Profile

Gregory Baines is the author of The Nail House, a Fairlight Moderns novella published on 1 August 2019.

Gregory lived in Newcastle, Sydney and Tasmania before attending Newcastle University (NSW) where he completed an arts degree focused on History and English. After working for three years as a web designer and project manager in Sydney, he moved to China to teach.

While at university, Gregory wrote some short stories and secretly wanted to become a writer one day. He started to write more frequently in China, stimulated by being plunged into a new world. His short stories were published on Café Diverso and included in a short story collection published in Shanghai, Party Like It’s 1984. During his last three years in China, he started working on his debut novella, which he completed upon returning to Australia.

Gregory now lives in a small country village outside Canberra. In his spare time he likes to paint.

Below is a short Q&A with Gregory:

How did you start writing?

I wrote a short story in Year Two and a very encouraging teacher praised me; I didn’t realise at the time, but I think it had the effect of making me think of myself as a ‘storyteller’ of sorts. Then through high school I wrote poetry and a few really bad short stories.

Did you always want to be a writer?

Not always. It wasn’t really till I was at university that I picked up a book of Peter Carey short stories and thought they were the most amazing things I had ever read. I plunged into writing short stories then and improved with a lot of hard graft. That was the start of really wanting to be a writer. Now I have lost the religiosity but still have the love of writing.

Have you ever experimented with other types of writing?

I wrote news for a student newspaper at university, and wrote bad poetry all through school and university. It was the regular blogging in China that, unintentionally, turned me into a writer. My first novel came out of that experience.