Elizabeth Hay on writing: “I like to write with a pen or pencil on paper. I have a rocking chair with wide arms in my second-floor study. I sit in the chair, place a piece of plywood across the arms and write on that flat surface. I got the idea from reading about Virginia Woolf, who worked the same way in the grubby back of the house where they printed the books for Hogarth Press. It gives me much more peace of mind to work this way than directly in front of a computer screen.”

At the heart of Hay’s newest novel, Snow Road Station, is the friendship between Lulu and Nan, now in their sixties and contemplating what to make of the rest of their lives.