Eliza Henry-Jones is an author, freelance writer, PhD candidate and flower farmer. Her previous novels have been listed for multiple literary awards including the ABIA, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and QLD Literary Awards. Her work has also been published widely, appearing in place such as The Guardian, Country Style, The Big Issue, and The Age. Eliza has qualifications in psychology as well as grief, loss and trauma counselling.
1. Why do you write?
Writing fiction is what I’ve always turned to in order to understand the world. I love the escape of it, the challenge – and the astonishing joy of people reading what I’ve dreamed up.
2. Describe Salt and Skin in one (or two) sentence(s)
A recently widowed Australian woman and her two teenaged children move from their climate change effected farm to a remote Scottish island that’s still haunted by the trauma of the 17th century witch-hunts. After the woman sells a confronting photo to the papers, the family find solace on the islands – in the depths of the north sea, in the accused witches’ fragmented stories, and through piecing together the origins of a wild foundling.
3. What was the seed/kernel/inspiration for Salt and Skin? Did this manuscript change over time very much as you wrote it?
A trip to Orkney in 2017 inspired Salt and Skin. Visiting St Magnus Cathedral and coming face to face with the dungeon where people accused of witchcraft (they were overwhelmingly women) were held, and the hangman’s ladder they had to climb, was a very confronting experience. The physicality of these sites versus the absence of many of their stories really struck me and I wanted to explore the unexpected ways that sites of long-ago trauma continue to haunt the living.
4. When and where do you write? Did you travel or write in different spots when writing Salt and Skin?
I started writing Salt and Skin when my son was very young, and my usual habits were shaken up so much that I almost had to relearn how to write. S&S inexplicably started out as 4000 word poem in the notes app on my phone before I had the time (and brain space) to turn it into a novel. Verse was how I found a way into the story – how I first told it to myself. These days, I tend to write from 8pm – 1am. I like the lack of interruption. I’m not going to get a phone call, or have to pop to the shops, or feel the pressure to be good company. I can just be quiet and focus on the words. Salt and Skin was largely written with a newborn and then during lockdown, but I did work on it a little bit while on a Varuna residency at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland for another project.
5. Setting - land and sea - plays such a big role in this narrative. Rather than merely a backdrop it is often the impetus for character action and development. How did you find the process of writing flashes of drought-stricken Australia alongside details of salty wet Scotland?
Despite the elemental differences between the two places, I was very preoccupied with the ways that both Australia and northern Scotland are at the forefront of climate change events and that there is a universality of these experiences, despite the elemental differences. The disparity didn’t bother me so much as not being able to access either landscape during lockdown (when I worked on it most intensively), so the setting was very much an act of dreaming.
6. This story explores artmaking and the capturing of others’ experiences without ‘permission’. What was the inspiration for this, and was it drawn from experience at all?
Quite a few years ago I read an essay detailing the controversy around American photographer Sally Mann, and have been preoccupied with her work ever since. She took quite confronting and explicit photos of her children during the 1980s and I kept thinking – how do parents find themselves with such different boundaries around what parts of their children’s lives and bodies and stories should be kept private and what parts should be shared in the public sphere? And who protects the rights of the child if it’s the parent who’s transgressing those boundaries?
7. What are three things that sustain you as an author, or while you’re writing?
Other people’s work, chocolate, being able to go out and plant flowers or ride my horse and step outside the writing part of my brain for a bit.
8. The characters of Salt and Skin research folklore, witchcraft, and troubled histories. How did you find the process of researching and writing these elements yourself - as well as having your characters do the same?
Salt and Skin is actually part of my PhD, and it’s the most research I’ve ever done for a book. I loved researching the folklore and history of the northern isles. My main struggle with integrating the research into the book was navigating how many liberties I could take- what should remain entirely true to the actual sources, and what could I twist and change for the sake of the story?
9. Do you have a favourite passage, chapter or section of Salt and Skin?
Probably the final scene (which is proving to be a bit of a talking point with readers!). It’s almost word for word the poem I wrote on my phone when I was delirious and sleep deprived and it guided the whole direction of the novel.
10. Were you reading anything while writing Salt and Skin?
So many things! Lots of poetry, fantasy, folklore, textbooks and contemporary fiction.
BONUS QUESTION: Do you listen to music while writing? If so, what was playing while writing Salt and Skin?
I always listen to music when I write. For the initial writing of Salt and Skin, the artists I had nauseatingly on repeat were Lana Del Ray and James Vincent McMorrow. I prefer instrumental pieces when I’m editing – for Salt and Skin I listened to a lot of traditional Scottish music, Bach and Phillip Glass.