Author Interview: Emily Perkins

Abby got the chance to speak with Emily Perkins about her book Lioness - a finalist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Lioness is a hypnotic read that steadily unravels wealth and power in Aotearoa through the unravelling life of it’s main character and her collision course with the woman she wishes she could be. It’s fiery, entrancing, and easily devourable. It was great to get to chat to Emily about the book:

You’ve previously won a New Zealand Book Award for Novel About My Wife in 2009. What do you think is the biggest thing that’s changed about your writing/you as a writer since then?

It’s hard to say – with each book or script I want to do something I haven’t done before, so I tend to think from project to project rather than look at my own writing over time. One thing I love about writing is that you have to bring your whole self to it. It doesn’t get easier but I’m more conscious of enjoying the golden moments.

Lioness is your first novel in a while, but you’ve been busy in the theatre and film worlds! How does your approach to writing a novel differ from a screen or stage work?

One difference is in how I create the first draft. With a novel I’m more likely to write into the unknown, finding it piece by piece and building the structure as I go, and with drama work I’m usually thinking through the architecture first, then honing in on the details.

I love the characters of Lioness and how they fit together - they’re so messy and real but simultaneously larger-than-life. Were there any people (real or fictional!) or encounters that inspired them?

Thank you! Not really – they emerged from the world of the book. Although there is a moment that Therese recalls, being at a party and having a man guess her age, that’s based on a real life encounter I had, and which was quite a propellant.

I’ve seen Lioness compared to Succession quite often which makes a lot of sense to me. Why do you think people love stories about the wealthy? Was there something that drew you into writing about wealth and class?

There’s the fascination we have with different systems, the feeling of having your nose pressed up to the glass. What would it be like to be inside that? Money is a huge driver of story: what we do to get it, what we do to keep it, what having it or not having it does to us. And the illusion of New Zealand as a relatively class-free nation has been blown up in recent decades. I wanted to foreground class, both its visible and invisible aspects, because I think we should be more honest about the way it works in order to challenge it as a force.

If you were a bookseller, how would you sell your book to a potential reader?

‘One of the books in this store contains a golden ticket worth 2 million dollars. It’s probably in a copy of Lioness, but you won’t know until you buy it.’ 

Any ideas for your next book yet?

I’m at the early stages of something. It’s centred around a marriage again – at the moment the character that’s drawing my attention is the husband.

Tell us a bit about your upcoming sessions/masterclass at the Auckland Writers Festival!

Voice is the most crucial part of writing to me – it defines and propels the work, it’s intimately tied with story, and it’s what I read for. This isn’t a generalised session on ‘how to find your literary voice’ because each project generates and demands its own. So it will be ‘how to find the right voice for what you’re writing at the moment.’ We’ll be doing fun exercises and looking at the effects different voices generate. I want people to leave feeling they know what feels right for their work, and that they have some new approaches.

Give us a quick review of the other finalists on the shortlist, if you’ve read them!

I have read them and I’ve been blown away by the mastery, range and ambition across all of them – as I was by the longlisted books I’ve read too – such a hard task for the judges, and so much juicy reading for booklovers!

Author Interview: Eleanor Catton

Abby spoke with Eleanor Catton about her latest book, Birnam Wood - a finalist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Birnam Wood took the book world by storm in early 2023, and sat at the top of Time Out’s bestsellers list for many months of that year. It’s no surprise then to see it on the Ockhams fiction shortlist. I loved getting to talk to Eleanor about this gripping, astute, and richly-layered thriller:

You’ve previously won a New Zealand Book Award in 2014 for The Luminaries. What do you think is the biggest thing that’s changed about your writing/you as a writer since then?

I believe much more passionately than I ever did that fiction is a moral art form; that even at its most entertaining—and maybe especially at its most entertaining—fiction is the best tool we have for exploring intentions and actions, causes and effects. I’ve always loved plot, but it’s only in the last few years that I’ve been able to articulate why I think it’s so important.

All three of your books are so distinct from one another - did you ever worry about what readers’ opinions of Birnam Wood would be, seeing as it’s so different from The Luminaries?

Not really. I did resolve not to write another 800-pager—I figured people might not forgive me for that—but I think that every book has to justify its existence on its own terms.

What was it like writing a novel set in such a particular political time, when that landscape is constantly changing? For example, if you started Birnam Wood now, when the year since its release has seen such a dramatic shift in NZ politics, do you think the novel would turn out differently?

It’s hard to say, because I never wanted the book to be partisan in its politics. I might have made the NZ government more complicit in Lemoine’s activities, perhaps, but topicality is a dangerous thing to aim for in fiction: nothing dates faster. Birnam Wood is set in 2017, when I was around Tony’s age, and not much older than Mira. I felt I understood them in a generational sense. I shared the hope that had been kindled by the election of Barack Obama, by Occupy Wall Street, by the Arab Spring; I shared their growing disillusionment with social media, and all the other disappointments they’d suffered as that decade wore on. (I still cringe to remember that the OED word of the year for 2017 was ‘youthquake’.) So in a sense the book was always written as a period piece. But of course my own personal circumstances are always changing, as everybody's are. If I were to start writing Birnam Wood now, it would be as a 38-year-old and as a mother, which inevitably would have a bearing on the work.

I think I’ve just talked myself full circle: my new answer is that yes, the novel would absolutely turn out differently if I wrote it now. It would be different in every single way.

Do you feel any obligation, as such an internationally successful author, to continue to write New Zealand stories? Do you think you’ll ever write about elsewhere?

I have lived in the UK continuously since 2019, and I think it would be very hard for me to write a novel set in present-day New Zealand because my experience of the pandemic was so different to how it was experienced back home. That has more to do with the need for the work to be convincing than it has to do with any sense of obligation, though. I’m also a Canadian author—I was born in Canada—and I actually feel much more of an obligation to address that in my fiction somehow. Someday!

Obviously the core of the novel is Macbethian, but you’ve also mentioned being inspired by Mary Shelley and by working on the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. How important do you think it is for other writers like yourself (and the general public) to be reading classics today?

More than important. Vital. We can’t understand our own age properly without a sense of how things have changed. I can never take a writer seriously if I find out that they refuse to read the giants of the past. But equally, I can’t trust writers who scorn to read contemporary fiction. They’re just as impoverished, and maybe more so, because they risk losing sight of their readers, who can only exist in the present, and nowhere else.

The flip side of this is the crime/thriller influences of the book. Was it a balancing act of classical, literary, and genre fiction elements, or did that relationship come naturally?

Emma has famously been called the world’s first detective novel, and in a way, Macbeth is our first example of an ingenious plot twist: really a double twist, first the fact that Birnam Wood is made to move, and then, the fact that Macduff was not technically born of woman. So they both gave me a lot to work with on a genre level while also being formally, and literarily, exemplary.

You’ve said the first seeds of Birnam Wood were sown (excuse the pun) during a writer’s residency in Amsterdam above a left-wing bookstore filled with protest books. Were there any specific books that helped shape your characters/story?

David Graeber’s The Democracy Project, Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform, Eliot Higgins’ We Are Bellingcat, and Katrin Marcal’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? all had a huge influence on Birnam Wood. But for me inspiration is as often negative as it is positive. Mark Bray’s Antifa, for example, was influential precisely because of how much it annoyed me.

If you were a bookseller, how would you sell your book to a potential reader?

It was always my hope that Birnam Wood would be the kind of book that you’d have to stay up late to finish. So maybe I'd say that. But I find this question slightly queasy-making, because I don’t really think it’s the author’s place to say whether their book achieves its ambitions or not.

Do you have anything you can share with us about your next book, Doubtful Sound, yet?

I can give you the first sentence: Eight months after my divorce from Dominic, I saw a woman he had led me to believe was dead.

Give us a quick review of the other finalists on the shortlist, if you’ve read them!

