Eight years in the making, Dr Lisa Fuller’s new book Washpool was never intended for publication.

Which is odd given her debut book Ghost Bird won the ACT Book of the Year Award in 2020.

Washpool is a magical adventure about two sisters who need to rely on their own wits and each other when they’re pulled into a new world. It’s aimed at 9 to 12-year-olds, for a very good reason.

A Wuilli Wuilli woman from Queensland, Lisa recently completed her PhD at the University of Canberra where she works full time as a lecturer in Indigenous Studies. 

She says she can’t think of a time when she hasn’t been studying, learning and growing.

“I’ve always had these amazing memories of books with my mum,” she says.

Inspired by her past and missing her young nieces in Queensland, then aged eight and 10, Lisa decided that she wanted to help foster a love of literacy in them. 

“I wrote them a chapter, only the first chapter,” she says.

“It went with a letter that said: ‘If you want the next chapter, you have to write me a letter, draw me some pictures or tell me what you think is going to happen next’.”

And so began a years’ long exchange of letters and phone calls.

“It became this really big family event,” she says. 

“My sister would get it in the mail and she’d read it to the breakfast table in the mornings before calling me back and giving me [feedback].”

Never intended for publication, Lisa’s book featured her two heroic leads – inspired and named after each niece – and saw a smattering of family members amongst the pages. 

Her nieces’ interests were represented on the page, with their particular affinity for phoenixes and mermaids represented in a slightly different way.

“Bella was at the time obsessed with mermaids and Sienna loved phoenixes, but I’m really aware given my background in publishing and also being First Nations just how much fantasy has taken from other cultures, so I never want to do that,” says Lisa. 

“I don’t want to take anyone else’s culture.”

Sienna’s phoenixes became firebirds and Bella’s mermaids became water people, each with their own special connection to the girls. 

Lisa, a literary “pantster” (someone who doesn’t plan their books before writing them), was devastated when the girls slowly lost interest in the book and their letter exchanges as they grew into their teenage years. 

“I had to know how it ended,” Lisa says. 

“I don’t really know sometimes where things are going to end up, so finishing it was up to me.” 

Winning a black&write! writing fellowship in 2019, Lisa took the opportunity to see her passion project turned into a book. 

“I needed to get [my nieces’] permission to sign the publishing contract, and I wanted to make sure they were still okay with me using their names and were okay with the story being associated with them,” she says. 

“Even though it’s fictionalised, it’s all about them. 

“This book has so many family members and family memories attached to it. 

“[During the editing process] lockdown happened and my mum was stuck back home with my sister.

“They would all drag mattresses into one of the girls’ rooms, and their siblings, them and everyone in the house would lie down, put me on a bluetooth speaker and I’d read however long until the first person started snoring.”

Washpool is available in bookstores.