Coincidently, Wood is promoting her third novel, The Children, about the fragile relationships within an Australian family. A Sydney-based novelist, Wood was driven by the desire to write about a country town and siblings.

In The Children, protagonist Mandy and her siblings return to the country town of Rundle, due to an accident that has left their father unconscious. Mandy, a foreign correspondent, is forced to face up to the realities which she has left behind – her faltering marriage and her alienation from her family. In her attempts to reconnect with her family she also battles emotional scars from her job and confronts a stranger from her past.

Readers have been drawn to the novel’s theme of family with many identifying with a particular character. During the festival, Wood’s sessions drew a number of comments about the relationships between the siblings. Even though they are almost middle aged, the Connolly siblings frequently bicker and bully one another.

“I had a lovely letter from a reader in his fifties who said that every time his siblings are together they still behave like children.” Wood recounts.

A devoted aunt, Wood’s eyes flicker with interest over the antics of the children playing around us. Between her and her husband they have 18 nieces and nephews. She smiles as the former tantrum throwing child happily walks past with her mother. “It’s only with our family that we really behave badly, but we always forgive each other.”

Wood acknowledges that it is usually only when a parent passes away that adult children assume greater family responsibility.

Having lost her parents to cancer in her twenties, Wood was forced to grow up quickly. “There comes a time when you decide either to behave like children or adults.” Wood believes that this common experience of losing a parent tends to deepen mutual love and respect between adult siblings, as it does in The Children.

Mandy was initially inspired by Wood’s reunion with a foreign correspondent friend who had also grown up in a country town.

“I was a bit shocked when I saw her as she seemed to have turned into a hard person,” Wood admitted. Wood realised that her friend had adopted a hardened exterior to cope with the trauma of her job. Through Mandy, Wood investigates how a woman copes with the pressures of being a war reporter and returns to the peace and isolation of rural Australia.

Mandy is a tough and highly intellegent woman but lacks "a perceptiveness about human relationships,” according to Wood. In one scene her husband Chris realises that Mandy’s wedding ring is missing. Having given it away to a distraught nurse separated from her boyfriend in Baghdad, Chris struggles to see the act of kindness from Mandy’s perspective as he is far removed from her experiences during war.

Wood’s exploration with war is a highlight of the novel. Confronting, heartbreaking and starkly real, Mandy’s flashbacks humanise war scenes that we usually only see on SBS World News. For Mandy, a faraway gunshot sound in Rundle triggers images of bloodied corpses and night mortar attacks.

Wood’s research for The Children involved reading many war memoirs. She admits some lacked a certain authenticity, as if there’s a compulsory requirement for every war correspondent to churn out a memoir. Although she cites Janine di Giovanni’s Madness Visible: A Memoir of War in her acknowledgements which Wood describes as being written beautifully and selflessly.

Wood claims she lacked a deeper insight into a war zone and felt fraudulent writing about war without seeing one for herself. “My friend offered to take me to the Gaza Strip or Baghdad, but I declined.” She says with a slight smile.

A trip to Sarajevo helped Wood to imagine the pain of a city living through war. She describes Sarajevo as a place which is “scarred” where bullet holes remain in the buildings and streets. Wood and her husband were guests of an elderly woman who lived in a tiny apartment who was obsessed with her immaculate red sofa.

“She mimed to us the sounds of the mortar attacks,” Wood describes. “It was very sad, but good to go there to see this very small corner of utter daily domestic deliverance.”

The Children raises the question of how one deal with the suffering and atrocities of war whilst living in a comfortable and safe life in Australia. “It is a quandary,” Wood concedes, “But it is better to be aware than be ignorant and to be politically active.”

Wood is uncertain if writing fiction can change the ways of the world but believes that it can certainly challenge people to think and understand others. “Art is about connecting to a deeper understanding of the world,” Wood says, “The culture of reality TV and Today Tonight-type programs scares the hell out of me, for me reading is about empathy and imagination.”

Wood’s first novel Pieces of a Girl was published in 1999. Her second novel, The Submerged Cathedral, was shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award but had initially been rejected by a publisher.

“It was heartbreaking,” Wood admits. When asked about writing as a career, Wood is quick to breakdown any misconceptions about being a novelist.

“Writing is a hard business, there is no fame and glory in writing.”

Her advice to budding Vibewire writers is simply to read and write. In her past experiences of teaching she is often surprised when students say they have no time for either. “To be a writer you need to learn to observe closely and quietly and to look outward more than inward.”

Wood enjoys meeting readers and confesses that she loves the Perth Writer’s Festival. “It’s relaxed, cruisy and the weather is amazing.”

Staring across the road to the shimmering Swan River, Wood wishes she had been able to spend more time in Perth. For now though, she is more than happy to go to her next festival session to talk about her characters in The Children as if they are her very own family.

Photo courtesy of Allen and Unwin.