The Kernel of My Story: A Guest Post by Emilia Hart

Our former Monthly Pick author is back with another genre-bending tale. Explore the magic and terrors of the deep in The Sirens, a story about sisterhood, resilience and the power of dreams. Read on for an exclusive essay from Emilia Hart on what made her want to write The Sirens.

I began brainstorming my second novel in 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. An Australian who had moved to London many years before, I was unable to visit my home country: the borders were closed, even to citizens. All over the world, planes idled on runways and in hangars. There was talk that the aviation industry might simply collapse. I began to fixate on the ten-thousand-mile journey from London to Sydney, and how I might traverse it in a world without long haul flights. Would I have to get a boat, I wondered, like my ancestors, who emigrated from England and Ireland? I love the ocean, and yet even in the twenty-first century, with the benefit of fast, modern shipping, the thought of being at its mercy terrified me. How, then, must my ancestors have felt?

They, at least, made the journey willingly; unlike the thousands of men, women and children who were transported to Australia as convicts from 1788 up to the 1860s. One of my ancestors had in fact facilitated one of those voyages, as the captain of the convict ship Atlas in 1801. Researching him for the first time in 2021, I discovered that his negligence led to the deaths of between 60 and 70 of the men and women on board. What struck me was that the convicts on the Atlas were Irish, like my female forebears who would emigrate during the famine only decades later. I was haunted by the thought of what the women in particular must have endured, what they must have done in order to survive.

I had the kernel of my story. Through my research, I discovered just how resilient these female convicts must have been – aside from the harrowing conditions of the voyage, they were sexualised and objectified at every turn, decried as concubines and whores. I wondered how these beginnings had shaped modern Australian society, where rates of sexual assault and violence against women remain shamefully high. I had already explored the echo of misogyny through time in my debut novel, Weyward, and here it was manifesting again, with a uniquely Australian flavour.

And yet, something lay beneath the historical record, glimmering below the surface. Women banded together onboard those journeys and in the so-called ‘female factories’ where they were held upon arrival in New South Wales. Just as now, women come together to speak out against the forces that would silence them. Misogyny isn’t the only thread woven through Australia’s past. There’s sisterhood, too.

I’m fortunate enough to have a wonderful sister of my own. This novel, about two sets of sisters – Lucy and Jess, Mary and Eliza – separated by time but connected by the sea, is in part a tribute to her. But it’s also a tribute to the sisterhood that exists between all women, and the power that comes from joining our voices together.