Emerging Writers Series: Samantha Byres
“I think most of the characters are looking for another go at things and there’s a big feeling of “if this hadn’t happened, or that had been different…” but really everyone acts in the ways they always have. It’s really hard to get a handle on your “fatal flaw” let alone trying to change it. I’m almost forty and I look at my friends and they’re looking at me and we’re like: ‘For the love of Christ, are you ever going to learn?’”
Samantha Byres’ debut novel, Dead Ends (2025, UQP) had me completely captivated when I read it earlier this year. Telling the story of Nell, “chaos merchant” as she returns to her small-town New Zealand home following a series of crises, Byres asks us to question what redemption means, if we ever really learn from our past, and whether the dead can speak to us.
We caught up with Samantha on her writing journey, queer representation in literature, and how she really really feels about psychics (sort of…). Enjoy!
I tend to start these interviews with an easy one - can you share a little about yourself and your background as a writer?
I think I have a pretty common writer origin story: only child, shy nerd, escapes into a world of books. I’ve been writing ever since I was a little kid, and when I got accepted into the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2012, I really thought I had it made. But that was really just the beginning of learning the real hard graft of writing, the commitment to the routine, the rejection and the continual honing of the craft.
Between having day jobs, it took such a long time to get something finished and into a state that was publishable. I learnt so much just through finishing this book.
You’ve described Dead Ends as a story about both second chances and last chances. Can you talk more about how that tension plays out in the novel? What drew you to that emotional territory?
Nell’s someone who’s been burning bridges for so long it’s become a way of life for her. It can be a really powerful propellant when we’re young, this tendency to blow everything up and start again, and it’s probably served Nell well in the past. But there’s a time when that behaviour runs down its usefulness and I think that’s where the book begins: Nell’s broke, leaving behind a string of bad relationships, and bad jobs. There’s nothing tying her anywhere and she’s really looking for something to hold onto. I think it’s familiar to anyone who’s run down their twenties and everyone around you has got a “serious” life.
I think most of the characters in the novel are looking for another go at things and there’s a big feeling of “if this hadn’t happened, or that had been different…” but really everyone acts in the ways they always have. It’s really hard to get a handle on your “fatal flaw” let alone trying to change it. I’m almost forty and I look at my friends and they’re looking at me and we’re like: ‘For the love of Christ, are you ever going to learn?’
The novel is set in New Zealand, and there’s this powerful theme of returning to places where we no longer (or maybe never did) quite belong. What role does place play in shaping Nell’s identity, and how did you approach writing that sense of estrangement?
I’ve lived in Australia for over ten years now, and most of my family live back home in the town where I grew up. There’s always some weirdness when you live away from home, this kind of realisation that the day to day of your family’s lives are kind of mysterious to you and vice-versa.
Family are also the people who think they know you best and where you encounter each other in that gap is really interesting to me. Nell left her hometown as a teenager, so the memories she has of the place are fifteen years old, she hasn’t had an opportunity to make new memories there.
So everything that happened for her feels so fresh and so grim, and everyone still sees her as the same person. I love thinking about the murky layers of memory people have, and how it’s so attached to place.
Nell’s voice is so intimate, flawed, and human, even when she’s making questionable choices. How did you approach crafting a queer protagonist like Nell, and what was important to you in portraying her inner world authentically?
It’s such a tough question for me because I rarely think about character. I had the idea for this novel bouncing around in my head for a while and I didn’t start writing until I was sure of Nell and her voice. I think if you have that strong voice of a character it can make other areas of writing easier, it pushes the story along. I don’t really brainstorm character or maybe I do unconsciously, I just wait for it to resolve itself.
Sometimes I’ll start writing a story because it’s a good idea but I’ll know it’s not ready and I have to wait.
Regarding Nell’s queerness, it was important to me to reflect the experience of grappling with queerness in a small town in the 2000s. There’s this gap between the lives you see around you and the one you want that’s almost impossible to bridge. You can’t even really articulate the life you want because it’s not modelled anywhere for you.
The washed-up TV psychic storyline in Petronella Bush is such a compelling thread, I loved it! Where did that idea come from? Was there a specific inspiration behind that character or the larger idea of faded fame and spiritual ambiguity?
My best friend and I were very enchanted by the TV program Sensing Murder when we were kids, and when there was a reboot a few years back it got me thinking about that nostalgia for the things you love when you’re young. When I did a rewatch of some of the episodes, it was such a disappointment. Things I’d been amazed by when I was younger just seemed so hackneyed and exploitative now. But I was noting this rise in mysticism and spiritualism around the time of the lockdowns.
I don’t know whether it’s as simple as “when times are uncertain, people turn to the spiritual” but it felt like people were looking for more and more input. We have to make sense of our lives to live them and I think people will use any tool they can to know themselves, or to create the feeling of knowing themselves.
One of the other things I loved was how you kept just enough mystery around the psychic’s abilities; even by the end, I wasn’t sure what to believe. How did you approach that balance between scepticism and belief? Was it important to you to keep readers in that space of uncertainty?
When I was just beginning to think about this book, I got a reading from a tarot card reader, who identified me as a writer and told me that if I didn’t finish something, I’d be in big trouble. Of course as a serial non-finisher of things, it was the most powerful and terrifying advice she could have given me. I think a lot of us live in that space of uncertainty until someone tells us something that feels undeniable and it’s just what we want to hear. If you fling enough nets in the water you’re bound to haul something in. I never landed anywhere definitive with Petronella myself and that’s what made her so fun to write.
Nell is constantly getting things wrong, yet there’s this deep desire for redemption running through her. Do you think true redemption is ever fully possible, either in fiction or in life?
God, I hope so! I think we’re always doing it, continually reaching for redemption. It’s the desire for redemption that’s interesting to me, not necessarily whether it’s successful or not.
I’m always curious about what other writers are reading and drawing inspiration from. Who (or what) have been some of the biggest influences on your writing style and approach?
When I first got serious about writing in uni, I had a great American teacher who was like, “you’re kind of funny, you should read Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Joy Williams, Mary Robison etc.” Those are the first writers that I really wanted to emulate and I think specifically I learned about writing humour from them.
Lastly, what’s next for you? Are you working on anything at the moment?
I’ve got a couple of events coming up: Emerging Writers Festival on 16 September, we’re talking about embracing cringe writing and I’m sure I’ll have a few examples to draw on. I’ll be in conversation with Thomas Vowles at Chestnut Tree Bookshop on 19 October.
I’m working on a short story collection, hopefully I won’t need an ominous warning from a psychic to finish this one.
Samantha Byres is a writer from Whanganui, Aotearoa. She attended the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington and her work appears in Turbine, JAAM, Sport and Out Here: An anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
