Higgins' younger sisters Carlie and Lisa had spent the weekend at the snow with their father, Maurice - it was an annual family ritual when the weather got colder.

For the first time, Higgins chose not to take part in that tradition; then 17 years old and her eyes set on going to university, she stayed home with mother Rhonda, to study.

As Higgins recalls, there was a knock on the door. It was the police, bringing some tragic news. There'd been an accident, they said. The family car had skidded, flipped and burst into flames. Carlie and Lisa had perished while Maurice was pulled out of the burning car and survived.

This is where Higgins' book, The Girls starts. While the title is named for her sisters, the book is more about the space they left behind and the various ways she and her parents tried to deal with it.

Some chose to stare deeply into that dark space, some chose to walk around it and pretend it wasn't there, some tried to fill it.

That is the way of most memoirs about grief - they're more often about those left behind than those who have gone.

When Higgins was writing The Girls - as part of a PhD in creative writing at the University of Wollongong - there was no conscious decision to opt against a focus on Carlie and Lisa.

"I just don't remember a lot about the girls and I find that really kind of sad," Higgins says.

"I don't know if it's a grief coping mechanism that has just happened automatically, but I just really feel like I don't have a huge amount of memories.

"In a way that's kind of a metaphor for how I have dealt with my grief in the past, just blocking out painful memories."

As well as being painful, memory can be slippery. For example, while Higgins can see in her mind the police standing on the doorstep, that never happened.

Rhonda told her the police called the family on the phone, while family friend Dean says they found out what had happened by ringing the hospitals when it was late and Maurice and the girls hadn't returned home.

That's why this isn't Carlie and Lisa's story. Nor is it Rhonda or Maurice's either - though they do appear quite a lot. It's Higgins' view of events; the way she remembered them, the way she dealt with them.

And she's remarkably open about what she did after that night at the end of July 2005 - which includes drugs, sex and a stint in a psychiatric ward.

Much of that came from the decision to write from her gut, both to use the page to figure things out but also stop the head from filtering out some of the worst moments.

"I was trying to think through, how I maintain a healthy relationship with my parents within the context of this huge and shared grief and vastly different world views and politics," she says.

"What does that look like? How do I honour them and also honour myself? And also, how do I not become trapped by the shame of my past? How do I not be ashamed of my past and some of the crazy shit I've done?"

Showing these sides of herself is also something Higgins sees as a "political act"; she's admitting to things society tells us to keep under lock and key from the world.

"I think the book in many ways, it's not about revealing secrets, it's about stepping out of shame," she says.

"I feel like so many of us are walking around unable to communicate to ourselves, let alone other people, these hard or difficult feelings or past experiences.

"I just didn't want to exist in that place any more, where I'm afraid to be authentic and honest and build authentic connections with people.

"A lot of the stuff I'm writing about is really socially stigmatised. So it's about me arguing against how heavily things around grief and trauma and unconventional sexualities are kind of stigmatised in a way I don't think they should be."

It's not just her own story she pulls back the curtains on, it's also the usually private grief of parents who have lost children - made worse when one of the parents was behind the wheel at the time.

In The Girls, Higgins is open about the friction between her and Rhonda as she battles to find her own space without pushing her mother away.

She also details the difficulties Maurice faced in dealing with the accident. The book has a heartbreaking opening sentence detailing how, whenever he talks about the accident he would start by saying "when I killed my daughters ..."

Her father is still dealing with the "deep trauma", Higgins says, and has good months and bad months. But both he and Rhonda allowed Chloe to include them in her book - her mother is so proud of Higgins, she has the book cover as the screensaver on her mobile phone.

In the writing of the book, the parents were worried about what the repercussions might be for their child. But the child, well, she was concerned about her parents.

"I think my mum initially was really worried about me publishing stuff that was all about my history with drugs and sex and so forth," Higgins says.

"But I think what is actually more scary is how is this going to impact on my parents when I am portraying such intimate details of their domestic lives and their grief."

Both Rhonda and Maurice know what was in the book long ago. Higgins wrote the book as if she would be the only one to read it; then she gave the early draft to her parents, letting them know anything about them was up for discussion.

"They being so supportive," Higgins says. "They are the most selfless, supporting, giving parents.

"My father's read the book multiple times and he actually said to me 'the way you were talking about it, I thought it was going to be so much worse' - in terms of what I'd written about him and mum.

"I think that he understands that this is just my view, it's not the facts of my parents' lives and their grief."

Her parents may be supportive of what lies within the book's pages but, with the Wollongong launch on Sunday ahead of Tuesday's release date, other people who know Higgins will be reading about her life.

And she's been so open that it comes with a risk that some of those people will look at her differently.

Higgins has been working on the book for several years and so has had time to fortify herself for this moment.

"I was petrified for the last year while I was editing, but at the same time, at the end of the day if they're going to judge me, that's actually their stuff, that's not my stuff," she says.

"That's their stuff if they're going to be harshly judging me.

"It's a tricky thing but I've tried to let go of that fear of judgement. The people closest to me understand where it's coming from, and that ultimately it's about me trying to figure out how I support my parents and still be true to myself."

Chloe Higgins launches The Girls at North Wollongong Surf Club, on Sunday, August 25 at 2pm.