It’s full of my favourite books, which I’m constantly plucking off the shelves for inspiration. I work from my study at home, which is a quiet room away from the rest of the living area in our flat. With all that’s on her plate she barely has time for her favourite distraction - spying on the beautiful Rosa, who dances flamenco at the tapas bar across the road. But after a misjudged crush on one of the cool girls, she’s become the school punchline as well. It tells the story of seventeen-year-old Delilah, who’s been struggling to run the family’s café -The Flywheel - since her father took off overseas, as well as survive high school. Danielle Binks has described it as “a tender-true story of girl meets girl, falling in love and finding your feet”.

The Flywheel, published in February, is a novel for young adult readers. WHAT IS YOUR LATEST BOOK OR CURRENT PROJECT? Working with the editors at Hardie Grant to get the manuscript up to scratch has taught me a great deal about writing and has been an incredibly rewarding experience. In 2013 I found out I’d won Hardie Grant Egmont’s Ampersand Project for my manuscript. Over the next two years that book became The Flywheel.

It bought me some time to write, and gave me the confidence to believe my book idea was a decent one. Then in 2011 I applied for and received an Australia Council Emerging Writers grant to work on a novel for young adults. Ones I took advantage of included the Australian Society of Authors mentorship program and a residency at Varuna, The Writers House in the Blue Mountains. When I got to uni I was lucky enough to meet a bunch of writer types who educated me about opportunities for aspiring writers. Making up stories was always my favourite school project, and I started entering short story competitions when I was about fifteen. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. Her first novel, The Flywheel, published in February 2015, was the winner of Hardie Grant Egmont’s Ampersand Project. Erin Gough is a Sydney-based writer whose award-winning short stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including Black Inc.’s Best Australian Stories, Southerly and Going Down Swinging.

The flywheel by erin gough