For the second edition of our summer-reading list for 2019 we return to Melanie Cheng‘s novella ‘Muse’, which was published in Griffith Review 54: Earthly Delights – The Novella Project IV.

Cheng’s prize-winning novella sees an aging, grief-stricken and guilt-ridden man reinvigorated when, at the urging of his grown-up daughter and her girlfriend, he returns to his long-neglected talent for drawing. This moving novella forms part of a collection of short fiction called Australia Day, which was awarded the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and was published in 2017 by Text. In this 2016 interview, Cheng explains how her novella fits within the Australia Day manuscript and discusses the central of role of empathy in her work as both a doctor and a writer.