Nigel Featherstone is often bemused when people question his Canberra credentials.
Although he lives in Goulburn and has friends and fellow artists throughout the region, he has always maintained Canberra as a creative base, and made a point of staying involved in the capital arts scene.
So he was particularly gratified to be named 2022's ACT Artist of the Year by the Canberra Critics Circle this week.
"Goulburn is my hometown, Canberra is my home city, and the ACT region is my creative community," he said.
"So my creative community does have a little bit of Goulburn in it, it's got a little bit of Queanbeyan, it's got a bit of Yass, and Braidwood and Bungendore, and it's also got a lot of Canberra. It's just true that that's my community. And I think there are some folks who find that a bit challenging.
"It's 80 kilometres and I can get from my place to Canberra in two sets of traffic lights, and Sydney people say, you know, that's like just going to the shops."
He is also what some might call an artist's artist, or a writer's writer. He made a personal commitment more than 20 years ago to write every single day, no matter what, and has done so ever since.
His latest novel, My Heart Is A Little Wild Thing, is set in the Monaro, as well as a town that closely resembles Bundanoon, and he has long been inspired by the physical landscapes around him.
His previous novel, Bodies of Men, a gay love story set during World War II, came out of a residency at the Australian Defence Force Academy in 2013, is still making waves. Now in his 50s, Featherstone has also written three novellas, a play, a libretto, at least 50 short stories and dozens of book reviews for The Canberra Times.
And as someone with a NSW home address, he's hardly an outlier in the arts community. A number of well-known artists we like to call our own, such as writer and performer Omar Musa, who lives in Queanbeyan, and renowned painter Michael Taylor, in Cooma, have chosen to live in the region while maintaining a connection to Canberra.
"Many of us do live across the border, and one of the key reasons why we move across the border is we just simply can't afford to live in the ACT anymore, particularly on an arts wage - you just can't do it," he said.