Pip Adam’s game-breaking, ground-changing Audition will break your heart and rearrange your brain, but not in that order. Reading Emily Perkins’ subtle and provocative Lioness, I kept thinking of a line from Diana Athill’s memoir, how the best observers of human nature are ‘lit by humour but above malice’; there’s so much warmth to the humour in this book, which is never malicious, even at its most satirical. The blunt, vernacular style of Stephen Daisley’s A Better Place kept astounding me, page after page, with its emotional scope; I had to keep reminding myself that this was a work of the imagination and not an eyewitness account. And the foot! Oh my God, the foot. 

Short version: all three are terrific books!

Author Interview: Pip Adam

Abby had a chat with author Pip Adam about her latest book, Audition - a finalist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Audition is a dizzying, genre-defying work of social realism, which the judges of this year’s Ockhams aptly described as ‘mind-melting’. Pip’s masterful use of language and structure will have these characters filling your brain long after you’ve finished reading. It’s a book best read blind, but one that is deeply affecting and truly unforgettable - my top book of 2023! It was a privilege to talk to Pip about her work:

You’ve previously won the Acorn in 2018 for The New Animals. What do you think is the biggest thing that’s changed about your writing/you as a writer since then?

I’ve been thinking about this a bit because a lot of people have been asking this question - which I think is interesting in itself. I’m always writing about the moment I’m writing in - if that makes sense. Nothing shapes my work more than the things I’m living through. I’ve often said I write to try and understand things that confuse me. The New Animals was written pre-Trump but also at the tail-end of the John Key government. The concerns that shaped that book were around inequity and work. At the time I was feeling incredibly bruised by the political climate. I was witnessing this lack of care - for people, for the planet - and The New Animals is largely about trying to work out why power might demand this attitude to protect itself. I think this is what I love about trying to write the moment you’re in because I had no idea at that time how much worse it was going to get.

Looking back on it, The New Animals contains this completely misjudged hope: hard work can be its own reward, community can protect us from power structures, the innocent individual will not be punished for the actions of those who wield power over them and, I think, most upsettingly, the powerless will find a way to survive the climate collapse. When I think about these things, they’re some of the stories we’re told to keep us in check. I think when I wrote The New Animals I was imagining a different future to the one I find myself in now and the one I wrote Audition in.

Probably, the most important thing that happened for my writing and me was not winning the Acorn Prize in 2021. As the room’s energy shifted toward the winning book that night I experienced this overwhelming sense of the freedom of being unseen. It’s hard to describe but when I next sat down to write I felt that wonderful, wonderful feeling that no one was waiting for the next book. That I had nothing to ‘live-up to’, that I could write something with no one looking. I come from a family where we know how to pass and there had been a degree of embodying this politeness, because I imagined people were watching, that I also felt kind of fell off me. I think this is why Nothing to See is such an autobiographical book. I felt while people were watching I could only speak for my own experience, that somehow people would be upset at me if I spoke to a bigger picture. Ironically, what I experienced after The New Animals won was the answer to my question around power protecting itself. I experienced a degree of privilege and wealth and this led to a degree of fear over losing both those things. It was not like this with Audition. The book was written during a year where I really needed to decide where I stood politically. The lack of care I’d seen in the Key government in many ways was still there during the last Labour government because that is the nature of our capitalist colonial government and to watch it being executed under a rhetoric and culture of ‘kindness’ woke me up in all new ways. I needed to educate myself about my position as Tauiwi Pākeha in the violence wrought by colonisation, about my complicity in the justice system, and exactly how I could be an accomplice in the protection and advancement of Trans rights.

So what I see that has changed about my writing in between The New Animals and Audition is a greater pressure on language and narrative to express what I’m struggling with politically and personally. An attempt maybe to work out the things about me in the world that confuse me. 

My predominant thought while reading Audition was that it was such a singular concept, something I never could have imagined being a book until it was. How did this story/these characters come to you?

One of my favourite things about writing fiction is that, for me, the only way to find out the story and to meet the characters is by writing the story and the characters. There’s this Wallace Stevens’ poem called Of Modern Poetry and it has this line:

It has   

To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage 

I don’t know much about poetry, and every time I read this one I am confused again. But that line, in my interpretation, describes exactly what it is to write a novel. I have to construct the stage for the novel to be on. In this way I think all novels are something we could never imagine. So, yeah, this is how the story and characters came to me. I would show up at my computer or at my notebook having no idea what I was going to write and start writing. I say this a lot and it is probably boring but the first draft is always a process of me telling myself the story. I reckon my most important job at this stage is two-fold. The first part is the turning up. Turning up especially when I am not feeling it - because at the stage when things are ‘coming to me’ I never feel it. The second part is to fuel up. I need experiences and information to bring to this process. So during this time, any time away from writing is trying to live as consciously as possible. Being open to chance encounters - with books, with news articles, with people. So it’s this strange time of being absolutely and wildly in the world and taking time away from it to write. This I think is where the story came to me. For example, one of the major influences was James E.K. Parker’s work on sound’s place in war and torture. I would have never found it if I hadn’t been working on a project at City Gallery around an exhibition Parker was co-curating. The job was part of a few I was doing at the time to make money, which is a massive part of living and one I need to be part of while I’m writing.

In an effort to describe the reading experience of Audition, the best I can come up with is a cluttered stream of consciousness, like synapses firing over a page. At what point in writing did that language come to you? Did you know from the outset that that’s what you wanted the writing style to be?

I think ‘style’ (or in my case perhaps lack of style - which is a stylistic choice in itself) comes quite late. I’m not a person who ‘hears’ voice. I can feel when it’s wrong so I’m usually writing away from something rather than toward it. There’s one choice I do remember making and it’s to have the first section all in direct speech. The book is really interested in ideas around gender and I am really interested in ways of subverting binary gender in language. The book is also, of course, interested in sound and I suddenly realised one day that direct speech is a way to depress the use of pronouns and also it’s a noisy construction. So it was an interesting way to explore both ideas at once. I’ve always been interested also in how direct speech has this effect, for me anyway, of escaping the narrative voice. In my head, direct speech is like a punch-through to a narrative. It sounds different in my head and I love that. 

You’ve said that the spaceship Audition is specifically based on Saydnaya Prison in Damascus, Syria. Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose this as a model for Audition, and what the research process was like?

I wrote an essay for The Arts Desk about sound in prisons. The idea of sound and prison are probably the things that have been in the novel from the start - they might be the foundational ideas of the work. In that essay I said this about Saydnaya;

‘The exhibition that James Parker was curating included the work of Lawrence Abu Hamdan which documented his collection of "ear witness" testimony from released and escaped inmates of Saydnaya – a prison inaccessible to independent observers and monitors. One of the things that became very clear through Abu Hamdan’s work, was the extent to which Saydnaya was designed to create sonic torture. A combination of panacoustic surveillance and amplifying architecture meant it was an extreme example of what Abu Hamden describes as the acoustics of incarceration which created "prisoners who see nothing but hear everything, who were both completely confined and yet totally exposed". I visited this work almost every day of the exhibition.’

It’s important for me to say that most prisons use a degree of sonic torture. This is not something we can look at others and feel good about our own justice systems. I think I chose Saydnaya also because of its actually shape - it has three wings and there are three giants. Saydnaya is symmetrical. In the chronological timeline there is a move from symmetry to asymmetry. The planet they end up on is based largely on the Pre-Cambrian era of this planet when the fauna was more asymmetric.

Audition is not a book I would classify as easy to handsell in the bookshop (often the best ones aren’t!) Who do you think should read it, if you could make anyone read it who would that be?

