Author Claudia Harrison celebrated the launch of her fourth fiction novel, The Oldest Daughter, at the Cowra Library on Thursday, September 25.
The event marked another milestone in her writing career, with Harrison opening up about her creative process, her personal connection to the story and the universal experiences she hopes readers will find within its pages.
Ms Harrison revealed that while the novel was two years in development, the final push came in an intense burst of creativity.
“This book has been two years in the making… and I wrote the last 45,000 words in one month,” she said.
Her approach to writing is deeply intuitive, shaped by her belief in the power of characters to take on lives of their own.
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“Once you open your mind to the fact that this person is technically in your life, they will take you where they want to take you,” she said.
For Ms Harrison, fiction has long been a refuge.
“Fiction has always been my space… because of the chaos I grew up with, it was my only escape,” she said.
The Oldest Daughter follows Maggie, the eldest of seven siblings, who leaves her country home for the city only to be called back after her parents’ deaths.
The novel traces Maggie’s struggles with grief, responsibility and identity as she balances caring for her siblings with her own search for independence.
“This is a story of a young woman chasing freedom and self-discovery,” Ms Harrison said.
“She is someone trying to outrun the role that shaped her, and at times, suffocated her.”
“Her life is split , her city life and her country life, and she doesn’t know which one she truly belongs to.”
“She has to go back and face being the oldest daughter again, putting her life aside.”
Ms Harrison’s own background as the eldest daughter in a Lebanese family strongly informed the book’s themes.
“For many of us, the role of the oldest daughter came with an unspoken contract: to hold it all together,” she said.
“The oldest daughter carries the family’s honour in her hands.”
That responsibility, she reflected, shaped her in profound ways, saying “being the oldest shaped me into a headstrong, determined, and compassionate woman but it also left me feeling unseen”.
“I pushed to work when my father forbade it and married young chasing freedom and independence.”
Her book, she explained, also asks a question that has shaped her own life, “when do I get to choose me?”
Ms Harrison spoke candidly about the challenges of writing and how she overcame them.
“The magic happens where the challenge begins,” she said.
“I found that creativity opens a different part of your brain.”
“Sometimes we procrastinate because we’re avoiding the fear behind something and we don’t even know it.”
She described a breakthrough moment during the writing process, saying, “I visualized just dropping all the things weighing on me… and it worked”.
While the novel is a work of fiction, Ms Harrison acknowledged how much of herself and her experiences shaped Maggie’s character.
“I always believed we are here to make a difference in our families, our communities and our friendships,” she said.
Her determination to write also came from her belief that creativity is not restricted to formal education.
“You don’t have to be educated to write, self-education is just as important as doing things you love,” she said.
With her fourth novel now released, Ms Harrison continues to explore the power of storytelling to connect personal history with universal themes.
