“If you can go back to child-likeness then do that and don’t take advice from anyone else. Forge your own path. Have fun with it.”

Kyle Perry is the celebrated author of The Bluffs and The Deep. In 2022 he topped the Tasmanian libraries most borrowed fiction lists. He paints a wholesome picture of a quaint, idyllic childhood in downtown Ridgely. It is distinctly at odds with the darkness of his books.

Kyle Perry on Wayne Hudson's 'Wood 'n' Art' outside Cafe Europa, Burnie!

At school his favourite prep teacher, ‘Old’ Mrs Matthews (as there were two), spun a fantasy world of fairies in the garden, taking the kids out before recess to catch leaves and grant wishes. A before-bell reading of Harry Potter by Mrs Poutney rendered the class spellbound.

“There was a physicality to reading it,” Kyle recalls. “She’d draw her wand. Hermione had a buck tooth and she’d do the voice and actually spit on people. Even a bunch of rural kids who weren’t massive readers, every one of us looked forward to that because of the way she made it come alive.”

“I’d lose myself in that. The librarian Mrs Maynard loved me because I loved books. She knew what my latest ADHD fixation was that week.”

At Parklands High School in Burnie, Kyle was in possession of an innate ability to shut out the noise and focus.

“I didn’t take risks,” he says matter of factly. “I didn’t use drugs, I didn’t go to parties, I didn’t make any forays into dating. I was very assured in what I wanted.”

In 2007 Kyle was the dux of Parklands High.

“I wasn’t any better academically than some of my classmates, but they didn’t have the goal of getting dux, whereas I did,” he says.

“I don’t like to lose. Competition is my greatest strength and also my greatest weakness.”