Author and educator, Cameron Nunn, discusses his new release Echo In The Memory, and the importance of research as a basis for authentic historical fiction.

How has your experience as an educator influenced your writing?

As an English teacher, I always write with my students in mind. I love talking to them about the books they’re reading and what interests them. At the same time, I want to stretch less developed ways of thinking about the power of literature. I therefore try and balance accommodating and challenging the things they are reading.

What is most challenging about switching between your role as a school principal and your creative work as a writer?

I’m first and foremost a teacher. Even when I became a principal, I made a decision that I would continue teaching. Good teachers don’t just talk about how to write: they write with their kids. Words are the tools with which I do every part of my job. Getting alongside students and showing them how to write is the best part of my day. My greatest achievements are the writers that I’ve played a part in nurturing.

How did your writing process change between Echo in the Memory and your debut novel Shadows in the Mirror?

I learnt so much about the craft of writing between the first and the second novel. There were so many gracious YA authors who offered advice. I’ve also learnt that good editors are gold. If you’re humble enough to accept some tough criticism, you can grow so much. I hope my biggest growth was in how to develop an authentic voice.

What sparked your interest in the history of child convicts in Australia?

One day I saw a list of convicts on board a ship that had come to Australia and my son’s name was on the list. I began thinking about the power of a name that linked the past and the present. The choice of a child convict protagonist reflected the YA genre rather than a particular interest in child convicts. However, all that changed when I began my research.

Echo in the Memory has quite a complex narrative structure. Did its construction come naturally to you?

I knew I wanted to tell a past-and-present story to explore ways that a name links people. The idea to tell the convict story in the first person made it much easier to hide the name from the reader. I also wanted that voice to be immediate and powerful. I was concerned that there might be too much of the same-same that can creep in when describing parallel lives if I told them both in first person.

How did you approach researching Echo in the Memory?

My research began when an editor of the early manuscript commented that the convict voice just didn’t sound authentic. She was absolutely right. I set about asking other YA authors who’d used convict characters about their work and was taken aback that there was virtually no research. They were simply better writers than me. I began trying to find information but there was very little readily available. It wasn’t long before I contacted Macquarie University to access some of their material and, without intending to, fell into a PhD.

The convict boy’s voice comes across as incredibly authentic. How did you achieve that?

As part of my research I spent time in the archives in London. I knew that a series of interviews had been taken down from boys on a prison hulk. What was exciting was the extent of those interviews, many in the boys’ own words. Hearing their voices nearly 200 years later was so powerful. I looked at the slang they used, the way they formed sentences and ideas, their imagery and expressions. As I write dialogue, I speak it aloud so that I can hear it. In the end, every day became ‘talk like a pirate’ day. The challenge was to work out how I was going to make a street boy so articulate.

I used Amos’ storytelling as a device for allowing him to speak with such expressive metaphors. I didn’t find any boys who actually spoke like that, but that’s what fiction requires.

What did you find the most surprising about child convicts?

They were not poor little waifs who stole a loaf of bread to feed their hungry families. They were products of an entirely dysfunctional society. They were, by and large, habitual thieves who had usually been before the magistrates many times. But as they had few other means of support, theft was the easiest—if not the only—way to survive. Life was usually short and brutal. What they stole, they gambled, drank and spent on prostitutes— even at the ages of nine or ten.

Can you tell us a historical fact that didn’t make it into the novel?

Did you know that Dickens’s Artful Dodger was almost certainly based on a boy called Samuel Holmes, who was transported to Australia for stealing (among other things) an ox tongue? Dickens’s description of Fagin’s hideout and the method of training young pickpockets comes almost exactly from one of the transcripts of the interview with Samuel Holmes. That was my favourite discovery in the archives.

Echo in the Memory explores the impact of Australia’s colonial history. What would you like your teenage audience to take away from your book?

The Indigenous story was particularly important to me, especially as members of my family are Wiradjuri.

To talk about loss, displacement, brutality and betrayal without reflecting on the impact on Aboriginal people was impossible.

If the boys had a connection to place, how much more important is it to acknowledge Aboriginal connection to country. My hope
is that the motif of hands also speaks of the humanity that binds Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to the thousands of generations who lived here first.

...It’s one thing to tell a great story but our history deserves more...

How do you create realistic interactions between your characters?

I’m not sure that I did that as well as I’d like. I find it easier to imitate London street urchins than the 15-year-olds that I teach every day. If I’ve done well in that, I have to be grateful for some of the younger first-readers and wonderful editing team.

Is there anything you would like educators to know about the use of Echo in the Memory in classrooms and libraries?

Literature is such an important way of teaching about our past. Our best historians are usually the best storytellers. However, if we’re going to use literature to explain our nation’s past, it has to be well-researched. We’ve got some great YA historical writers like Jackie French, Kirsty Murray, Catherine Jinks and others. They combine the best of both arts. However, I get frustrated when I pick up one of the many child convict stories (and there are lots of them) to find they’re simply not grounded in any deep understanding of our past. It’s one thing to tell a great story but our history deserves more. I hope Echo in the Memory piques interest in our incredible journey.

Can you reveal to us what you’re working on at the moment?

It’s another convict narrative, partly set in the boys’ prison at Point Puer near Port Arthur. I loved drawing on those voices, so I’m hoping there’s a bit left to use.