Over the four years it has taken me to research and write this novel I’ve been inspired by countless books, articles, artists, films and images. Here is a selection of just some of those inspirations. 

My aunt handed me this book from her own collection when I mentioned I was writing about the Angliss meatworks. It has been the most important text I worked with during the research. A collection of transcripts of interviews with workers from Angliss, I eventually went on to listen to some of the original interviews in the archive of the Living Museum of the West, chat with the editor and interview Michael Leunig – the son of one of the workers featured.

I found The Dyehouse through my search for ‘factory girl’ and ‘strike’ fiction of Australia. This debut novel published in 1961 and recently re-released with an excellent introduction by Fiona McFarlane is a portrait of work and workers in post-war Australia and the writing is dazzling. 

One of my all time favourite books and one that had such an impact on me as writer. The way Winton seems to throw out the rules on language has always inspired me – a maker-upper of words! Getting the opportunity to speak to Winton for the podcast has been a career highlight. 

One of my early inspo books for this project was Egan’s Manhattan Beach and the ‘woman in a man’s world’ historical story but in the end it was her latest brilliant novel The Candy House which helped me to imagine the multi-narrative tale my novel would become. 

I’m fascinated by the work of US writer Steven Johnson who originally termed the phrase ‘Hummingbird Effect’. In this book Johnson explores six innovations that changed the world as we know it.  

Extraordinary memoir in verse by the French writer Joseph Ponthus, who takes casual shifts on factory lines in fish processing plants and abattoirs to make ends meet. I spoke to Australian translator Stephanie Smee for The First Time Podcast about this book, the art of translation and Ponthus’s tragic early death. 

The first book anyone would mention when I said I was writing about abattoirs. Sinclair wrote this novel in 1906 about the Chicago meatpacking district, intending to depict the terrible conditions for meatworkers and advance the socialist cause, however the book caused more sensation for illustrating the conditions for animals and led to changes in the industry. I read the original and also this incredible graphic novel by Kristina Gehrmann. 

An Australian classic of ‘industrial fiction’, this – Hewett’s first novel – was published in 1959 and depicts the world of working life in Sydney’s spinning mills. Like Calthorpe’s The Dyehouse, this novel inspired me to tell Lil and Peggy’s story. 

Weisman imagines (accompanied by excellent research) what the world would look like if humans vanished. Terrifying but strangely hopeful, this was wonderful inspo for my far future world. 

Like Weisman, Flynn is interested in post-human landscapes, and investigates a number of real-life places where humans have abruptly left in an attempt to imagine a new world.  

I’m a relatively new convert to Yuknavitch and will now read anything she writes. Her latest novel Thrust is an extraordinary time-stetchy novel of resilience and hope and imagination. Loved it so much I asked to use some of her words for the epigraph of The Hummingbird Effect and I'm honoured I could do so. 

Why oh why did it take me so long to find the poetry of Alice Oswald?! Recommended to me via twitter when I asked for books on the anatomy of rivers – a long poem in the voice of the river itself and many of those who work and live alongside the Dart river. Sublime. 

I love this book for so many reasons but the section that is most profound is the one in which Peaches discussed the generational links of eggs and womb that go back to our grandmothers. My cousin read this section at my grandmother’s funeral, and I used her version of Lucy’s words in the novel.