Sarah Kanake: My PhD (finished in 2014 - QUT) is comprised of an exegesis and novel (Sing Fox to Me!) and basically questions why characters with Down syndrome are built into the scaffolding of (what I termed) 'the Down Syndrome' (capital S to delineate the importance of the syndrome/disability in the novel) novel rather than being represented as individuals with a clear agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and point of view. Question: What inspired the story of Sing Fox To Me? She lives on the Sunshine Coast with her partner, baby daughter and two labradoodles. Sarah is one half of the country music duo The Shiralee.

Her fiction has been published most recently in The Lifted Brow and Stilts. She was recently shortlisted for the Overland Short Story Prize and won the QUT Postgraduate Writing Award in 2013. She has a PhD in creative writing from QUT on the representations of Down syndrome in Australian literature. Sarah is a creative writing tutor at University of the Sunshine Coast. At eight years old, Sarah was bitten on the very same bum cheek by a shark – her brother literally pulled the shark off her. At four years old, Sarah was accidentally shot in the bum. Sarah Kanake grew up in the rural beach town of Tin Can Bay with her parents, brother who has Down syndrome, two Aboriginal foster brothers and her best friend. It is the symphony of three howling male voices, each hoping to find the right pack and live comfortably in their own skin. Sing Fox to Me is a story built from lost and stolen children, Tasmanian tigers, missing animals, Down syndrome and parents who run away. There's something out there in the menacing bush, something that seems set on tearing this family to pieces.

While Samson – who has Down syndrome – finds mystery and delight all around, Jonah develops a dark obsession as persistent as Clancy's desire to bring River home.

The resentful, brooding Jonah and thoughtful, inquisitive Samson become entranced, in different ways, with the mountain. Clancy Fox is a beat-up old man obsessed with finding his long-missing daughter, River, and convinced that she was taken by a Tasmanian tiger pack.

In 1986, fourteen-year-old Samson and his twin brother Jonah travel from the Sunshine Coast to the wild backcountry of Tasmania to live on a mountain with a granddad they've never met.

Sing Fox to Me by Sarah Kanake