**Shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize 2017**

**Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2017**

Ava Langdon is often not herself. Having fled her early life in New Zealand and endured the loss of her children, she now lives as a recluse in the Blue Mountains. Regarded by locals as a colourful eccentric, she dresses in men's clothes and fearlessly pursues her artistic path.

All that matters to Ava is her writing. Words offer beauty and a sense of possibility when so much else has been lost. But can they offer her redemption in her last days?

Poetic, poignant, and at times bitingly funny, The Last Days of Ava Langdon takes us into the mind of a true maverick.

About the Author
Born in Melbourne Mark O’Flynn now lives in the Blue Mountains. After studying at the Victorian College of the Arts, and working for a number of years in the theatre where several plays were produced, Mark turned to fiction and also poetry. A first collection of poems The Too Bright Sun was published in 1996. He has also published a novella Captain Cook (Pascoe, 1987), and the play Paterson’s Curse (Currency Press, 1988). A second book of poems The Good Oil was published in 2000. A second novel Grassdogs was published in 2006 after winning the Harper Collins/Varuna manuscript prize. What Can Be Proven, a third collection of poems was published in 2007. A selection of these poems, Falling Awake, was published by Picaro Press in 2010.