Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She has published two thrillers, two novels, and a non-fiction work on the Empress of Iran. Fireweather is her sixth book. Miranda loves to draw: her cartoons have featured in The Australian, and she regularly performs spoken word poetry. She loves taking photographs, rambling walks, and practicing kendo. Mamma, short-order cook, divemaster, nomad at heart –like every women, she wears many hats, conjuring Visions and noticing the smaller miracles.
Fireweather is a story that follows on from its prequel Thunderhead, coming back to the story of Winona Dalloway.
Thunderhead was called, ‘A feminist triumph and homage to Virginia Woolf,’ and ‘a potent exploration of suburban entrapment for women,’ by the Australian Book Review when it was released back in 2024, and some of the Woolfian themes continue here with Fireweather, in more than just the name of the protagonist.
A few years have passed, the husband is no longer the husband, and Winona is reeling from the changes in her circumstances, her health, and the city she calls home. The weather is dangerous, and the prose are as on fire as the bush.
It takes a lot of skill to capture the mental gymnastics of any of us, and bring those scattered thoughts into a narrative that regularly experiments with text and ideas and multiple points of view.
We managed to pin Darling down for her Irresistible interview just after the Stella shortlist was announced, and found out what she loves most about how her work is received by the public, and how she keeping all her own irons in the fire.
Congratulations for Fireweather making it onto the shortlist for the Stella Prize! It’s a great achievement. How would you describe where this prize sits in the landscape of other prizes? And do you think we’ll ever not need a separate prize for women, or is it more important to keep celebrating the ladies who can?
Miranda Darling: I think it’s an incredibly valuable prize. Firstly, it’s women and non-binary voices, which is fantastic, and opens the door to a whole other sense of diversity. It’s all about kaleidoscoping the narratives and bringing other voices and discussions into the mix.
Sometimes I feel like we need to intentionally redress the balance before we can all be mixed in together and we don’t need these things anymore. It has been very, very out of balance, and maybe the Stella prize came about as a reaction to that. Anything that destabilises the mono- narrative is good in my book- this year there’s a graphic novelist and poets and there are essays. I love that.
And the people behind Stella are so passionate and smart – it’s great!
That sense of multiple voices is also reflected in Fireweather- there’s a shifting voice and a fragmenting of narratives. How does that mirror what you’re saying in the book and about society generally?
It goes back to this fundamental sense that the mono- narrative has to be exploded, and that things that are considered true and unshakeable must be destabilised. I see myself as a little bit of a quiet revolutionary. I’m kind of a very gentle warrior who literally wants to bring the house down, but, you know, in a very sharing and caring kind of way, while making everybody laugh.
But I do have a real mission to do that, so I like telling a story from the most unlikely and overlookable points of view, even if just with a word.
I always think of the image of the kaleidoscope because when I was little, it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I love this idea that various strands or truths can be emphasised with the turn of a kaleidoscopic lens. It’s not to say that there are some things that are more true than others, but it’s not always the case that which someone tells you is true, is true. So it’s this idea of constantly questioning and shifting your lens.
What happens if you broke the paradigm and looked at something a different way? What if you paid attention to different things? What would that do? Attention is a moral act- you pay attention to what matters. So if we change that, if we don’t accept the way things are supposed to be, the way we’re supposed to value things, or look at things, what happens then?
In Fireweather my protagonist is at the receiving end of the world and resisting the narrative that’s been assigned to her and to everyone. There’s a monolith, and she’s only one tiny person.
The book is a sequel to Thunderhead. Will there be another book in the series?
Yes, it is a trilogy. A very loose one, so you can read them out of order, but it was always envisaged as three books.
You’re such a good fit for Irresistible magazine- we love the rebels!
It all exists side by side, right? That’s perfect. You collapse the boundaries and see what happens?
On the subject of resistance one of the big systems you come up against in the book is the medical world, and then there’s the patriarchy itself. How do you approach writing about these big systems that we all live inside, and often touch and are interweaved in our own homes and families?
I think you put your finger on it when you say it reaches right into the home. Obviously there are massive global currents, but I like to bring it right back down to tiny granular moments of experience, like a supermarket or a sandwich, because then we can see the reach all the way into our lives. One of the things I like to do is use humour. I always say it’s a funny book- dark, but funny!
I feel like we’re very well defended when it comes to the arguments for patriarchy and against it. We don’t necessarily come with a very porous mindset to these issues, because it can get very aggressive and intense, and it’s not something that many of us need in a day- to- day situation.
With humour, you can sneak around the back, and I think if you can make people laugh, then they can wonder why they’re laughing.
I’m not telling anybody anything, but I’m just offering some potential ways to look at things in different way. And that goes for the patriarchy too, but without me trying to drag the readers to it.
Yes, people don’t do well when they’re lectured too, do they? It tends to backfire!
It’s more like, if you’re laughing, just consider your own life, within your own parameters, and ask yourself- how does it all fit?
One of my greatest thrills is, for example, when people come up to me and say they will never see the supermarket in the same way. I’m like – yes! Because people are bringing their own experiences. It’s an act of co-creation, of views shifting together. That makes me very happy.
That’s lovely to get feedback like that. What is the best thing that anyone’s ever said to you – maybe at a book signing or if someone has come up to you?
Every interaction is precious and lovely. But one of the things that I have noticed, especially in the quieter signings or situations, is that people will come and quite amazingly open up. Often about instances of bullying or things that they’ve experienced in their life – men and women- that have a similarity in a way to something I’ve written- a sense of emotional truth. That’s very special. People feel that they can come and tell me things, and I will spend a long time talking and listening, because it’s unlocked something. Maybe on some level they’ve felt seen. There’s something that says- you know, you’re not alone.
That’s very powerful- the reaching into someone’s life with a novel. It’s a very potent vehicle to meet people one- on- one.
It really is because your most intimate space is inside your head. I’m very cognisant of that fact, and I try to tread very gently. It is a privileged place and people are spending hours on the material- I don’t want to waste their time.
Thinking about that response in people, some writers probably have a feeling they want to interrogate and reproduce in others – and the narrative comes second. Others have a story and the feelings go where they will. Do you have a sense of which comes first for you?
For me it’s the emotions, for sure. The narrative is there too, like a tuning fork against which you strike things, and your own body will vibrate differently according to your makeup. There’s feelings of unease, then there’s laughing, there’s feelings that can be placed opposite to each other. I like playing with these sorts of polarities which constantly intermingle, full of vibrational possibilities and creativity. I think I try to create a third state, an almost philosophical sense of the cosmic world, but I express that with a supermarket trolley that’s jammed.
You’ve talked before about using other mediums or tools as you write, like photography and music. Do you feel those things help you with that tuning fork, or is it all in the background somewhere?
It helps me a lot to go to ‘not words’ when I’m writing- things like drawing, a lot of photographs, things I find beautiful. I create playlists for each book and they have no words in them – or at least no words that I can understand because I can’t write with words in my ear. The mood is opening up the portal to a hyperawareness of the wondrous. Those things tend to get me there fast.
Stella Prize Winner Announced
13 May 2026
