Posted March 10, 2017 06:53:01

For any Australian writer, winning the Miles Franklin is a sure sign you've made it, plus it's a financial boon worth about $60,000.

Photo: AS Patric's novel is based on a refugee couple in Melbourne's suburbs. (Supplied)

AS Patric, who won the literary award last year, says it's been the most joyous year of his life.

His novel Black Rock White City focuses on the lives of a married refugee couple who fled the Balkan Wars to live in the suburbs of Melbourne.

Patric spoke to Lateline about the highlights of achieving literary fame:

Meeting the readers

"I've been invited to various libraries, and to go and speak to people in that local community and to have 100 people there wanting to talk to me about the book and the experience they had with the book, that's nice in itself," he said.

"But it's so much more than nice when you've spent 15 years in absolute oblivion."

"That's really what you're living for. I suppose there are some writers that might be thinking, I've sold thousands of copies of the book or whatever, that's what they find significant, but each one of those moments of contact with a genuine person who has experienced the book is why you do it."

Photo: Meet and greet: AS Patric signs a copy of his book at Adelaide Writers' Week. (ABC News: Barbara Miller)

It proves anything is possible

"You do feel elated but you also feel incredibly anxious as well. It's like one of those experiences that just takes you months and months and months to process," he said.

"I've got a seven-year-old and a five-year-old daughters. It's wonderful for them to have that experience of incredible things can happen."

"When I was growing up [in the western suburbs of Melbourne] nothing was possible, it certainly wasn't possible to be a writer, it wasn't possible to be any kind of artist.

"I was meant to be like a mechanic or a carpenter or, perhaps like some of my friends became, apprentice butchers."

Black Rock White City will endure

"To be short-listed for the Miles Franklin, to me felt like it was enough, because it felt at that point the book can't just disappear," he said.

"A lot of great books do disappear for all time, never to be recovered again you know, but if you get short-listed for something like the Miles Franklin it can't just disappear."

Ego, celebrity and … Twilight?

"Great success can also be a great disaster for a writer or any kind of artistic person, you see it happen all the time," he said.

"You start believing in some sort of egotistical version of yourself. What you start producing then is just trash. It just comes from ego and anything that just comes from ego is going to be just puerile.

"You know someone asked me once, 'Would you be happy if you'd written the Twilight series?'

"What does that even mean? I can't imagine that question. But no, I wouldn't be happy. That's not the sort of book I set out to write."

The only downfall?

"None of the Black Rock White City publicity possibilities are helpful in creating this new novel, so there's also a desire to get back to that kind of quiet life as soon as possible," he said.

Topics: author, books-literature, arts-and-entertainment, melbourne-3000, vic