Familiar dreams of rural life inspire Beechworth writer Margaret Hickey

"Mallee people, if you're living in a place where there's a terrible drought and a mouse plague and the wheat crops are failing, it's very different to if you're a Western District farmer in Western Victoria," she said.

"Or again if there's floods in Walwa or the threat of bushfires, I think our landscape shapes our character more even than we know."

So what's her region's character?

"I think there's a real pride in the beauty of the North East because it's a very beautiful part of the state," Hickey said.

"But also that's offset by an acknowledgement of how fraught we are every summer when it comes to bushfires, so there's a hardiness there as well, it's like a tough realisation in a way."

Rural Dreams, released last week and now available in bookstores and online, is a collection of short stories that are fiction but grounded in Hickey's experience as "a product of rural Victoria".

The daughter of a small school headmaster, she attended half a dozen country schools growing up, arrived in the North East about 17 years ago and now lives in Beechworth with her husband and three teenage sons.

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With a PhD in creative writing, Hickey lectures at La Trobe University and also teaches year 12 students at Cathedral College Wangaratta, helping them negotiate a particularly challenging year.

"I admire our youth so much, they get a lot of stick, don't they, teenagers, but I just have seen how resilient and really wonderful they are," she said.

"They have just got on with it."

Hickey considers herself more a reader than a writer and, as she tells her students, the former assists the latter.

"I've always read voraciously and vigorously," she said.

"I honestly don't think you can be a good writer if you're not a good reader because that's how you learn voice, different characters, you gain insight into different world lenses and different world views and perceptions, you learn about tempo and pace, it increases your vocab."

The themes in Rural Dreams, like driving home from uni to play sport, a backpacker pulled out of a swamp or the passion generated by under-14 football, generally start as an idea associated with landscape and image.

"I'd say I'm a binge writer," Hickey said.

"I think and I think about it and then I write furiously, crazily, over like three days.

"And I do no housework and I don't talk to my children, I just neglect everybody," she added with a laugh.

Excited by the release of her latest work, Hickey was also thrilled by the interest shown within her community.

"Really, I couldn't feel more supported in being an artist or a writer living in the country than I am right now, I'm very lucky," she said.