We need new voices and unconventional narratives to guard against rigidity. Plots that are distinct and lucid and sometimes boiling hot.

A few years ago I was in Cairns. I went to look at the house I grew up in, a boxy white timber thing with all the louvres, slats, lattice work, French doors and big timber beams and posts, you would expect of a tropical house built in the 1980s. The house sat on a steep gradient – looking down at it from the street, it felt as though there should be countless short stories to pull from such a place.