We're all familiar with the stories of struggling writers - the piles of rejection letters from publishing houses, the abject poverty, the bad posture from years spent hunched over a desk.
But for Katherine Brabon, 29, the publication of her first novel, The Memory Artist, occurred with a suddenness and smoothness that she is still trying to figure out.
The Melbourne author has won the coveted Vogel's Literary Award, a manuscript prize open to writers under 35 years of age which includes publication by Allen and Unwin and $20,000 prize money.
"For it to happen so quickly, I'm still turning around going, 'how did that happen and how did I come to be a writer?'" says Brabon, who was in Sydney for the award's presentation on Tuesday night.
"I was ready to wait a lot longer, I was prepared for a lot more of a struggle. I know how difficult it is and so I'm feeling incredibly grateful that this will be a book that I get to hold so soon."
The award has launched the careers of some of the country's most successful novelists, including Gillian Mears, Tim Winton and Kate Grenville. But unlike their entries and many of the past winners of the annual award, Brabon's book has no links to Australia in its setting, plot or characters.
The Memory Artist tells the story of Pasha Ivanov, whose childhood apartment in Moscow was used for secret dissident meetings during the years of Brezhnev's tyrannical rule over the Soviet Union.
Years later, as a young man living in St Petersburg after Gorbachev has promised openness for the country, the death of his mother triggers Pasha's desire to create art and as he travels across Russia he retreats into his own memories and the country's troubled past.
"I'm quite excited that the Vogel's Award has taken on something that doesn't have that Australian connection," Brabon says. "Australian literature doesn't have to be set in Australia. There's a lot in here that echoes important considerations for everyone, about the value of art in particular."
While Brabon has always been an avid reader, she did not grow up wanting to become a fiction writer and had only tried her hand at a short story before starting on her novel. She nurtured a passion for Russian history during high school, an arts/law degree in Melbourne and a Masters in History at Oxford.
The Memory Artist was written for the PhD in creative writing that she is set to complete at Monash University by the end of the year.
"It was this really overwhelmingly sad story but I could only say so much in a history essay and so somehow I started writing this novel," Brabon says.
Reading the novel, it is easy to assume, Brabon must have lived in Russia for some time, but while she does speak Russian nearly fluently, she had only visited the country once before she started writing.
Her studies gave her the factual basis for the work and she relied heavily on archival research, particularly photographs, to give her a better sense of the time and place.
Brabon plans to keep writing fiction, perhaps shifting her focus to a new country, and hopes to continue with her academic work.
"I think universities are getting better now at recognising that creative work is an academic output," she says. "Whereas it used to be that a novel would be in in your list of other publications, now it is right up in front as a research work."
