agency to myself and talk about the active and personal experience of ‘releasing’.

One of the benefits of releasing something is that it creates space. Not overnight, and certainly not on publication day, a semi-tortured day for me of energetic clinging. But slowly, over days of travelling, talking, meeting booksellers and readers, gradually the thing is being released from organs and bones – all of the places I let it inhabit me...