Book Bubble Podcast

In the past 11 episodes of their podcast Book Bubble, novelist Nicky Pellegrino and children’s author Stacy Gregg have talked to a wide-ranging mix of New Zealand writers – from icons like Elizabeth Knox to talented newbie Amy McDaid – about their lives, their words and their work.

"It’s been a pleasure and also very illuminating,” says Nicky. “Every writer has been so different, but they’ve all had something interesting and new to say.”

This week in the final episode, the co-hosts talk to each other about their own publishing journey.

“We had feedback from listeners who wanted to know how we got our start – I think a few might have embarked on novels over lockdown!” says Stacy. "And we realised over the years we’ve learned some valuable lessons about publishing as an industry, that we were happy to pass on.”

Stacy has published 25 novels so far, and is now working on a series for younger readers. Nicky’s latest, Tiny Pieces Of Us, is the best-selling NZ fiction book of the moment.

“Crafting a novel is one skill, getting it out into the world so people can read it is quite another,” says Nicky, “And as we say in this week’s Book Bubble, ‘it’s hard but it’s not impossible’

Auckland’s Amy McDaid is an exciting new talent on our literary scene. Her debut novel, Fake Baby, strikes an elegant balance between dark comedy and compassion. All three of its characters are in crisis. Stephen is mentally ill and believes his dead father is going to destroy the world. Jaanvi has lost her baby, and adopted an eerily lifelike baby doll. Lucas is a pharmacist who has bungled a prescription. The novel tells of nine dramatic days in their lives.

Juggling shift work in a neonatal unit and caring for her daughter, McDaid has needed resilience and passion to keep writing but it’s paid off - Fake Baby has spent five consecutive weeks in the bestseller charts so far since its release.

Wellington poet Tayi Tibble was 23 years old when she won the Ockham for best first book of poetry for Poukahangatus. Of Te Whanau ā Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent, Tayi’s poems speak to beauty, activism, power and popular culture with a compelling guile, darkness and deep sensuality. She completed the title poem of her collection while she was undertaking her Masters in Creative Writing at Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. The poems in Poukahangatus map colonisation of many kinds through intergenerational, indigenous domesticity and sex and Hawaiiki is the final poem in the anthology.

After switching careers from criminal barrister to novelist, perhaps it was inevitable that Hawkes Bay author Charity Norman would find herself writing gritty family dramas. Her books have found international success but the latest, The Secrets Of Strangers, was inspired by events close to home. During the 2009 Napier siege when gunman Jan Molenaar opened fire on police officers, Norman’s house was taken over by the Armed Offenders Squad and peppered with bullet holes.

The Secrets Of Strangers involves different circumstances but explores similar themes. A suspenseful page-turner, it is set in a café where a group of people find themselves being held hostage by an armed man who is growing increasingly desperate.

Victor Rodger’s darkly provocative play Black Faggot brought him accolades at the Edinburgh Festival. A former Shortland Street hunk, and one of our most celebrated and prolific writers for theatre, he’s held writers residencies in Otago, Wellington and Hawaii, but lockdown found him in the one place he swore he’d never live again – his hometown of Christchurch. When he spoke with Stacy Gregg he was back at level one and in Wellington where he’d been attending the Black Lives Matter marches, working on a new play for Toi Whakarii and musing on what issues should take precedence for him as a writer right now.

Children’s author Sue Copsey had the germ of an idea for her first adult novel while in the shower, thinking about Donald Trump and how he resembled an equally unpopular figure from history, King Henry VIII. That led to Wife After Wife – written under the pen name Olivia Hayfield – a romp of a novel and a modern re-telling of the story of the famously much-married Tudor.

Her background as a book editor means Copsey is a meticulous researcher and teller of stories. With Wife After Wife she has managed to reinvent a genre that seemed long gone, the old-fashioned bonk-buster with its money, sex and glamour, giving it a fresh outlook and a clever twist. In the modern-day version of his life Henry VIII becomes Harry Rose, a ruthless but charming media mogul, and a womanising rogue.

Damien Wilkins is one of our most celebrated and awarded writers of adult fiction. Now, his first-ever YA foray has been shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

Set in a fictional South Island town that very much resembles Wanaka, Aspiring is a coming of age story in the classic YA tradition that stretches back to Catcher in the Rye.

Fifteen-year-old Ricky lives in Aspiring, a town that’s growing at an alarming rate. Ricky’s growing, too — 6’7”, and taller every day. But he’s stuck in a loop: student, uncommitted basketballer, and puzzled son, burdened by his family’s sadness. And who’s the weird guy in town with a chauffeur and half a Cadillac? What about the bits of story that invade his head? Uncertain what’s real — and who he is — Ricky can’t stop sifting for clues. He has no idea how things will end up . . .

With sunlight, verve and humour, Wilkins brings us a beguiling boy who’s trying to make sense of it all.

Strawberry Jam in a Spinach Can, sounds very much like a classic Kyle Mewburn picture book.  In fact, it’s the title of Kyle’s impending autobiography; the emotional and powerful story of her journey to realising her true self as a transwoman. In this episode of Book Bubble Kyle recalls the lengthy physical ordeal of Facial Feminisation Surgery, growing up in a household without love or books and coming to terms with what being an author, and being transgender, means to her now.

For a long time Auckland's Nalini Singh was the most famous author that New Zealanders had never heard of. Her paranormal romance novels regularly made the New York Times bestseller list, but you couldn't find them on the shelves of bookstores in her home country. She tells Nicky Pellegrino how it felt to be overlooked for so long, why writing romance isn't as easy as it may seem, and how she decided to take a chance and tackle her first murder mystery, the twisty turny A Madness Of Sunshine.

In this episode Stacy Gregg talks to Christine Leunens the Nelson-based author who found herself on the red carpet at the Oscars thanks to Taika Waititi who turned her novel Caging Skies into the hit movie Jojo Rabbit.