The Wellington Branch of NZSA met at the Thistle Inn on Monday evening
for their branch meeting. We were
sponsors for the regional prize for the National Flash Fiction competition and
Janis Freegard came along to read her winning entry (runner up in the National
competition and winner of the regional prize) – Elephant. What a pity if you missed it! I see that the winning stories are not yet
in print as the organisers are considering an anthology. So, if you didn’t join us on Monday, you
will have to wait a while before you hear this delightful and very clever
piece. This was followed by two
recently published local writers who came to talk to us, Gigi Fenster (left) and
Catherine Robertson (right). Catherine had
stepped in at the last minute when Ellie Catton was unable to get to Wellington
on time (flying back from the UK).
What a terrific
conversation we had. Both writers were
very generous, open and entertaining.
We started with Gigi who decided to interrogate the ‘Jewish Novel’ and
to ask us, (and herself), is there really such a thing? I haven’t read Gigi’s highly praised (The
Herald describes it as a standout debut) novel ‘The Intentions Book’ but it
seems that it has been touted as New Zealand’s first Jewish-themed novel. Gigi evidently was taken by surprise to be
asked this question in an interview with North
and South. She told us she had
looked up the definition of a Jewish Novel and reeled off all the usual
suspects – Roth, Potok, Kafka, Bellow, et al, - and she had quite a bit
assistance on this from our very well
read audience. Then very humorously,
and in quite some detail, Gigi described a conversation with her sister on this
very topic which might well have been a piece of dialogue from a Woody Allen
movie and more or less proved her point to the audience, if not to herself –
indeed her sister had no qualms at all – yes, it is a Jewish novel.
Catherine and Gigi
are friends which is how we were able to ask Catherine with such short notice
to step into the breach. She is a very
funny woman and her talk to us was a series of running jokes read with speed,
humour and anecdotes about where the jokes came from. Once again the audience joined in when she
began reciting the Cockney Alphabet and couldn’t remember all of it. She told us that she was raised on humour citing
her grandfather as one strong influence and her father as the king of puns. Catherine, like Gigi, has been genre-cast
and so, like it or lump it, her novels are considered chick-lit; her latest
replete with a pink girly cover. But
this is one very smart writer and you realised very quickly that we’re not
talking fluff. She told us that she
wrote to 19 UK Agents before she found someone to represent her and she’s gone
on to be the hot new girl at Random with her best-selling ‘The Sweet Second
Life of Darrel Kincaid’, and a new novel due out soon ‘The Not So Perfect Life
of Mo Lawrence’.
Interestingly, in
the audience was another friend of the two guest speakers, Bronwyn Evans, a writer
for Regency Romance who was very modest and humble about her work, but we were
all extremely interested and would love to hear more from her. And hopefully, with some encouragement, we
will. What shone through in the
conversations with these writers was their overall disregard for genre, and
that they were writing to their strengths and respectful of each other’s
writing and talent. It was suggested (by
Gigi I think) that books might perhaps be displayed in shops by colour rather
than by genre.
The highlight of the
evening for me and I think for others, was the honesty and humour of the two
guest writers. They were interrogating
their own success in some way and you very quickly learned that success is not
some magic formula or sudden luck. We
were not a large group and this afforded a quite intimate exchange, turning the
presentations into a kind of conversation.
I can’t help thinking how fortunate we are to have so much talent on our
doorstep, and now of course, I have at least two more novels on my list of
‘must reads’ and so should you.
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