Brisbane author Megan Williams is on a roll. She won the 2022 Text Prize for her debut young adult novel Let’s Never Speak of This Again.
Recently Let’s Never Speak of This Again got another gong when it was announced as an honour book in the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards in the older readers category. (Each category has an overall winner, 1-2 honour books and a “shadow judges” kids choice winner).
The overall winner of the category was Karen Comer for her book Grace Notes, published by Lothian Children’s Books. Being named an honour book comes with a $4000 prize and a medal that can be emblazoned on the book.
Williams, 35, a Brisbane lawyer with three young children, was in Sydney for the awards ceremony while her husband Peter, also a lawyer, stayed home with the children.
“It was so exciting but very surprising,” Williams says. “I was over the moon just to be shortlisted and I wasn’t expecting anything else.”
It was vindication that the time she had spent writing at home during lockdown, sharing parenting duties with her husband, was not wasted. Williams is now back at work after what turned out to be three-and-a-half years of parental leave. Let’s Never Speak of This Again is the first thing she has written.
“I started it literally the first week of lockdown in March 2020,” she explains. “It was a great project and it took about seven months. “
It was done in bursts between her busy life as a mum of three children, one with special needs.
“I didn’t show it to anybody until I had finished it,” she recalls. “Then I showed it to my husband and a close friend.”
And she submitted it for the Text Prize and won, with a $10,000 advance and a publishing deal her reward.
The Age described the book as “a bittersweet and relatable portrait of adolescence, and what an awkward comedy of errors it can be”.
It’s about 16-year-old Abby who is navigating her teen years with her best friend Ella by her side. And with Ella’s brother, Will, interesting and attentive on the sideline. When a new girl, Chloe, turns up at school she become friends with her and that might affect her friendship with Ella. When something tragic happens, Abby has to face her feelings and work out what friendship really means.
“It’s written in first-person but it’s not autobiographical,” Williams says. “It’s really a book about friendship and how to navigate changes in friendship and what it means to be a good friend.”
Despite denying any autobiographical elements, some people weren’t convinced.
“My mum was convinced she was the mother,” Williams says. “But she wasn’t. But because she thought she was when I did the edit, I made it more flattering.” Well, as an author she can do that. Her mum must be chuffed.
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Now Williams is “in the early stages of marinating my ideas” for a new book. She admits life can be a tad chaotic with three young children but she’s got the hang of multi-tasking. She learnt that when she was writing in her head while breastfeeding and then getting the words down later on her laptop.
That first book was a great success and there’s no reason she can’t do it again. Her readers hope she will, particularly teenagers such as Allayne L. Webster, who gave the book an enthusiastic review summing it up this way:
“Traversing friendships and changing alliances, and grief and loss with the best of intentions, Abby’s anxieties, stuff-ups and funny saves are completely endearing and relatable, and so very now. Teens will love this. I did!”
That’s the sort of endorsement Megan Williams thrives on … and deserves.
cbca.org.au/2024-book-of-the-year-award-winners
Let’s Never Speak of This Again by Megan Williams, Text Publishing, $24.99
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