Member Spotlight: Eleanor Limprecht

6.06.22

Our June Member Spotlight features Eleanor Limprecht, the 2020 winner of the Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship! The $20,000 scholarship is offered annually to an Australian author to provide them with valuable time to work on a current manuscript, and this month Eleanor's winning manuscript, The Coast, was published by Allen & Unwin!

Eleanor Limprecht was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Germany and Pakistan before moving to Australia in 2002. She is the author of The Passengers (Allen & Unwin, 2018), Long Bay (Sleepers Publishing, 2015) and What Was Left (Sleepers Publishing, 2013, shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal). Her short fiction and essays have been published in various places including Best Australian Stories, Sydney Noir, Griffith Review, Kill Your Darlings and The Big Issue. Eleanor works as a lecturer in Creative Writing at UTS.

What inspired you to begin writing?

While researching my second novel, Long Bay, I spent some time at Little Bay and visited the Prince Henry Nursing and Medical Museum. I learned then that a small leper colony had been part of The Coast Hospital and was immediately curious. Later, I read a wonderful essay by Rebecca Solnit about leprosy called “The Separating Sickness” in Harper’s Magazine and realised that our familiar perceptions of what is now known as Hansen’s Disease are completely wrong. It is not at all contagious, people’s extremities do not ‘fall off’ and the stigma around the disease can be far worse than the symptoms. In Australia, leprosy meant lifelong imprisonment for most sufferers until the late 1940s - the government could lock you away and there was no cure. It wasn’t until a cure was discovered in the 1940s in Carville, Louisiana in the USA that the treatment and stigma around the disease began to change. 

What did winning the Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship in 2020 mean to you? How has it helped you in writing your new book, The Coast?

Winning the Blake-Beckett was a huge boost to my confidence. It also allowed me to spend more time on research and community consultation for The Coast. Early on, a few people expressed disbelief that I wanted to write a novel about Hansen's Disease - they thought it sounded unpleasant. My mother actually said: ‘Who wants to read about that?’ But she has read The Coast now, and she loved it (at least she said she did). The Blake-Beckett gave me the wherewithal to keep going.

What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your writing journey?

I wish that I trusted my gut more often, that I was not influenced by what I thought I ought to do. As a lecturer of creative writing I see some questionable advice come in student workshops but also a lot of excellent feedback. I tell the students they have to make the call about what is right for their work, but it isn’t easy. It has taken me a long time to figure out what is right for me.

Which Australian authors or illustrators have been influential for your writing practice and career?

I am a huge, huge admirer of the novels of Joan London. Amanda Lohrey writes the most perfect sentences. I am still thinking about Nam Le’s The Boat. I would read anything by Debra Adelaide and she has also been a mentor to me since 2007. At every moment in my career, I’ve been amazed by the generosity of other Australian writers. 

Learn more about Eleanor at www.eleanorlimprecht.com, on Twitter @theneedtoread or Instagram @author_eleanor_limprecht