As you can tell, I have a lot to say on a lot of things but this question has me absolutely stumped. It’s still a pretty weird idea to me that anyone would read this book and I’m incredibly grateful to anyone who does. I think the book requires a degree of generosity that feels really arrogant of me to ask from a reader. That being said, I have been really humbled by the people who have come to me to talk about the book and what they got out of the book. I think as well as generosity the book requires a degree of surrender as well and I think, actually, at the moment there are quite a few works examples of work that people are willing to surrender to. I’m thinking of things like the films All of Us Strangers and The Zone of Interest. I’m not putting my work on a par with these amazing pieces of art but I saw both of them in the cinema and, in the case of The Zone of Interest, I was sitting next to some very vocal people. It was an incredible experience hearing them coming to terms with the film. They started quite angry but sort of ‘settled into’ it quite quickly. My favourite director is Kelly Reichardt and I saw Showing Up (possibly her greatest film) at the film festival last year and was sitting in front of people who really hated it and it was another really helpful experience for me. Eavesdropping on this really candid conversation about all the things that I think a reader would also hate about my books. Of course a book is a much bigger time commitment than a film. I think that’s why Audition is short. I always feel like if I’m asking for generosity I need to respect that and not waster people’s time. 

In the book’s acknowledgements you mention Anne Kennedy’s poetry book The Time of the Giants. How did the relationship between that book and Audition form, and were there any books that shaped Audition?

I have been a massive fan of Anne Kennedy’s work for a long time. I love her work and the way there is this reinvention of what her work is each time she publishes. She is a massive inspiration to me to build a new stage for each book.  The Time of the Giants was the first book I returned to when I was writing Audition. I love the way it holds the ancient weight of the giant and the politics of the contemporary at the same time and kind of uses them to add this push and pull to the work which reflects the perspective readjustment you have to do to include the giant. I realise now I didn’t read a lot of books about giants apart from Anne’s. I did read Gulliver’s Travels. Oddly one of the hardest things about the book was getting the perspective right. I spent a lot of time walking round the city and my house with an imaginary friend who is three times my height. 

In the acknowledgements I list a whole bunch of writers I was reading at the time. I think because the book includes a trans character it was important for me to be reading work by trans writers not as research but a reminder that as a cis person I will never be able to write the trans experience and that there are already amazing books being written that do this well. One of the most dangerous ideas a writer can have I think is that as a writer from outside a community they need to write this community’s stories because they are ‘untold’. There is an amazing essay by Alexander Chee called ‘How to Unlearn Everything: When it comes to writing the “other,” what questions are we not asking?’ The questions Chee identifies that writers are not asking are: ‘Why do you want to write from this character’s point of view? Do you read writers from this community currently? Why do you want to tell this story?’ 

If anyone wanted to learn more about justice and the prison system after reading Audition, where would you point them to next?

There are a lot of incredible books and discussions taking place at the moment. I really think the best first stop in Aotearoa is PAPA - People Against Prisons Aotearoa. 

We’re headed very quickly toward a really dark time for justice in Aotearoa and I think it’s really important that we inform ourselves about the justice system, especially the business of prisons and evidence from research conducted into alternative forms of justice. Prisons are a capitalist and colonial construct; there's nothing natural about the kind of justice they attempt to elicit. The justice system the present government is envisioning and bringing about will benefit no one except the global companies who make money out of the prison industrial complex. 

Any ideas for your next book yet?

I am really excited to be moving to Ōtautahi in July where I’m lucky enough to be one of the recipients of the Ursula Bethell residency at the University of Canterbury. While I’m there I’ll be working on a novel about the weaponisation of humour. It’s kind of about all those times I’ve been told to ‘lighten up’ and that it was ‘only a joke’.

Give us a quick review of the other finalists on the shortlist, if you’ve read them!

Before I start on that, I just want to strongly recommend: Turncoat by Tīhema Baker, Big Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia, The Artist by Ruby Solly, Biter by Claudia Jardine and Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand by Jared Davidson. These books all made an incredible impression on me this year.

Awards are weird and hard for writers. This is no fault of the people who organise and work for competitions. It would be so great if writers were paid adequately for their labour so some of the pressure could come off them at awards time. I think competition is antithetical to writing which relies on community and collaboration so it’s incredibly tricky that the only way to get money is to be in competition to get money - contestable arts funding I’m also looking at you. I’m really excited that one day we’ll find other community-building ways to financially support the amazing books being written here. In the meantime, I’m incredibly impressed with the way writers deal with the status quo - the way we celebrate and support each other. 

Lioness is such an incredible exploration of wealth in New Zealand. Emily has written this incredibly compelling book which is making profound observations on money and what it actually buys you. It occurred to me last night that all four books on the shortlist include crime and I think Lioness is incredible in the way it describes what justice looks like to the wealthy and how so much is reliant on who is ‘in your court’ at any time. Emily’s craft blows my mind. Her control of narrative and character, her eye for the perfect detail described in ways that progress rather than stall the narrative - she’s just fucking amazing. I’ve read this book a couple of times and it just keeps giving. I also want to recommend the audio book which is read by Kerry Fox which adds a whole other layer to it.

I think because it’s so compelling readers might forget what an incredibly experimental novel Birnam Wood is. I think this is a massive part of the power of Eleanor’s writing. This ability to be absolutely ground-breaking and still deliver a story that’s compelling. I really love the way Eleanor controls point of view in Birnam Wood. The way an entire set of psychologies seems in play. Eleanor is so good at drawing entire lives in precisely chosen snippets of information. I also love the way the plot is structured so that solutions cause more problems. This is so satisfying in the book because we are allowed into each character’s mind so we get to see the life that has lead to the choices they make. Right from the start when Mira chooses to leave to solve a relationship problem and I’m like, ‘That is totally what Mira should do’ - it’s such a wild and fun ride.

A Better Place brings to life an incredibly vivid and original vision of World War 2. Stephen Daisley makes the concerns of World War 2 urgent and profound by holding the books stare longer, forcing the reader not only into the hell of war but into the hell of life after war. The narrative of the book is so well conceived and I think this is the real gold of it. Instead of trying to update the character’s psychology so they become stand-ins for our current thoughts and feelings, Stephen offers us a contemporary structure to view characters that read very much as products of their times. In this way, he’s created a historic work which feels more relevant and urgent than many I’ve read.

What’s It Like Judging New Zealand’s Biggest Book Award?

Abby spoke with Juliet Blyth, former bookseller and current CEO of Read NZ. She is the convenor of judges for this year’s Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Why did you apply to be an Ockham's judge?

Well, I’ve always been a reader and I’ve been lucky to be attending the Ockham NZ Book Awards and previous iterations for several years. They never get old for me, it’s such a buzz to be there to celebrate the creativity and the accomplishments of our writers, in all fields. I decided I wanted to be part of it, and to give something back to the industry I’ve gained so much from. Plus, several good friends have been judges over the years and they heartily recommended the experience!

Tell us a bit about the process - how many submissions did you have to read? What did your days look like when trying to get through them all?

All up we had 43 books to read. From September to December, I cleared the decks, and read in the mornings before work, again in the evenings, and at weekends. Once I settled into the routine, I really welcomed the discipline.  

As judges, you're obviously all extremely passionate about NZ fiction. Were you mostly harmonious in your decisions? What was your strategy as convener if/when disagreements arose?

Judging with Kiran and Anthony has been a dream, they are thoughtful, extremely well read and articulate. We all brought different strengths and experiences to the judging process which provided balance and alternative perspectives, as one would hope. We worked successfully together because of our mutual respect for each other, and clear communication from the beginning. If we needed time to consider alternative views we took it, our decisions were stronger for it.

What was it like meeting with international judge Natalie Haynes? Was there anything about her perspective on our shortlist that surprised you?

It was amazing, Natalie is very very smart, insightful and articulate. Her perspective as a reader on the other side of the globe, and her experience as a literary prize judge was invaluable, providing clarity and fresh eyes at a critical time in the process.

This particular shortlist is made up of four very distinctive stories that span across drastically different genres. Was there any intention behind that choice?

The short list celebrates established writers at the height of their powers, whilst drastically different they are united by their sense of social conscience. The short list is also a direct reflection of the incredible depth and range of writing we were presented with as judges. It’s exciting.

