Now that she's cracked the longlist for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award for her sophomore novel Duke, Sara Tilley has earned "literary elite" status.

Below, the Newfoundland author answers eight questions submitted by eight of her fellow writers in the CBC Books Magic 8 Q&A.

I think it would be the day I nearly lost my eye, when I was about three. I was at my friend's house, next door to my Nan's, on Southside Road in St. John's. The backyard was a steep hill that ended in a chain link fence at the bottom, to keep us from the train tracks and the river beyond. We were running races, and I tripped. My face made contact with the fence, exactly where a stray bit of wire was sticking out. It caught me above the left eye. There was blood sticking my eyelids together. At the hospital they had to take my mom to another room to lie down. My dad was holding my hand so tightly I thought he might break the bones in it, and there was a stranger coming very close toward my eye with a real sewing needle. Migraines often start in this spot now.

I suppose I start with an impulse for a house but no idea how to build it. I start assembling bits of furniture that might help to define the house, shifting them and reupholstering until a core energy begins to assert itself and the house itself tells me what it wants to look like. With Duke, I wasn't sure if I was writing a novel, an epic prose poem or a monologue for theatre until I was at least a full draft into the work.

A tattered copy of The Love of Monkeys and Apes by Dan Freeman — a book of photographs we had when I was small. I'd spend hours looking at each page, taking extra time with my favourites, as evidenced by the many rips, stains and creases. This book is part of why I've always felt that animals have souls and intelligence. Each monkey was an individual, looking out with perfectly conscious eyes into mine. I lost this book for a long time, and found it again several years ago. It was like a family reunion, to see these faces after so many years. I keep it in my bedroom now, for times when I need pure comforting.

I'm a practitioner and teacher of a form called Pochinko Clown Through Mask, which is a Canadian form of theatrical clowning that uses mask-making to explore archetypes unique to the performer in order to create character. Apart from the clown shows that I've created, I've begun to take this process and adapt it into my "straight" writing practice. Duke was written while wearing a mask that I made for the main character, based on my great-grandfather. This experiment in using Pochinko technique as a method for writing fiction resulted in a different voice on the page than I could have created with my writer-brain alone.

"Who would play you in the movie about your life?" I just think it's a silly question. It doesn't have anything to do with writing, as far as I can tell. Besides, I'd want to play myself! I also don't like when people ask "What will you do with the prize money?" "Eat, and turn the heaters on" is not an adequately glamorous response.

When I was writing Duke, I was worried that I was trespassing on a story that wasn't mine to write. I was writing fiction about my own family, using their real names, and at times their real words, filling in the holes with events of my own devising. I was terrified that a relative would call me up to tell me I was a horrible person, or that they wanted to sue me for telling lies. Then I tried making a mask for the character, and wearing it to write. It let me ditch my fear long enough to write my first draft.

Inner versus outer reality, isolation, the natural world, physical sensation, pain and illness, relationships between Settlers and Indigenous people, humour within the darkest aspects of being alive, sexuality, religion, love, friendship, family and a non-linear experience of time.

Visually, audibly, and in the gut.