The Dark Side - Auckland Writers Festival

In the Limelight Room this afternoon before a packed audience we explored the dark side with three talented fiction authors -  Ben Atkins, Paul Cleave, Camilla Lackberg and Eimear McBride . Each of these writers,who mine the underbelly, shared with us a ten minute excerpt from their writing.

Ben Atkins

Ben completed the first draft of his first novel aged only seventeen, and yet writes with a maturity well beyond his years. He has now reached the ripe old age of 20 years and is a third year student of Political Studies and Film & Media Studies at Auckland University. He has a deep interest in how politics permeates and defines society. This, tied in with his passion for mid-20th century crime fiction, resulted in Drowning City. Ben intends to continue writing fiction alongside his growing interest in film and screenwriting.

Paul Cleave

Paul Cleave lives in Christchurch, where his novels are set. He just garnered an Edgar nomination for Joe Victim, alongside Stephen King, and has been shortlisted for the Barry Award. His novels have been translated into 15 languages and sold into 20 territories, and has hit #1 on Amazon in three different countries. His eighth book, Five Minutes Alone, will be released later this year.

Camilla Lackberg

With over 12 million copies of her books sold in 37 different languages and to 55 territories, Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg is carrying on the tradition of Scandinavian noir in high style.  She writes contemporary psychological thrillers, the latest of which to be translated into English is Buried Angels. She is interested, she says, in “just how horrible people can be”.

(Thanks to Harper Collins for bring Camilla to NZ).

Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing has garnered rave reviews and earned her the Goldsmith’s Prize , a shortlisting for the Folio Prize and perhaps most impressively it has been shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.  The £30,000 prize, which was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012, is awarded in London on the 4th June. Fingers crossed Eimear.Now resident in England, she grew up in the West of Ireland providing the setting for the novel, which took six months to write but nine years to find a publisher.