ANGELA MEYER has been published widely, including in Best Australian Stories, Island, Cordite, The Australian, The Lifted Brow, and Killings. She is the author of Captives (Inkerman & Blunt). She is also a commissioning editor for Echo (Bonnier Publishing Australia). She has published Emma Viskic, Gary Kemble, Alison Evans, L.J.M. Owen, and many others, and acquired The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, currently selling into multiple territories around the world. literaryminded.com.au / @literaryminded
Her poem ‘New’ appears in The Suburban Review #8.
TJR: What inspired you to write ‘New’?
AM: A relationship that blossomed over Snapchat, while I was very far away. I wrote ‘New’ before we physically met and yes, we did hold hands as soon as we met.
TJR: What does it feel like when your writing is on a roll and things are flowing nicely?
AM: The channel from the subconscious and all one’s thoughts and experiences—everything you’ve seen, smelled, heard, touched—filters through a more logical, structural consciousness and the words go down on the page/screen, and it does feel like something magical or otherworldly, in moments. Then you have to edit.
TJR: How does your work as an editor influence your work as a writer?
AM: It is an extreme privilege to get to work with authors. I acquire and I structural edit, so my working relationships are often about bringing out the story, characters, themes—making the book really gel as a whole. The relationships are all so different. Some over email, some in person; one author I’ve been speaking to for a couple of years on the phone. Mostly the effect my job has on my writing is that I now ride a kind of rollercoaster of passion, hope, and sometimes anxiety and heartbreak with a bunch of other people! I think, looking back at this answer, being a writer affects my daily work much more than the other way around. My very busy day job mainly affects me as a writer by taking up a lot of my time and headspace, so I’ve just become a bit slower in recent years.