Hi, I’m Ash Merriden.

I’m an Australian writer, and for a long time I didn’t think I had much to say. My first book, The Shape I Took, changed that. It’s a novel that grows out of my own life: a boy growing up in rural Australia, from the schoolyard to the navy, trying on different versions of himself just to get by.

Writing was never the plan. It’s still pretty new to me. But I’d spent years keeping things to myself, and putting them on the page turned out to be a relief.

Right now I’m working on a historical novel based on my grandmother’s escape from Soviet Russia.