In January, Dan Kois published a review of Elizabeth’s novel The Absolute Book on Slate titled ‘This New Zealand fantasy masterpiece needs to be published in America, like, now’.
“That was the beginning of the wildest ride of my life and was possibly the most extraordinary thing to happen to me,” says Elizabeth. “We spent a week answering queries from everybody under the sun—I mean we had Bad Robot calling, Disney—everybody.”
By the end of February, she had secured a six-figure publishing deal in the United States with Viking Penguin.
In the past 12 months, the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington alumna has won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Fiction and received a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In addition, she will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University in December.
“I like to say I am now a mighty tōtara, which is a joke. But perhaps I’m a cabbage tree. I have many heads,” says Elizabeth.
“I do feel as though I have gone up a notch. It’s a peculiar year in which to have nice things happen to you. Everything we love is up in the air, and it is all so scary. It is very hard to plan and commit.”
“I like to say I am now a mighty tōtara, which is a joke. But perhaps I’m a cabbage tree. I have many heads.”
Elizabeth began her first published book, After Z-Hour, when she was a student in International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) founder Bill Manhire’s original composition class, along with her sister Sara Knox, poet Jenny Bornholdt, and scriptwriter and now IIML director of scriptwriting Associate Professor Ken Duncum.
“Bill persuaded me to drop classes in my third year to write my novel. When I had two-thirds of it done, he gave it to Fergus Barrowman at Victoria University Press to read, who proposed to publish it once it was finished,” says Elizabeth. That was the first time Elizabeth had met Fergus. They have now been together for over 30 years.
“The whole business of having a first book published is a rite of passage, a bit like a wedding. I remember the night before After Z-Hour was published, when I received the ICI New Writer’s Bursary at Antrim House, more acutely than the actual event. What I remember is standing beside my father. That’s the memory I stare and stare at, my father beside me.”
Coming to university aged 23, Elizabeth recalls she enjoyed every moment. “My classmates would be moaning about having to write an essay about William Blake, while I was thinking, ‘You get to write an essay about William Blake!’
“I was treated well by my lecturers because they were generally interested in what I wrote. My thinking was determinedly individualistic, which saw my English lecturer, Dr Ian Jamieson, writing in my essays, ‘I disagree with what you are saying but it’s a lovely paragraph’.”
Elizabeth engages in conversations with different genres when writing her books. “I think literature can appear in any genre. I am always trying to see what I can do with a genre, whichever it is. I consider the books I love in a genre and think, ‘How do I create the feeling that book gave me, without it being like that book?’, and it’s a great intellectual game.
“That’s part of why I write, I think. And on a good writing day, when I am going in the right direction to unlock the story, and I’ve had the breakthrough—I’ve broken the curse of going in the wrong direction, and my subconscious ‘back-room boys’ are firing away—then my conscious mind is working with my subconscious, acknowledging and including what my subconscious is telling it,” says Elizabeth.
If you engage with literature in Wellington or indeed New Zealand, it’s likely you have heard Elizabeth speak, about Wake, or Mortal Fire recently, or The Vintner’s Luck. Or perhaps you heard her Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture at the WORD Christchurch festival a few years ago.
“Speech writing is something where I think people should take real risks because there is so much more risk in just having dead air. You have to tell a story in your speech and make an argument.”
“Speeches are interesting because you often need to be mixed in tone, and you have to master your whole flimflam self to make it work,” she says.
Elizabeth also leads a workshop on world-building at the IIML, teaching 12 students each year how to “explore your own fictional provocations, and develop your voice—without getting the helmet of your character stuck on your storyteller’s head”.
She is inspired by today’s students, saying, “For many years now, we’ve had neoliberalist capitalism telling us every time we fail that it is our fault. Young people need to know that it isn’t—it’s the world. Everyone is so knocked about by events and wondering how they can plan for their future. But they have all this energy and appetite. We all need to help and encourage them, and join them, let them use their energy, and make a change.”
The Absolute Book is published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press and available at bookshops nationwide. It will be available in the United States and the United Kingdom in February 2021.
Previous
The power of te ao MāoriNext
Drawing the pandemic