You started your career as a bookseller! If you were working in a bookshop right now, how would you handsell the shortlist to a customer?

Gosh, that was a while ago, here goes!

A Better Place shines new light on the impact of war, specifically WWII, on our collective conscious. With practiced economy Daisley conveys a whole world.

Audition asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much space. It’s a genre buster, like nothing you’ve ever read before, often confronting but told with heart and love.

Birnam Wood is a wild ride, give yourself over to this often hilarious, impeccably written, tightly plotted and richly imagined eco thriller.

Punchy, refined and frequently funny, Lioness is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity.   

We know you probably can’t tell us which of the shortlist was your favourite! But what are some of your favourite things about this shortlist? What was the reading experience for these four books like?

You’re right, they are all completely different reading experiences.

A Better Place excels in its tender exploration of the pervasive themes of the time through the eyes of two brothers; Audition excels in its world-building and its heart;  Birnam Wood is pacy and sophisticated in its handling of a large cast and multiple narratives , and Lioness for its very contemporary take on women’s lives who are sometimes invisible and often overlooked or dismissed. It’s funny, sharp and relevant.

What’s your outlook on the landscape of NZ fiction right now, having spent months reading the best of the best?

Bowled over really, it was a spectacular year for NZ fiction.  How lucky are we as readers to have all this richness within our reach.  The experience of judging, of reading more NZ fiction than I ever have, and the conversations with my judging comrades has been a gift. I’ll miss it.

Author Interview: Sam Low - Modern Chinese

Hollie spoke to MasterChef winner Sam Low about his amazing new cookbook, Modern Chinese.

What does a typical day look like for you?

The great thing about being a freelancer and a food creative means I have the opportunity to dabble in so many different areas within food media. If i'm not doing my brand ambassador work (which includes recipe development, video shoots or workshops) I am either creating content for social media or working on a creative food project, an example of this was earlier this year I was a part of a team helping to develop a food theater show and hosting Sik Fan Lah a food adventure series on TVNZ. I’m currently brewing a new project so watch this space!

What was the process of getting your cookbook published?

Long, cathartic and thought provoking would be some of the words to describe the process. I looked into so many different aspects of food media exploring things like food masculinity, orientalism in food photography, queer food history, Chinese gastronomy, assimilated Chinese food (survival Chinese food), my relationship to food and family, these were just some of the topics I looked into. I thankfully had the best publishing team that helped me throughout, and because it is the first of its kind in NZ and the only Chinese cookbook to come out in the last decade we were all piecing it together and learning from the process. It starts with writing recipes that utilize a really accessible and approachable pantry which is a section in the book I spent a lot of time on. The recipes needed to be cohesive to a Chinese banquet meaning that there are options for protein or vegetable focused dishes including rice, noodles, broths and cold appetizers. Once the recipes were done, its recipe testing and food photography. From here, essays, stories, illustrations and personal touches. Once everything is designed then we think about the title and final checks before it goes off to print.

Why did you decide to do Modern Chinese as a cookbook?

I felt as though in NZ there aren’t many books focused around diasporic foods or speak to the history of food from ethnic minorities that help make up the beautifully diverse culinary scene here in Aotearoa. Modern Chinese is a documentation of something that is important to the food scene here and speaks to the contemporary audience of today, hoping to debunk any xenophobia people might have on Chinese cuisine. I wanted to create a cookbook that is easy, accessible, approachable and targeting a large audience potentially first time cookbook owners. Modern Chinese is about community and a simple introductory guide into Chinese food and culture, hoping to inspire young cooks, food creatives and other diasporic communities to embrace and celebrate their own cuisine and share their love of food.

Do you have a favourite recipe in the book?

Instead of my favourite recipe, my favourite part of the book is the building of the pantry. I have arranged this section into 3 tiers, tier one being super easy to access even from a western supermarket and with that alone you can create most of the dishes in the book. I wanted the book to be utilised throughout with a simple Chinese pantry so specialty ingredients that are not only used once and sit at the back of the pantry. Outside of ‘the building of the Chinese pantry’ my favourite recipes are the sauces in the book, they help make bland foods super tasty! Like the sweet fragrant soy sauce (make a batch and store in squeezy bottles) and the aromatic chilli oil (also make batches and store in jars). Use these on a simple protein like grilled chicken on rice, add it in a stir fry or dressing your dumplings, these homemade condiments are game changers.

What is one ingredient that you always have on hand?

Besides the homemade condiments, I might say ground white pepper. It's floral, warmingly spicy and can be used in every savoury dish. If this is new to you, start adding a little shake (or pinch) in your savoury foods to add a new level of flavour.

What food writers inspire you?

Fuchsia Dunlop is a big one for me, a Chinese food gastronomist, a wealth of knowledge matched with an infectious love and appreciation for the people, culture and food of China. Soliel Ho, they were the head food critic at San Francisco’s The Chronicle now critic at large. I fell in love with Soleil’s work when they did the podcast Racist Sandwich and Extra Spicy, having different narratives and conversations in food media about class, race and gender. Brandon Jew, owner of Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco's Chinatown, a Michelin star modern Chinese restaurant. Brandon really pushed the boundaries of what it means to be Chinese American where you don’t need to be more or less Chinese to feel enough as a Chinese person in diaspora. Harold McGee, an American author who writes about science and food but his latest work on smell has really changed the way I think about our human senses. His book ‘Nose Dive’ a field guide to the world of smells is so incredible it goes beyond food but more so on how we navigate life.

What author or book is a recent discovery for you?

Emily Contois is an incredible author whom I discovered last year. She’s an associate Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa, author of Diners, Dudes & Diets: How Gender & Power Collide in Food Media & Culture, and co-editor of Food Instagram: Identity, Influence & Negotiation. Her work revolves around food media and how it has come to be in today’s climate. I am especially interested in her exploration of the ways we consume food media and how this reflects on our day to day food behaviors in society.

What was your favourite snack to eat while putting together Modern Chinese?

Soft egg (slightly scrambled and folded) sandwiches with Japanese mayonnaise. The soft white loaf bread and delicate sweet egg is so comforting and has been a favourite of mine growing up since a little kid.

Author Interview: Mona Awad - Rouge

Hollie spoke to best-selling author and store favourite, Mona Awad about her latest novel, Rouge.

Where do you draw inspiration from? 

Usually my own fixations and obsessions. In the case of Rouge, it was skincare and beauty, and an addiction to beauty videos on YouTube. I couldn't help but see the great potential for horror there. I'd also always wanted to work with the fairy tale of Snow White, which is the ultimate fairy tale about beauty and its shadow side. 

So….Tom Cruise?

Or is he? Appearances can be deceiving, Bunny :)  

Has your skincare routine changed since writing Rouge?

It was really byzantine when I first became obsessed with skincare and I experimented quite a bit with different products. I was also very easily enchanted and seduced. Now I have some trusted products I rely on and I'm slightly more dubious of claims. But I'll always love a mist and to be honest, I'm still a bit of a sucker. 

What’s next in skincare?

God knows. But I'll probably be trying it. 

How do you structure the layout of a story? Do you write with an outcome in mind? 

Usually I'll do a kind of rough blueprint of the first part of the book and then I'll start writing. The ending usually comes to me as I'm writing the beginning. I don't hold myself to it, I tend to just follow the story, but in each case it's where the book has wanted to land. 

There are aspects of your novels that read like a dream. Are any parts of your books inspired from a dream you’ve had?

I'm glad to hear that. I think that's often the feel that I'm going for and the subject matter or the character's mental state is what dictates it. Beauty is, after all, a kind of dream. I also really like to immerse the reader in the character's mind, and in our minds we're always dreaming. 

What author or book is a recent discovery for you? 

Not terribly recent, but I really loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I thought the narration was so wonderful--this heady mix of enchantment and dread.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?

Usually it's just coffee or green tea for me but I have a friend who sends me little knick knacks that are in conversation with whatever book I'm working on, sort of to cheer me on. For Rouge, she bought me these beautiful rose gummies. I did enjoy those during breaks. 

