About Me
Photo by Angela Bailey
Amra Pajalic is born and bred in Melbourne’s Western suburbs and this is the inspiration for her debut novel The Good Daughter published by Text Publishing. The Good Daughter won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award, and was a finalist in the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award and was shortlisted in the 2007 Victorian Premier’s Awards for Best Unpublished Manuscript.
Her short stories have placed in competitions, been published in magazines, journals and anthologies. Amra conducts short story workshops and was funded by Artists in Schools to be an Writer in Residence in high schools in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
She has a Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing and a Bachelor of Arts.
Amra is working on her second novel funded by Arts Victoria. She lives in St Albans, Melbourne, with her husband, daughter and three cats, and is a co-author and Project Manager for What a Muslim Woman Looks Like.
The personal story
I always knew that I wanted to be a writer and used to read out loud to my brother before I knew my ABC’s, inventing stories to go along with the pictures in the picture books. The day my brother learnt to read and caught me out was the darkest day of my childhood, and as payback I gave him a special haircut by hacking his fringe.
After finishing high school I bypassed university, with the vague idea that life experience is what made a person a writer. I embarked on a series of dreary office jobs to pay the bills. Realising that I was ambitious I commenced a shorthand course with the view of furthering my ‘career’ only to discover that I hated it.
I completed the course and after graduating I burnt my shorthand certificate and relegated the experience to the darkest corners of my mind, but it led to an epiphany of sorts. If I could complete a course that I hated so much, and do so well at it, what would happen if I studied something I had a passion for?
In 2000 I commenced the Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing at the Council of Adult Education where I learnt the practical skills of becoming a professional writer. After an abandoned attempt at a romance novel I went back to the advice to write what you know. And so The Good Daughter was created.
I share a few similarities with Sabiha, the protagonist of The Good Daughter. We are both of a Bosnian background, both live in St Albans—a suburb in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs, and both have mothers who are Bi-Polar sufferers. Unlike Sabiha, I lived overseas in Bosnia for four years as a child and am in touch with my cultural roots and can speak Bosnian.
After living in Sydney for four years, where I completed a Bachelor of Arts when I realised administration jobs had only so much appeal, I decided to move back to Melbourne. Realising you can take the girl out of the Western Suburbs, but can’t take the Western Suburbs out of the girl I bought a house in St Albans, around the corner from the house my parents live and where I grew up. I share my new home with my husband, daughter and three cats.
To learn more about my creative processes read this whohub on-line interview or listen to this radio interview on ABC Radio National Life Matters program, to know more about St Albans the area I grew up in and where I set my novel see this video as part of the Trace to Place project or if you want to find out about me see this video filmed as part of the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature.
See my other interviews on my media page
My Bosnian page:
