I have a new short story in the Saturday Paper this weekend (3rd August 2024). It’s called ‘Freedom’ and it’s about an encounter Kitty Oppenheimer has with a spy. I came across Kitty when I was researching my novel To Sing of War. The novel braids stories from New Guinea, the US (New Mexico), and Japan, and is set across the last nine months of the war. To Sing of War is young people making life and death decisions in a time of war, but it is also about disconnection and connection, about violence; how it erupts in intimate relationships, as well as on a larger international stage. Yet the narrative also traces love and friendship, and the sheer wonder of being alive on our astonishing planet. On my research trip to the US, I become interested in Kitty Oppenheimer and Freedom develops a fictional Kitty to explore how someone can be trapped inside a local community, fighting for their freedom, even when that community is engaged in global hostilities.





