HIS latest novel may be titled No One, but Cessnock-raised author John Hughes is well on his way to being a literary someone.
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No One has been shortlisted for Australia's best-known writing prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
"I must say I was incredibly surprised, but very pleasantly surprised," said Mr Hughes.
"Just the last couple of days, I've been surprised by how much razzmatazz there is associated with it."
No One has been described as being part crime novel, part road movie and part love story, which explores Australia's complex relationship with its Indigenous past.
As award judge Richard Neville noted, all six of the shortlisted books explored the effects of trauma.
Past and present relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians have been a prominent theme in the novels.
"The fact that so many of these books are now dealing with that legacy, which is an enduring legacy and still very prominent now, it suggests that at least for many people, we are facing up to some of the less pleasant and palatable facts of the early colony, and the ways in which ... the stings of that time still haven't been removed," John Hughes said.
During his writing career, John Hughes has tapped into his own past. He spent his first 18 years in Cessnock, before moving to Newcastle to study at the university. Years later, while teaching at the uni after studying overseas, Mr Hughes wrote his first book, The Idea of Home, which won a string of awards.
The idea of "home" is still in his writing.
"It's still very rich and still alive for me," Mr Hughes said of Cessnock. "In fact, in No One, my protagonist grows up in a series of foster homes [and] one of his foster homes is in Cessnock. So I can't keep Cessnock out of my work."
John Hughes regularly returns to Cessnock to visit his parents and brother. These days, he lives and works in Sydney. He teaches at Sydney Grammar School, so he does a lot of his writing on weekends and holidays.
While COVID-19 played havoc with many people's lives, for a writer, being isolated and staying indoors feels almost natural.
As Mr Hughes recently said to his agent, "Crisis!? What crisis? This is my life!"
John Hughes has already been recognised by his hometown, being an inaugural inductee in the City of Cessnock Hall of Fame: "I was very touched by it, I must say."
But this level of national recognition as a writer feels like something else again.
For the Coalfields boy who dreamed of being a writer, being a Miles Franklin shortlisted author would have been even beyond the limits of his imagination.
"Maybe that young fellow would have thought, 'I might be able to get something published', but certainly I don't think he would have been entertaining at all such a thought as that one," Mr Hughes said.
The 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner will be announced on July 16.
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