Q&A with Maggie Mackellar
Tassie-based writer Maggie Mackellar shares what she's eating and reading this month ahead of the release of her new book Graft.
Maggie Mackellar is a writer living on a fine wool merino farm on the east coast of Tasmania. Her new book Graft comes out next week, April 25. It’s a story of motherhood, family and living on the land, and we cannot wait.
Maggie is a regular contributor to Country Style and Graziher magazines. She has a wonderful podcast, and her weekly newsletter The Sit Spot, is a favourite of ours.
In short, this is a writer with a very special voice, a generous spirit and outrageous talent. We are thrilled to have Maggie Mackellar do our Something to Eat and Something to Read Q&A today.
What’s the last book you read and LOVED and why?
I’m going to cheat and ask myself the last fiction/nonfiction/poetry book I read and loved.
The two books that have stayed with me this year were both written in the 70s. Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book is a quietly moving funny and profound novel. Set on a tiny island off the Gulf of Finland, an elderly artist and her 6-year-old granddaughter wander through the summer after the death of the artist’s daughter, the granddaughter’s mother. Esther Freud writes in her Foreword, “The Summer Book is impossible to categorise: a work of fiction, adventure, humour and philosophy, its structure a beautifully observed overlapping of the months of summer.”
And jostling alongside this is May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude (1973). I have transcribed great chunks of this book into my journal. Sarton, a prolific novelist, poet and memoirist, set herself the task of keeping a journal of a year in Nelson, New Hampshire. “I am here alone for the first time in weeks to take up my ‘real’ life again at last. That is what is strange – that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened.” She explores both her inner geography while mapping the movement of the seasons in the garden, and along the way, she talks about art, aging, death, loneliness, gardening, love and friendship.
The last book of poems I read was Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind. I love her. That is all. If you don’t think you are someone who reads poetry well have a little crack at Ada Limón’s work. Here’s a taster if you haven’t read her before Foaling Season.
Stop Press: Am nearly finished listening to India Knight’s Darling a retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. It’s read by Sophie Winkleman who is genius. Oh my goodness, it’s so, so funny. Have been texting memorable lines backwards and forwards with a friend for two days. Food features heavily – am only ever going to bake darling cakes from now on. Hard recommend if you don’t mind swearing, scatological references and pure joy.
What was the last meal you had in a restaurant and LOVED? And why?
We are so lucky to have The Waterloo at Swansea just up the road. A young couple (Alex and Ben) have taken it on and made it the place to eat on the coast. The restaurant is unrenovated straight out of the late 70s, early 80s, and the only thing they’ve changed is the food and grog list. Consequently, this is a place full of soul with a killer view over Great Oyster Bay to Freycinet National Park. Add the swoony food, and it’s quite hard to get a table. Last time I went we had crayfish vol au vents with tarragon, anchovy toast with taramasalata and fried rosemary, focaccia with Sobrasada and hot honey (my absolute fav) and Pork Coppa with Gnocca Fritto and salsa verde. Follow them on insta for the quirky interior and the drool-worthy menus.
What was the last meal you had at home and LOVED? And why?
Freshly caught crayfish cooked in seawater with a crisp Bream Creek Pinot Grigio followed by home-killed lamb chops cooked on a wood fire bbq with a tomato salad with basil olive oil and mozzarella. This is my favourite summer meal. Winter is lamb shanks and mashed swedes.
What’s your go-to comfort food?
Cheese on toast (with a single malt whiskey if significant comfort is required).
What’s your go-to comfort read?
It depends on the sort of comfort required. But my go tos are: Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals, which I know basically off by heart. I also love Elizabeth Goudge The Herb of Grace and have a very soft spot for Georgette Heyer and reread Sense and Sensibility usually once a year.
A cookbook you are loving cooking out of at the moment?
My friend Michelle Crawford sent me Lazy Baking by Jessica Elliott Dennison. I don’t know how I survived without it. I use it all the time. The coffee cake, the crumble base, the pastry recipe, the pork and fennel sausage rolls. I’m not a confident baker, but this book makes it super easy.
You get to invite four of your favourite writers over for dinner, who are they?
The pandemic gifted me a writing group and we meet weekly over Zoom. We are far flung, so to have them all around my table would be bliss. The talk would be intense and hilarious and rude and deep and smart. Four of us have books out. Jessie Cole’s Desire: a reckoning, Meg Bignell’s The Angry Women’s Choir and Bronwyn Birdsall’s Time and Tide in Sarajevo and our fifth member Carolyn Fraser is possibly the best natural storyteller I’ve ever met, and you will all want to read her book when it’s published. They are all women of appetite and creativity, it would be a dinner to remember.
I thoroughly enjoyed this Q&A. Another few books to had to the stack. Thank you so much.