Tell us about ‘Match Fixing’. What prompted you to write it?
‘Match Fixing’ is about arranged marriages, as they occur in the lives of Southeast Asian Australians. I interviewed several people who have had both positive and negative experiences of arranged marriages, and the goal is to explore how this important cultural practice impacts the lives of Australians, and how it fits into how we conceive multiculturalism in contemporary Australia.
I’m Indian-Australian, and arranged marriages have been a big, looming fixture in my life — I wanted to find out how other people experience them, and try to interrogate the practice through an ethical, cultural, and investigative lens.
Which nonfiction writer would you most like to have a drink with?
I’m a huge Helen Garner fan, and would do pretty much anything to sit down with her over a glass of something! I would love to pick her brain about her writing process, how she dealt with the uproar over The First Stone, and what her views are on contemporary feminism.
If I asked a friend of yours what you were good at, what would they say?
Probably time management — I’m a serial over-committer, and am always incredibly busy. It’s pretty fashionable these days to complain about how busy you are, but I do tend to cram in four or five projects alongside full-time work and finishing my Masters degree. But I love having lots on my plate, and couldn’t live any other way!
What was the last book you had trouble finishing?
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It’s just such a grim novel, and, despite some pleasing prose, was frustrating to get through. It felt like misery porn by the end — though its reviews have been positive, and it was longlisted for the Booker, so what do I know?
If you had to award a prize for nonfiction writing to one of the following books, which would you choose? Anna Funder’s Stasiland, Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, or Helen Garner’s The First Stone.
That’s such a difficult choice! Can I award several prizes? I would choose Anna Funder with Stasiland. I love Funder’s writing style, and how she structures her narrative around such disparate stories in a way that really pulls the reader into an understanding of the GDR. I would love to be able to write with her compassion, humour, and analysis.
What is a constant in your life, even as other things change?
My love of reading has never changed — I will always have one (or several) books on the go, and have never really adjusted the pace of my reading either. I just can’t imagine not reading a great book at lunchtime, and finishing my day the same way in bed.