Australian author Fiona McFarlane discovered the Welsh poet and author Dylan Thomas as a teenager, combing the bins of the second-hand bookstores in Glebe.
Thomas's 1945 lyrical poem Fern Hill remains one of her all-time favourites and she has long admired the power and the passion of his words - the way Thomas wrote lyrically but with precision.
![Fiona McFarlane, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize.](/web/20170514054341im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/m/g/w/w/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw2nem.png/1494683610004.jpg)
On Thursday, McFarlane won the world's richest literary prize for young writers, judges noting the echoes of Thomas in her short story collection, The High Places.
McFarlane's anthology, which explores Australian lives from various perspectives and parts of the world, is only the third short story collection to win the International Dylan Thomas Prize, worth $52,000 to the winner.
![The High Places by Fiona McFarlane.](/web/20170514054341im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/m/g/w/s/p/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gw2nem.png/1494683610004.jpg)
The prize is named after the literary giant who died shortly after his 39th birthday. It is awarded for the best work of English-language literary fiction – poetry, drama or prose – by an author aged 39 or younger.
Judges had shortlisted McFarlane's short story collection for its quality, originality and "dazzle factor", along with Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage, Welsh writer Alys Conran's Pigeon, American writer Callan Wink's Dog Run Moon: Stories, and Luke Kennard's Cain and Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent, both British authors.
McFarlane's 13 short stories included one about a scientist researching a giant squid, a vet who has a car accident on her wedding day while travelling to treat a sick cat, and a farmer, worn down by years of drought, who makes a Biblical sacrifice.
''I didn't write imagining the books but as individual stories to stand on their own,'' she said from London. They were written before, during and after The Night Guest, her 2013 debut novel which won the Voss Literary Prize and a NSW Premier's Award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize.
The writer studied in Cambridge and at the University of Texas at Austin and teaches creative writing at the University of Sydney. The prize winnings buy her material comfort and time to write; the patience to wait and the space to take risks with her next book.
McFarlane is the second Australian to win the prestigious prize. In 2008 Vietnamese-born Australian Nam Le, a close friend of McFarlane's, took out the prize for his debut collection of short stories, The Boat.