Author Interview: Dominic Hoey - Poor People With Money

Hollie spoke to award-winning poet and playwright Dominic Hoey about his latest novel, Poor People With Money. This is a pacy, heart-twisting, punch-in-the-guts, darkly comic novel that captures life on the poverty line in Aotearoa now.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I normally wake up around 10 or 11, argue with Chilli (my dog), go to work at Atawhai and look after teenagers, come home, more arguing with Chilli. Around 10ish I start writing then when that becomes hopeless I read or watch a film. There's also drinking and talking shit with friends mixed in there. 

Where did the inspiration for Poor People with Money come from?

I wanted to write about the shit people have to do just to get a pinch of dignity when you're broke. Also I used to train Muay Thai before I got sick and I always thought that combat sports in general is such an interesting community.  

What is one thing you would like readers to take away from Poor People With Money?

I don't know if there was a moral I wanted people to get. Just hopefully it inspired people to write. Like if a dyslexic with no education can do it so can you.

How did your writing workshops come about? 

When I was 18 I was in the dole office and they were like "what do you want to do?" and I kept on saying I wanted to be a writer. Which they must have thought was crazy. but I had a case worker who actually tried to find me short courses but there wasn't really anything. So once I learnt some stuff I really wanted to share this knowledge with people. especially people who wouldn't normally have access to it. 

Do you have a different approach when it comes to writing a poem versus a novel?

Yeah its a real different part of the brain. I feel like poetry is squinting and looking at a photo and then describing it, where's a novel is a pile of photos you're trying to arrange into a story. 

What can you tell us about your next novel? 

I'm currently writing two. One is set over a month starting the day after the rainbow warrior bombing in 1985. It's about a thieving fat kid who's really good at video games.  The other one is a paranormal mystery thriller set in Port Chalmers. 

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing? 

I don't really eat when I write. I smoke lots of weed when I write poetry. It doesn't help with novels though unfortunately 

What author or book is a recent discovery for you? 

I've recently got into Dan Chaon who writes quite dark kind of mysteries I guess. But they are more about families and breakdown of relationships. Also Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry. One of the best books I've ever read 

Can we expect Prince Chilli’s memoir anytime soon?

Yes, in fact the final draft of "Biting My Way To Happiness" is with Penguin as we speak

Author Interview: Ruin and Other Stories - Emma Hislop

Hollie spoke to Emma Hislop about her debut collection, Ruin and Other Stories. This collection shimmers with a brutal kind of hope, exploring power and its contortions, powerlessness and its depravities, and the ends to which we will go to claim back agency.

Tell us about yourself.

I whakapapa to Kāi Tahu. I love coffee and good books and spending time with my loved ones. I'm trying to write a novel now. I live in Taranaki with my partner and kid and dog. I currently am trying to make a living freelancing and juggling lots of jobs.

What are you currently reading?

Hiwa, the new collection of contemporary Maori short stories. It’s out with AUP and it’s a beautiful thing.

What inspired the collection?

I’ve always been interested in power and the different forms it can take. The way in which it can be upfront and obvious, or more subtle and coercive. That’s Ruin’s main preoccupation, probably.

What was the intention in naming the collection Ruin?

II like how Ruin can be both an end and also hold potential. The stories in this collection can be hard to read at times, but hopefully, by shining a light on them, some of the power is taken out of some of the violence that’s in them.

How did you go about choosing the cover art by Maiangi Waitai?

I’ve admired Maiangi’s work for years, and when I saw this image, which is titled ‘When pushed, pull’, it seemed to encapsulate the ideas I was trying to express in my writing. It’s both chaotic and full of potential. The publishing team at Te Herenga Waka went for it, luckily.

Do you have a favourite story from the collection?

That’s a hard question, but I think I’d choose The Game. I was interested in the power dynamic with the complicated friendship and it challenged me in terms of what each character knew or didn’t know about the situation. Also its set in summertime in Brixton, in South London where I lived for almost a decade.

How did you feel when you heard Ruin and Other Stories was going to be published?

I was happy! I’d hoped Te Herenga Waka would want it. I sent it there first as I’ve built up a bit of a relationship over the years.

What writing projects do you have in the pipeline?

I was fortunate to receive some CNZ funding last year to draft a novel, so I’ve been working hard on that. It’s set in Ōtepoti and I'm hoping to get back down there soon.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?

Honestly, as long as I have coffee and fizzy water, I’m good. I don’t really snack. Roasted almonds, if I can afford them.

Author Interview: Melinda Szymanik - Lucy and the Dark

Hollie spoke to Melinda Szymanik about her latest children’s book, Lucy and the Dark. When Lucy makes friends with the Dark she discovers a new and exciting world - but the world is about to discover what it's like without the Dark! A funny and enjoyable bedtime story with a glow-in-the dark cover to encourage lights out!

Tell us about yourself. 

People say we are made up of atoms, or cells, or flesh and blood, but personally I believe I am made up of words. When I first learned to read, I was filling up pretty fast on new words and I expanded exponentially till I became an adult. I have slowed down quite a bit now because I come across fewer previously unmet words, but I’ll keep growing till I die like a tortoise or nose hairs.

What inspired Lucy and the Dark?

I can’t remember, but whatever it was I’m really grateful because it turned out really well. However, as it is a bit rubbish to say, ‘I can’t remember,’ here is a snippet from an earlier draft, which ended up getting replaced as it didn’t fit so well with the rest of the story but is still rather lovely, I think.

‘It’s time to go home,’ I said.

I don’t want to go back to where everyone is afraid of me,’ Dark cried.

‘But I will be there,’ I said. ‘And we are the best of friends.’

‘But what do you see in me?’ Dark asked.

And I said, ‘The stars.’

What is something you are scared of?

Being buried alive. Not really a great central idea for a picture book though so I went with the dark instead which I’m only just a little bit afraid of.

How did you team up with illustrator Vasanti Unka?

When Penguin decided to publish my picture book My Elephant is Blue, they had the genius idea of inviting Vasanti to illustrate. She did an incredible job so when they suggested her for Lucy and the Dark, I could not have been happier. Dark is just so cute and charming children will be won over instantly.

Can you describe your writing space for us?

I have the terrible habit of writing in bed. I hear Meg Rosoff does the same so I feel like I’m in good company, but it really isn’t good for your back or neck. I can see Maungawhau/Mt Eden from my bedroom window plus our front garden, and the cat hangs out with me, and it is lovely and peaceful, and I am surrounded by all my own detritus which seems to support my creative process.

What are some of your favourite childhood books? 

I will never get over Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and The Lion in the Meadow by Margaret Mahy. They are magic and no matter how many times I read them I can’t quite see how the trick is done and I am delighted all over again. We should never stop reading picture books – they are the biggest source of wonder in literature.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?

I’m not much of a snacker when I write (do I even qualify as a real writer?).

Author Interview: Ruby Solly - The Artist

Hollie spoke to Ruby Solly ahead of the release of her latest collection, The Artist. The Artist brings to life the histories of our great Southern iwi through the whakapapa of its characters and the rich world they and their ancestors call their tūrakawaewae—their place to stand, their place to sing.

Tell us about yourself. 

Kia ora! Ko Ruby Solly tōku ikoa. Ko Waitaha ratou ko Kāti Māmoe, Ko Kāi Tahu ōku iwi. Ko Waihao tōku marae. My name is Ruby and I’m a proud daughter of our Southern iwi, hailing from Waihao marae. I’m a writer, taonga pūoro practitioner, music therapist, and general kaitoi living in Pōneke, Wellington. My second book ‘The Artist’ is out now from Te Herenga Waka University Press.

What first sparked your interest in Tarot?

