One of my favourite regular features in the Baby Seal Book Club is the two-part explorations, where I examine a particular genre and then unpack it by speaking with a favourite Kiwi author. Last week I had a marvellous time writing about New Zealand poetry, and then interviewing the excellent Sam Hunt.
It was important to me that the interview be a flowing, natural conversation rather than a formal question-and-answer session, and I think that worked out well. As a lifelong reader of poetry and sometime poet, I also got a huge thrill out of seeing the draft of Sam’s newest work, Salt River Songs, which he graciously let me publish in the blog once it was finished. Here it is for your reading pleasure.
The interview was later referred to by Richard Langston in a Waitangi Day segment on Radio New Zealand. You can listen to it here.
I Get By With a Little Help
My latest two-part series on the Baby Seal blog was something of a challenge to set up. I’ve loved reading horror fiction from a young age, so writing the first piece was an absolute pleasure. However, finding a quality Kiwi horror writer to interview was not as simple as I thought.
In the end, the Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand stepped in to help:
I fielded responses from several fantastic writers, and in the end chose to speak with Matt and Debbie Cowens. These two are the husband and wife team behind 2012 mash-up novel, Mansfield with Monsters. I’m not overtly a fan of the mash-up genre, but as a die-hard Katherine Mansfield admirer I did enjoy the chance to discuss two of my favourite literary topics in the one interview.
SpecFic NZ’s Liz Gatens praised the piece, saying:
In other news, I enjoyed interviewing Craig Sisterson of Crime Watch blog for next week’s Richmond Leader. I stumbled across the blog while researching an article on Bev Robitai’s Murder in the Second Row, which is set in the Theatre Royal in Nelson. When I learned Craig had grown up in Richmond, I decided he would make an excellent subject for our “Two Minutes With” section.