Since she began writing in the 1990s, multi-award-winning Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko has been flipping the script. With grit, defiance and killer one-liners, her novels relate the untold stories of Aboriginal Australians living ordinary lives. In the process, her work dismantles lazy stereotypes and exposes the realities of Australia’s colonial legacy.

Her latest novel, Edenglassie, moves between mid-nineteenth-century and contemporary Brisbane to interrogate the myths of the past and explore how they’ve shaped our present. In this conversation with Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver – which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity – Melissa reflects on the challenges and possibilities of historical fiction and the writer’s role in helping us understand who we are.