Janette Turner Hospital tracks her literary career to a few minutes of panic in southern India in 1977.
Then in her mid-30s, she and her children were walking in the place they called home while her husband, a scholar of religion and Sanskrit, worked on the subcontinent for a year. Within seconds they were surrounded by an 'angry mob' of Communist Party members who were demonstrating after the arrest of Indira Gandhi.
No harm was done but despite a well-travelled, adventurous life, Turner Hospital says she suddenly understood that she had taken her privileges for granted.
'That was the first moment that I realised history could randomly make havoc of your life,' she says during a visit to her birthplace, Melbourne, Australia.
'I remember at the time thinking that no one would ever know what had happened to us. The situation didn't last terribly long and I got out of it. But I started to think about what happens to people who don't get out of it when history suddenly convulses,' she says.
Until that point she had been a seamstress, a high school and university English teacher, a librarian at Harvard University and a scholar of medieval literature.
While looking after her children in India, she wrote the short story Waiting and sent it to The Atlantic Monthly. The magazine published the tale before awarding Turner Hospital an Atlantic First.