Honestly, I’m not really a tarot reader! Huge interest, but I more read oracle cards and create similar sets to help me with randomizing content to generate inspiration. I’ve been interested in tarot since I was a kid when my parents gave me a book on magic and divination that had a paired down set in it which I would use. There’s a whakapapa connection with Judaism and tarok and other Jewish forms of divination and spirituality that come from our culture that we have taken with us across the world. I think the reading of tohu within my Māori whakapapa weaves in with this as well, and I see that reading of signs within our cave tohu, our cave art. When I make cards it’s often a way to represent options or trial things that I already have as strong themes within my mind, and it gives me a physical representation of my mental space. The character cards for the book were a big part of this; so I could randomize different relationships and think about dynamics and voices. It’s something that I’ve continued to use since this book, bringing it into my other work in music too! 

What are the things that connect art, spirituality and whakapapa for you?

In a kind of weird and possibly narcissistic way, I think those things often combine within me, and within doing the work to create things from the whakapapa and connections to spirituality that it has. I also think just the idea of ceremony, and knowing that we can use our tikanga and kawa to create significant moments for ourselves spiritually, is crucial for me to create works like this and to ensure that it’s more than just me working. And to ensure I’ve got the strength to do it! I also think that art, spirituality, and whakapapa are truly in harmony for me when I’m on our whenua and working with our people with taonga pūoro. I truly believe that we can all create and being able to encourage that in other branches of my whakapapa is deeply meaningful for me.

There’s a mixture of prose, poetry and visual artistry in your poems and you’re also a songwriter! Do your creative processes inform one another? 

I’m a firm believer that toi was and is something that weaves through all things and mediums. In secondary and tertiary spaces I was often ‘told off’ for ‘dabbling’ outside of whatever it was I was doing, and it took me a long time to decolonise this part of my thinking after having to partially adopt it in order to get through those places. Now, I use a wide range of creative mediums to bring out works. Sometimes I might create words, music, or art for a project, that doesn’t get used as part of the final piece and is just part of how I learn what I need to in order to create the work. The cards for this book were a bit like that, I didn’t initially think they would be in the book, but I’m so glad they are. 

How did you approach writing The Artist? 

With a lot of things I make, I get a very clear image of something within the work, and then I just can’t let it rest until I’m working towards that. For me it was one of the main characters, Te Heikiki, standing in a nightgown, bare foot on a dirt road, on a flat plain with wind stirring up her hair, which is how she appears on her character card too. After this, I did a lot of researching and having conversations with whanaunga and mentors about all the different aspects that went into the book; cave art, pūrākau, pounmu, whakapapa…. And then I planned out the plot in about 40 bullet points, and wrote to that! The first section took me a year because it covers the history of te Wai Pounamu up till settlement. Even though it’s only 12 or so poems, it really took a lot of research and thinking about wording. After getting that whakapapa sorted, it flowed so much easier from there.

What are some of your favourite writers or books?

Oh man, how many can I have? In Aotearoa, essa mae ranapiri, Tayi Tibble, Michelle Rahurahu ( who has an amazing novel coming out with THWUP), Whiti Hereaka, Becky Manawatu, Keri Hulme, Robert Sullivan, Albert Wendt, Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttal, Anne Kennedy, and you should definitely get my cousin’s book, ‘Bird Speak’ by Arihia Latham! Outside of Aotearoa, Joy Harjo, Anne Carson, ‘Deep Wheel Orcadia’ by Harry Josephine Giles, Faylita Hicks, Danez Smith, Bernadine Evaristo (check out ‘The Emperor’s Babe’), Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘The Golem’ by Gustav Meyrink, Alison Bechdel, Isabel Greenberg and Henry Dumas… amongst many others!

What is your favorite snack to enjoy while writing? 

Currently a bit of cut fruit and some nuts as I’m on a diet for PCOS which affects the health and fertility of 10% of women, which isn’t something that we talk about a lot in society. But, this book was definitely written on date scones from Aro café. With the occasional eggs on toast, and always a mocha.

Author Interview: Joy Holley - Dream Girl

Hollie spoke to Joy Holley about her latest release, Dream Girl. Bittersweet and intimate, comic and gothic, Dream Girl is a collection of stories about young women navigating desire in all its manifestations.

Tell us about yourself

I’m 25 and a lifelong Wellingtonian. I did my Masters at the IIML in 2020, and wrote most of the stories in Dream Girl that year. This is my first book.

What traits of a Virgo Sun, Sagittarius Moon, Taurus rising do you most possess?

Virgo Sun: I’m detail oriented (in writing and in life) and have a good memory for the specifics.

Sagittarius Moon: I love to party and I love to talk! Definitely an extrovert.

Taurus Rising: I feel very connected to all five senses. I’m obsessed with food and cooking, perfume and candles, pretty things, and soft clothing.

What inspired your short story collection, Dream Girl?

My friends, my crushes, and the queer community. I also wanted the book to reflect my aesthetic world, and contain lots of femme imagery. The stories are very much based in Wellington, and some were inspired by the history of specific places, such as Erskine College and Mount Victoria tunnel.

What was the intention behind the order of the stories in the collection?

The collection starts off pretty grounded in the real world, but most of the protagonists are living in a crush-related fantasy… they’re often a bit deluded. As the stories go on, the characters no longer get to live comfortably in their fantasies: love goes wrong, and the love-interests become less idealised. Meanwhile, the stories become more magical, and the supernatural creeps in. By the end of the book, there’s a broader sense of reality.

What author is a recent discovery for you?

I read Casey Plett’s short story collection A Dream of a Woman last year, and have read both of her other books since. Her work focuses on the lives of trans women, friendship, addiction, sex, and love. Highly recommend!

What is your favorite snack to enjoy while writing?

Bread and butter, always. My fave bread in Wellington is the jalapeño cheddar loaf from Myrtle, and in Auckland I love the smoked rye from Daily Bread. Fave butter: Lurpak.

What makes you happiest?

Being at a party or a concert with my girlfriend and all my friends, wearing an outfit that I love.

Author Interview: Leah Dodd - Past Lives

Hollie spoke to poet Leah Dodd about her collection, Past Lives. Grounded in the urgency of the moment - motherhood, housing precarity, politics - Past Lives also surges along on the nervous and joyful electricity of Leah Dodd's voice, taking us from buses to poetry readings, rental bathrooms to Runescape, sometimes through the power of astral projection.

What does a typical day look like for you?

An 8am rush to the bus with my three-year-old first of all. Then after kindy drop-off, a coffee on the walk to work. Pretty soon after I get home it’s dinner and bed, and after that is when ideally I would write but usually end up stewing in front of Netflix or Mubi for a good few hours and regretting not spending that time writing (sponsor me @Mubi).

What can you tell us about the cover art of Past Lives?

The art itself is called ’The Goldfish Bowl’ and was painted in 1870 by Charles Edward Perugini. I designed the cover myself, and ultimately realised that graphic design is not, in fact, my passion. I wrote an essay about this process on The Spinoff here.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?

Ooh! A good ol’ flat white probably. Or an earl grey. I think I’m a more beverage-based poet, but don’t get me wrong, I’m a lover of all snacks. Especially… little cakes. 

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Mostly other poems and books, if I had to chalk it up to one thing. But more generally, I get inspired by things I see and hear and touch. Memes, the moon. A gig, a baby goat in the wildlife reserve. Funny things that friends say. I have a page on notes app that’s full of stuff like “clotted cream” and “leave us alone, fancy feast!” lol

What’s your experience been like submitting for different literary journals?

I’ve been really lucky with having poems accepted into journals, and feel so grateful for this, especially for journals like Starling that have published my work many times over the past seven (!!!) years. These days I usually only submit work when I feel it’s ready to be published, rather than sending something in to a deadline for the sake of it. Lately that has looked like barely sending anything in anywhere, and for now that’s okay!

What are some of your favourite writers or books?

