![Courtney Collins, the author of Bird, will launch the book in conversation with Rosemarie Milsom at MacLeans Booksellers on July 31. Courtney Collins, the author of Bird, will launch the book in conversation with Rosemarie Milsom at MacLeans Booksellers on July 31.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/324VkdtvqnBSp7aYw6KyqmM/faddfd0c-d6f7-4bc5-8bd0-881e920d62d4.jpg/r0_0_3648_5472_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
It's been a long time in the making, but Courtney Collins' latest novel, Bird, has been worth the wait.
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Collins, who values her formative years as a fiction writer spent earning a masters degree in English literature from the University of Newcastle, has brilliantly crafted this 320-page book published by Hachette Australia.
Bird, set for release on July 31, is the story about a girl (named Bird) who comes of age in two challenging worlds - in modern day Darwin as a young teen with a natural talent for art who is trying to figure out where she belongs in the world, and as a child growing up in a village in the Himalayas, who has no intention of living life in a relationship forced on her as a child.
![Bird, published by Hachette Australia, is released on July 31. Bird, published by Hachette Australia, is released on July 31.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/324VkdtvqnBSp7aYw6KyqmM/461be985-fd73-4a3c-89de-605494910ab1.jpg/r0_0_1813_2767_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
It is also the story of another woman, nurse Margie Shapiro, approaching mid-life, who is warding off an emotional breakdown and complete crisis.
The book addresses several themes - how we value young women, intergenerational trauma, the necessity of connection for survival, the power of art, and pursuing a spiritual life outside of organised religion.
The storytelling is clear and engaging. The dialogue resonates.
Collins, who was a journalist in her younger years, has an eye for detail.
"It's paying attention, and wanting to name things as cleanly and accurately as you can to paint the picture. That's what I was aiming for," she says.
I knew I wanted to write a story about connection. I knew that I wanted to write a story about the way trauma ricochets through lifetimes. And I wanted the protagonist, the heroine, to be a young woman, a girl.
- Courtney Collins, author of Bird
Collins is an author, screenwriter and producer. More than a decade ago, she was a finalist in The Stella Prize for her breakthrough novel, The Burial. She works as a producer, writer and podcaster (Are You Still Working? interviews with arts practitioners).
It's a chilly morning as we speak, but she's quite comfortable with a roaring home fire burning in the mud-brick home she shares with her partner and dog on the banks of the Kalang River, near Bellingen, on the Mid-North Coast.
She's had her early morning dip in the river. "I've taken up this morning ritual of plunging in, for two seconds - having a scream and jumping out again. But it's good. It's a re-set," she says..
Collins loves what it brings to her life: "It's the repetition, the ritual. It's a really helpful way to deal with uncertainty I think."
Collins had the seeds of an idea for the book in her head, and in a touchstone moment, she solidified the storyline during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.
"I knew I wanted to write a story about connection," she says. "I knew that I wanted to write a story about the way trauma ricochets through lifetimes. And I wanted the protagonist, the heroine, to be a young woman, a girl.
"I was in New York at MOMA. And there's an artist who I love, Georgia O'Keeffe, and she happened to have a retrospective, and she has a painting called Evening Star, which is this incredibly simple and beautiful watercolour image of parallel lines at the bottom of the image that wrap around a sun.
"It was one of those things, you see a work of art. And it gave me such a buzz [because] I recognised the shape of the book in it. And it might make no sense to anybody else, but that image just kept me going. That's the shape it holds, that's the shape it takes. Parallel lines coming together to be something whole, and I guess, you know, in any long works, I worked on this book for years, you need those guiding images to pull you through because you're loading something up with so many desires and ideas, and the clarity of that image was the thing for me.
"It's also true to the idea of the book, which is art in itself can reveal us to ourselves. There's something about seeing a great painting, or a great film, or hearing a great song, it can show yourself to yourself. You can discover yourself in it."
Initially, she had planned to dive into writing the book while living with her partner at Ngukurr in south-east Arnhem Land. But the immediacy of life there did not allow her to focus solely on writing the book (she found herself producing the stories of First Nations artists and storytellers). But the eight years there had a profound affect on her outlook, and ultimately, the book she wrote.
During her youth, Collins' taste in literature gravitated toward "sad and existential stories".
"It was very much this story 'you're born alone and you die alone', and for some reason, I took that to be true. It doesn't really hold up when you examine it.
"It really wasn't until I lived in south-east Arnhem Land, in Ngukurr, in every person in that community, my friends and neighbours and colleagues, their belief was you're born connected and you die connected. And when I began to take that on, and take that in, really, that was a fundamental shift."