Erin Gough on the superpower of storytelling and representation

Gough is the Senior Associate for Community Wellbeing and Justice at the Paul Ramsay Foundation. The Foundation was bequeathed $3 billion following Ramsay Health Care founder Paul Ramsay’s death in May 2014, making it the largest philanthropic foundation in Australia at that time.

Its modus operandi is to work with other organisations to address social inequality, and to fund and guide initiatives that provide opportunities to those at a disadvantage.

Prior to joining the Foundation, she managed a number of reviews for the NSW Law Reform Commission and NSW Sentencing Council regarding guardianship law and consent. She also led strategic policy work at Legal Aid NSW to support service delivery and broader reform within the legal services sector. For the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, she managed a review of the legislative framework for the provision of boarding house accommodation to people with a disability.

Her work has been demanding, both in terms of time and effort, and in the emotional investment made in pursuing the most humane and fair outcomes for people who rely upon the legal system to uphold their rights. Yet, Gough has managed to kindle the candle at each end with her second professional life.

For more than a decade, Gough has authored short stories that have featured in compilations including Best Australian Stories 2012, Kindred: 12 Queen #LoveOzYA Stories, Griffith Review, and New Australian Fiction 2024.

She’s also penned three novels: “Into the Mouth of the Wolf” (2024), “Amelia Westlake”, “The Flywheel” (2015). The high-achieving Gough is no newcomer to prizes, either. Her “Amelia Westlake” was the winner of the Readings Young Adult Book Prize and the NSW Premier’s Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adult Fiction, while “The Flywheel” won the Ampersand Prize (Australian award for unpublished manuscripts of children’s and young adult fiction).

In March this year, Gough was named amongst the shortlisted authors in the running for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of The Year for her young adult novel “Into the Mouth of the Wolf”.

She tells LSJ Online that her dual careers began with an Arts-Law degree.

“Those are the two mutual interests that I’ve always had, and until about 10 years ago, I was working full time in the law at various New South Wales agencies and organisations, particularly with a focus on criminal justice policy and referral,” she says.

Gough transitioned to a four-day work week when she received an Australia Council grant (now Creative Australia) to write her first novel.

“That way, I could carve out a little bit of time for writing as well as for my legal career, but I think they’re two very complementary fields to be working in. I use my writing skills in my legal career daily. And a sense of social justice is something that is a very strong theme running through the novels that I write.”

“Into the Mouth of the Wolf”, she says, “is about climate justice and climate change, something that is of acute concern to our future generations, and to me.”

Finding a balance between the gravitas of how bleak the consequences of climate change are versus the hope, optimism and unity of conscientious activists is one Gough grapples with.

“I have considered the question [of balancing gravitas versus hope] in all three of my novels. I bring in humour, speculative and otherworldly fiction elements to remove the narrative from the everyday, and it’s action-packed to keep readers interested and engaged,” she says.

Staying interested and engaged in both her job as an author and for the Paul Ramsay Foundation is also a balancing act, but one she has seemingly mastered.

“It’s always a challenge with limited hours in the week, but I’m very strict about preserving that one day a week I have for writing,” she says.

“I treat it like another workday, I sit at my desk and stay there to the end of the day with the discipline of an office job.”

On the other four days, Gough is likely to be travelling around Australia to meet with partners of the Foundation.

She explains, “I’ve worked in the criminal justice space for over 20 years, and anyone who has done so knows about the inequitable impact that our justice system has depending on who you are. The role with the Foundation was an opportunity to redress some of those inequities, including the over-incarceration and criminalisation of First Nations peoples.”

She adds, “It’s really important to emphasise that we work with any and all governments and we don’t have the resources that government does, so we can’t shift the dial without working collaboratively with the government of the day. Philanthropy can take risks on innovative programs, but so often the end goal is to see those ideas embraced by the government.”

In parallel, the joys of tackling riskier ideas and innovative possibilities in her fiction can also win over a broad audience. One of the key benefits of national prizes is the publicity associated with being shortlisted or winning, and finding shelf space in school and public libraries.

Gough says, “First and foremost, it’s always nice to have the recognition that the writing you’re doing is reaching an appreciative audience. There are only so many prizes, and so many wonderful books, so it’s important not to equate value with whether a book has won a prize or been shortlisted, but it makes it easier to engage a publisher in future work you might be doing.”

The most important aspect to the  CBCA award shortlisting, she says, “is that [my novel] will be widely distributed in school libraries. One of the reasons that I got into writing for young adults was to increase the representation of queer characters in young adult fiction. In Australia, when I started, there was an acute under-representation of queer characters, particularly protagonists, in Australian novels for young people. I’m glad to say that this has changed quite a lot in the last 10 years, but there could be more. It’s really important to me that my queer readers can see themselves reflected positively in the works that I write.”

Somehow, between travelling and dedicating most of her week to the Foundation, and penning her latest novel, Gough also finds time to read novels for pleasure. A good writer is a committed reader, after all.

She tells LSJ, “I just read The ‘Left Hand of Darkness’ by Ursula K Le Guin, so that’s a classic. It’s also a queer, classic, science-fiction novel, which was really great. I read a graphic novel called ‘Gender Queer’ by Maia Kobabe, which was the most banned book in the US in 2023 because of its gender narratives. And that’s a beautiful book. I also read an amazing book recently called ‘Translations’ by Jumaana Abdu [set in rural  New South Wales], which was shortlisted for the Stella Prize.”