Some of my favourite poets are Mary Ruefle, Richard Siken, Mark Leidner and Kim Addonizio. Eimear McBride and Lauren Groff are two all-time fav writers as well (Fates and Furies and The Lesser Bohemians have my heart forever). I’ve been loving reading Mag Gabbert and Ama Codjoe lately. At the moment some of my favourite books are by friends, which is the coolest thing ever. Like Dream Girl by Joy Holley, and The Artist by Ruby Solly. Buy them!! (And buy Past Lives ofc)

Author Interview: Josie Shapiro - Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts

Hollie spoke to Josie Shapiro about her stunning debut novel. An unforgettable debut about change, family and grit, and what it takes to achieve your dreams.

Tell us about yourself. 

I’m married and a mum of two daughters, and we live on the North Shore with our little dog, Tess.

What author is a recent discovery for you?

I am late to the party, but that doesn’t spoil how much I’ve enjoyed discovering Annie Ernaux and Taylor Jenkins-Reid. Two writers with different styles that have given me food for thought about how books are created and enjoyed. 

What are you currently reading? 

I have three books on the go – I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel, The Riders by Tim Winton, and I was lucky to get an early reading copy of The Bone Tree by Airana Ngarewa (out in Aug).  

What drew you to write about running opposed to another sport?

There seemed like a space to write about a female runner – I’d only read books about males. Then I read a quote by Alexi Pappas, ‘the marathon, like a good story, lures you in, takes you along if you are willing; all is nearly lost and then! The hero emerges victorious!’, and the narrative potential of running was clear.

Describe the feeling of when you found out that you were the winner of the A&U fiction prize.

I honestly couldn’t believe it. I have a habit of laughing when I should really be crying – I laughed and laughed and laughed. It was such an incredible feeling to win and to know that I would be published. 

What is your relationship with running? 

I stopped running about ten years ago, and even then I was a very average amateur. I wished I had run a marathon. This novel was a way of experiencing that without having to actually put on my sneakers and run. I am fully cured of any desire to run now, the book was true catharsis.

What is your writing routine? 

When I am into something, I try to write as often as possible – at least every day. That way I’m immersed into the story and it ticks over in my head when I’m busy doing other things and good ideas float to mind. 

What is your favorite snack to enjoy while writing?

Coffee and chocolate covered almonds

Author Interview: Shaneel Lal - One of Them

Hollie spoke to Shaneel Lal about their memoir One Of Them. This is a story of one person's fight for the right to live their life as they deserved - and their extraordinary work to protect other young New Zealanders.

Tell us about yourself.

I am Shaneel Lal. I am your Young New Zealander of the Year and the author of One of Them.  I am young and queer and have a hunger for disrupting the status quo. I sometimes say I came out of my mother with a pride flag in one hand, yelling 'Freedom!'

What are you currently reading?

I am rereading The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy. The book is a feminist manifesto discussing the importance of anger, attention, profanity, ambition, power, violence and lust.

What was the process of getting your memoir published? 

I sat down for coffee with my manager and Allen & Unwin, during which I shared my experience of surviving conversion therapy and how I led the movement to ban conversion therapy, and the next thing I knew, I had a book deal. 

How do you feel now that the book is out and people are reading it? 

It is frightening and exciting. Frightening because I have written about my conversion therapy, something I have never spoken to anyone before. Exciting because I think the book shows people there is a human behind the media façade. 

What was your writing routine? 

I wrote my memoir while doing law school full-time, writing for the Herald and working in hospitality. I had little capacity. I wrote for 8 hours every Saturday. Somehow, it did not feel laborious, and I could keep going. 

What author or book is a recent discovery for you? 

The Savage Coloniser Book by Tusiata Avia. 

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing? 

Grapes and carrots.  I am trying to minimise my dairy and sugar intake. I wouldn’t recommend it. 

What can we expect to see from you in the future?

If you’d like another memoir, you’ll have to give me at least a decade. If all goes as planned, I'll soon be working on something gayer than One of Them. 

Author Interview: Susan Wardell - The Lighthouse Princess

Hollie spoke to Susan Wardell about their gorgeous children’s book, The Lighthouse Princess. A delightful contemporary fairytale about an independent princess, who looks after a very special lighthouse lamp, fishes off the balcony and goes swimming with seals.

Tell us about yourself.
I have an academic job, a big garden, and a restless mind. I like to hop between genres and mediums, and see how they cross-pollinate. 

What inspired The Lighthouse Princess?
A walk on a wild Southern beach, the story of Rapunzel, my own introverted heart, and raising a daughter.

How did you team up with illustrator Rose Northey? 
My manuscript was selected for use in the Gavin Bishop Award for first-time illustrators... and Rose entered and won!

How does it feel being a finalist in two categories at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults?
Startling and delightful. I feel encouraged to dig even deeper into the space of Children's writing.

What are some of your favourite childhood books? 
Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series. Debbie's Dream (Gilbert Delahaye). Books full of animals and adventures.

What is in the pipeline for you?  
A couple of projects connecting my academic interests (in emotion and mental health) with children's writing, and also trying my hand at longer (junior fiction) texts. 

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?
Salt and vinegar chips, all the way!

Author Interview: Airana Ngarewa - The Bone Tree

Hollie spoke to Airana Ngarewa (Ngati Ruanui, Ngarauru, Ngaruahine) about his debut novel The Bone Tree. The Bone Tree is a gritty coming of age novel, where the unforgettable young protagonist faces immense challenges, and the stakes are life or death - yet it also has a lyrical beauty, and a powerful message of love at its heart.

What does a typical day look like for you? 
Wake up, read, write, work, read, write, train. I find my R & R in variety. As long as I am reading widely and mixing up my training I am quite content. I also tend to do this all with podcasts and YouTube blaring in the background which keeps it interesting and makes me very hard to live laugh. 

What are you currently reading? 
Dissemination by Jacques Derrida; Te Koroua me te Moana (a translation of The Old Man and the Sea into te reo) and Ngāti Ruanui, a short history of my iwi. 

Where did the idea for The Bone Tree come from? 
The story runs adjacent to so many of our stories in Pātea after the closing of the freezing works and the economic collapse of South Taranaki. You could say the idea came from every conversation I had growing up. 

What was your thought about setting the book in Taranaki?
We claim direct descent from Taranaki Maunga so the story had to be set here, under his shadow. The next book will be set here too!

How important was it for you to include te reo Māori in the story?
We call te reo Māori te reo rangatira: the chiefly language or the language of chiefs. So many concepts and ideas are beyond translation. To capture the thoughts and experiences of Māori across time, the book had to be sprinkled with the language. 

How did you feel when you heard The Bone Tree was going to be published? 
I am pretty stoic. Publication felt like the next natural step of writing a novel. What has got me excited is the love and care of Moa Press. I am incredibly grateful for their guidance and wisdom. 

What is your desert island book? 
Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History by Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?
Toast. 

Author Interview: Michaela Keeble - Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai

Hollie spoke to Michaela Keeble about creating her book Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai alongside her son, Kerehi.

What does a typical day look like for you? 

Wake up too late, stumble around looking for my socks then my kid’s socks, slug coffee, get kids to school. Work werk wurk, mainly from home, very little writing. Walk Boss the Dog. Hang out with the kids. Talk politics or history or bad jokes with their dad. Eat. Sleep. Lovely.

What was the process of creating this book with your son, Kerehi?

When he was little, he talked, all the time, as some kids do. I remembered a lot of it and wrote it down. He zoned in and out of the long process of publishing (he loved riffing with Tokerau the most). He’s stoked with our pukapuka.

How did you team up with illustrator Tokerau Brown?

I just asked! And Tokerau said yes. How lucky is that.

What is one thing you would like readers to take away from Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai? 

Every single person, no matter how small, has intrinsic power. The trick is in learning to wield it gently and for the right reasons (like, standing up for, alongside and behind any being with less political power).

How would you compare writing poetry to writing a children’s book?

It’s really similar. Light on words, heavy on meaning. And it doesn’t take as long as a novel!

What are some of your favourite childhood books? 

