Lynette Noni is one of the most well-known and beloved Australian YA fiction authors. She is a bestselling and award-winning author with a substantial back catalogue including The Medoran Chronicles and the Whisper duology.
Noni has a real flair for fantasy and seamlessly transports readers into her worlds whether they be epic fantasy in origin like Medora or urban like Whisper. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to interview Lynette Noni before the release of her latest book The Prison Healer, which hits shelves on March 30th in Australia and April 13th in the US and UK.
Hi, Lynette! Thank you for taking the time to sit down today and chat about The Prison Healer. Could you tell us a little about yourself and your new book?
Oh, gosh, where to begin! You’ve summed me up brilliantly in your intro (thank you for such lovely words!), so I might jump straight into The Prison Healer. In a nutshell, it’s about a seventeen-year-old girl called Kiva who has been locked in a death prison for the last ten years, and when she finally gets the chance to earn her freedom, the cost could be her very life. Add in a terminally ill Rebel Queen who Kiva has to keep alive, a series of “unsurvivable” elemental magic trials, a deadly prison plague, an adorable young healing assistant, a surly but protective guard, and a persistently charming romantic interest, and that gives you an idea of what you can expect to find in this book!
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading: The Story of Imelda, Who Was Small by Morris Lurie and illustrated by Terry Denton.
The book that made me want to become an author: I don’t have an answer for this, sorry! I wrote the book I wanted to read when I couldn’t find that book written by someone else.
The book I can’t stop thinking about: Oooh, that’s tricky. Probably anything by Sarah J. Maas, but that’s also because I’m friends with her and I critique her books during the editing stages, so I have to think more deeply about them in order to provide solid feedback. That means I get to deep-dive into her worlds, which leaves me thinking about them long after I’m finished!
What inspired you to set this book within a prison, especially one like Zalindov?
Zalindov Prison was actually inspired by Fremantle Prison in Western Australia. In the middle of 2019, I went on a tour there and learned that the prison has an entire underground tunnelling network where the inmates were forced to labour for hours on end, digging the passageways in order to supply water for the nearest township. I walked through those tunnels and, in some cases, paddled a canoe through the ones that are still partially submerged. It was an unforgettable experience, enough that when I left, I just knew that I had to set a story in a place that had left such a mark on me.
The Prison Healer is a darker YA fantasy. Was the writing process different for this book compared to your others?
I wrote this book in an unnaturally short amount of time (26 days), so that took a bit of a toll on me mentally and physically. But more than that, the research that I did was particularly rough, especially when looking into real life prison environments and concentration camps and the treatment of inmates at the most extreme places around the world. I’ll never forget the Amnesty International report I read that delved into the horrors of Tadmur Prison in Syria, with it vividly detailing the ways in which the prisoners were harassed and abused and tortured. I had nightmares for a week after that. But since The Prison Healer is set inside a death prison, I wanted to make it as realistic as possible — while also keeping it as YA-friendly as I could. It’s darker than my other books purely because of the setting, but like my other books, the overarching themes are still that of hope and light, as well as friendship, family and love.
I feel like the potential for drama was rife in this book. Was there anything that didn’t make the cut and got edited out?
It was actually the opposite. In the early revisions, I cut a scene towards the end of the book where a main character faces punishment for their actions, and I changed it to just mention what happened briefly after the fact. But during the editing process, I realised how important it is to experience that scene in real time — and how much of a mark it leaves going into the next books from a PTSD standpoint. It was too powerful not to reinsert as I had originally envisioned it.
You have included elemental magic in The Prison Healer (my favourite kind). If you could control any element what would it be?
Ooooh, wouldn’t that be fun! I think I’d have to say “air” as an element, since whenever I’m asked what superpower I’d want, I always answer that I’d love to be able to fly. So being an air elemental would surely allow me to do that, right? *Dreamy eyes*
What is your favourite thing about being an author?
There are so many things I love about being an author, but one of them is definitely having such amazing readers. They’re honestly the nicest people ever and they give me constant warm-and-fuzzy emotions every time they share how much they love the worlds I’ve created and the characters who live in them!
Has your job as a writer changed due to the effects of the global pandemic?
COVID hasn’t been fun for my poor creative mind, but aside from struggling in that sense, there haven’t been any other notable changes for me. By pure chance, 2020 was the first year since my debut novel came out that I didn’t have a book scheduled to release, so I was able to focus on writing and editing last year without having to worry about an imminent release. That certainly made things a little easier!
Kiva is such a wonderful protagonist, but do you have a favourite secondary character from the book?
If we’re going off book one alone, then I’d have to say Tipp, Kiva’s trust eleven-year-old “assistant.” He’s just a little ray of sunshine and brings so much light into the dark world of Zalindov prison.
But there’s another character who has a cameo appearance in book one (his name is Caldon), and he comes into book two as a major character, and I absolutely love writing him. I can’t wait for people to get to know him!
Who is an author you always recommend to others? What are you reading right now?
I don’t have any go-to authors for recommendations — it’s usually just the most recent book that I’ve read and enjoyed! So that makes your second answer easier: I’ve just finished reading Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston and also Lore by Alexandra Bracken (both were amazing!), and I’ve jumped straight on to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. So far, it’s fantastic, too!
Can you share any sneaky secrets about your upcoming work?
All I’ll say is that the second book in The Prison Healer series is coming out in October — only six months after the first book — and it’s called The Gilded Cage. The stakes are raised, the drama is next-level, and the fallout is nothing short of catastrophic. Brace yourselves, because Kiva’s trials have only just begun!
