Squidsquatch. A new interview (almost) every day. A single question. The subject one day becomes interviewer the next.

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Rob Hood: Margo, you have been a decade-long “overnight” success — a success reflected in the fact that you have been nominated and have won an amazing, and international, raft of awards. Lately there seems to have been much argument about awards and their value. In the light of all your award wins, what is your attitude to awards as such and the controversies that have ranged about them? Are they useful?

Margo Lanagan: Awards are pretty much the executive-washroom key of the writing life. They’re the colourful, glorious compensation you get for not having a social life at work every day as most people do. Just the possibility, when you hand in your book, that there will be this series of surprise announcements and emails, and possibly dinners, speeches and ego-fondling to follow them up, is cheering. Cheering the way buying a lottery ticket is cheering, the way, I imagine, sitting around a roulette wheel with all the chips in place on the table, and the glam gown and the right cocktail at your elbow would be cheering. (Or maybe I just need a cocktail right now.)

When I started out writing I thought winning awards was the pinnacle of achievement; that you had ‘made it’ if you won particular awards - if you’d moved up through the ranking of less-to-more meaningful awards, less-to-more famous ones (’You’re nominated for a Hugo? Wow, even I’ve heard of that one!’ said my non-genre-literate acquaintances). I was prepared for a long slow slog, which is good, because it has been, but actually, I was expecting a much longer one. I didn’t entertain the thought of winning the World Fantasy Award, for example, so to suddenly have two of them on my mantelpiece (and those awards really know how to look at you) kinda knocked me for six. All of a sudden I was much more visible; all of a sudden I’d so far exceeded my own expectations that I had to shuffle all my thinking around, about this writing lark and what I was really after. I couldn’t use awards as a measure any more, because pretty much the only one beyond World Fantasy, to my mind, was the Nobel, and that’s just getting silly.

And I think if nothing else this is a useful thing for awards to do - they serve writers in forcing them, either by tantalising them or rewarding them - to compare and contrast their own values with the values of the awarding organisations and judging panels.

But of course, we’re not talking about their being useful to winners so much as useful to the book buying/reading public. And my feeling about them there is that they’re pretty much hit and miss, the way those bronze/silver/gold medals on wine labels are. There are as many people who’ll avoid gold-medalled books as will choose them over unmedalled ones, though possibly this goes more for literary medals than genre ones. You’ve got to know your awards to be able to use the medal system properly; you have to know what the medals signify, but also you have to have experience, you know, throwing a few ‘Great Reads’ across the room, or falling asleep over a few CBCA winners (did I say that?) or whatever; you’ve got to know which awards you personally take seriously.

And that’s probably the crux of the matter. It’s entirely subjective, is the thing. You might always like the wine that this committee chooses at the Wongillybong Show; you will always find someone who’ll sneer at you for that, but who cares? It’s your palate; send whatever you like across it. I don’t see the point, especially if you’re not a super-fast reader, of ploughing through the Miles Franklin winner every year just because it’s the Miles Franklin winner - you know, if it is a matter of ploughing. If it’s something you were attracted to anyway, jump right in.

But then, I’m beginning to rebel against duty-reading of any kind these days. I think I should stop fruitlessly trying to keep up with genre and YA publishing; it just can’t be done. I think I should read the way I drink - which will appall some people. Right price (meaning a price that indicates it won’t actually choke you)? Label that doesn’t make me wince? Style that’s given me pleasure in the past? And if I think I’ll finish the bottle, it’s a goer. And a few gold stickers doesn’t hurt, either.

Margo Lanagan collects acclaim the way a magnet collects iron filings. She describes her writing as “speculative fiction and fiction for young adults and junior readers,” but plenty of adult readers will testify to the power of her stories to shake your emotions. A big, fat fantasy novel, Tender Morsels, will be published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2008. Margo’s blog is Among Amid While.