Tokerau and I share a love of the What-a-mess books. I remember a book called Creatures in the Beard, and a hit kids book of the 80s, The Jolly Postman. A bit later, I loved everything by Isobelle Carmody.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing?

Not a snack, but when I do find time to write (often with friends), they’ll set superlux hand creams and light natural candles. When you stop to think (or because you can’t think), you can give yourself a lil relaxing hand massage instead.

Author Interview: Giselle Clarkson - The Observologist: A Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions

Hollie spoke to Giselle Clarkson about her gorgeous book The Observologist. A highly illustrated and creative scientific guide to the small creatures and natural wonders we find when we take time to open our eyes to the world around us—and ode to the power of quiet observation.

Tell us about yourself.

Hello! I’m an author and an illustrator and a cartoonist. Some of the things I like are gardening, sea swims, hot chips after a long walk, and crosswords. The best flavour of ice cream is a tie between chocolate and boysenberry.

Where did the idea for The Observologist come from? 

I’ve been fascinated by tiny things in nature all my life and I really love invertebrates. I like getting really close and watching them go about their lives so it seemed like a logical thing for me to make a book about. Once I started making a list of all the interesting things I knew about worms and flies and spiders and lichen I couldn’t stop!

What is one thing all young observologists need to pack for expeditions? 

Nothing! That’s the very best thing about observology: all you need is curiosity and your senses. Sometimes it’s fun to have a pencil and paper with you though, because drawing is a good way to practise focussing on tiny details and you end up with a neat record of what you’ve seen too.

What are some of your favourite tiny creatures? 

Praying mantises always feel special to me, and it’s pretty exciting to watch one hunting. I love having them in the garden because during their wingless nymph stages they don’t move around very much and it’s possible to visit the same individual day after day and watch it develop. I also have a real soft spot for jumping spiders. They’re so fluffy! With such big eyes!

What was one of the best scientific adventures you’ve been on? 

A favourite moment was when I was helping with some tawaki penguin field work in Piopiotahi/Milford Sound. We had to stay up into the wee hours of the morning, silently watching and waiting for the tawaki we were monitoring to return to their burrows. The Sound was moonlit and completely still and one of the most magical places I have ever been.

If you could be half human and half bug, what bug and what half

would you be? 

There are very few ways to blend humans and bugs without creating something horrifying! Perhaps I could be selectively 50% dragonfly. I’ll take their eyesight, their incredible wings, and a couple of extra legs would definitely come in handy.

What is your desert island book? 

I really like remote islands, even better if I’m alone to fossick in the undergrowth or comb the shoreline. A guide to all the flora and fauna of that particular island would keep me entertained for years, and maybe provide me with something to eat too. I mean in terms of foraging, not eating the pages of the book (unless the foraging prospects really are that bad).

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing or drawing?

I don’t tend to snack while I’m focussed, but every so often I’ll emerge from my room to breathe some fresh air, straighten out my hunched back and eat a piece of toast. It must be very dry and crispy, with a savoury topping.

Author Interview: Margaret Meyer - The Witching Tide

Hollie spoke to Margaret Meyer about her debut novel The Witching Tide. An immersive literary debut inspired by historical events—a deadly witch hunt in 17th-century England—that claimed many innocent lives.

Where did the idea for The Witching Tide come from? 

The idea grew from a visit to a local museum in Aldeburgh, a picturesque seaside town in Suffolk. I already knew of the 1645‒7 East Anglian witch-hunt, but in the museum, I discovered that self-styled witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins had visited the town in winter 1646 to purge it of its witches. As a result, seven innocent women were hanged. Later, when I started my research, I was deeply saddened to find that only two of the seven accused women were named in the historical record. The loss of their lives was bad enough, but it seemed to me that their namelessness effectively obliterated them from history. So, I resolved to write something to commemorate them.

What research was involved in the writing of the book? 

A lot! I started by reading around UK witch-hunting and of course this particular hunt, which was England’s deadliest, in some detail. I did some primary research, looking at 17th -century records, although lockdown brought this to a halt. The rest of my research I had to do through secondary sources and online. Because the landscape is important in the book – almost a character in its own right – I read widely about the history of the Suffolk and Norfolk coast, as well as its flora and fauna. My main character, Martha, is a midwife and ‘herb woman’, so it was necessary, and also a great pleasure, to read about the different plants in Martha’s physick garden and how they would have been used. For this part of the research, I turned to wonderful source, The Midwives Book, published in 1671 by a midwife, Jane Sharp. Her book gives such an insight into women’s lives at that time. Its pages contain a wealth of information about plants and humoral medicine. I grew to absolutely love this book and eventually bought my own copy. 

Why do you think people are so fascinated by witches? 

Over the last few years there’s been noticeable momentum towards writing women back into ‘the narrative’, whether historical or mythological. I’m thinking, for example, of Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls or Naomi Wood’s Mrs Hemingway. Both books are engaged with rounding out the record by prioritising women’s experiences and perspectives. Witches and the hunting of them are rich seams to mine. The witch is one of those archetypes that simply won’t lie down. In our psyches and our cultures she occupies a unique position: on the one hand relegated to the margin, yet still able to exert influence. In past times the figure of the witch has been an affront to patriarchal norms, an epitome of subversion. In more recent depictions it’s her attributes that are explored ‒ her disruptive capacities, her different kinds of power.

Do you have a favourite witch in pop culture and why? 

I don’t have a favourite, but a fantasy project of mine would be to somehow interview famous witches from history and mythology. I’d love to talk to the Witch of Endor, Circe, some of the African witch-deities and Macbeth’s three witch sisters, to find out their back stories as well as what they’re like as people.

What is your writing routine?

I aim to write for up to 4 hours each day, preferably in the morning, but I don’t really mind the time of day. Then I’ll do another 1‒2 hours of research (my next novel is also historical fiction), admin or responding to publicity enquiries. Around this I fit in walking my dog, Polly the standard poodle, as well as workouts in the gym.

What’s a book you always recommended to people? 

Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, about a touring psychic medium and her assistant. It’s less well known than some of Mantel’s other novels but is arguably her wittiest. I read it every year.

What is your favourite snack to enjoy while writing? 

Great question! I do like a good muffin and most weeks will make a batch. The family favourite is courgette and banana. I now double the recipe because – unless I manage to hide some of them in the freezer – they disappear very fast.

Author Interview: Catherine Chidgey - Pet

Hollie spoke to award winning author Catherine Chidgey about her latest novel ‘Pet’. When a charismatic new teacher arrives, everyone longs to be her pet. A gripping story of deception and guilt, set in a Catholic school during the 1980s.

How did you celebrate your recent win at the 2023 Ockham Book Awards? 

I was quite preoccupied with trying to stop my 7-year-old daughter from barging into frame on the TV interviews! After that I had a lovely conversation with Acorn Foundation people about Jann Medlicott and her incredible legacy. Then I tucked my two Acorns up in bed for the night at Sky City.

What are some of your favorite writers or books?

Kate Atkinson, Maggie O’Farrell, Bernardine Evaristo, Kevin Barry, Patricia Grace, Peter Carey, Janet Frame, Edna O’Brien.

Where did the idea for Pet come from? 

There was a very glamorous, charismatic teacher at my primary school, briefly, who played favourites. She invited select children to do errands for her, or to come to her house to make fudge and listen to records…and she ostracised those she deemed unworthy. She’s stayed with me for decades.

Were you a teacher’s pet?

I was! I still have the framed prayer my Primer One teacher gave me for helping after school.

Why is morning the best time for you to write? 

Because I’m still in a half-dream state, when I can access my unconscious more easily – and that seems to be where the writing comes from. (Also because I have a full-time day job!)

What is your favorite snack to enjoy while writing? 

I have an outrageously restricted diet due to extreme allergies, so I’ll have to go with the bad reviews of the books of my enemies.

What is one thing you would like readers to take away from Pet?

Never, ever take your Smurf collection to school.