Unsheltered is the riveting story of one mother's search for her child across a climate-ravaged continent in a dystopian future. Clare Moleta talks with Pip Adam about her inspirations.

Unsheltered is the riveting story of one mother's search for her child across a climate-ravaged continent in a dystopian future.

Clare Moleta talks with Pip Adam about her inspirations, the impact of climate change on her world-building, and how parenting can make for good fiction.

Clare Moleta

Listen to Clare Moleta speaking at the 2021 Verb Wellington festival

Unsheltered has been hailed as a remarkable debut, thrusting readers into a dystopian world consisting of a society divided into two classes - the sheltered and the unsheltered.

Set in a non-existent place that has echoes of the Australian landscape, the story is told from the point of view of Li, a resourceful woman whose eight-year-old daughter Matty goes missing after fire engulfs their camp.

Listen: Clare Moleta reads her short story Safer

Listen: Luke Finnegan reviews Unsheltered

Clare Moleta

Clare Moleta

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Clare Moleta was born in Aotearoa, grew up in Whadjuk Noongar Country in Western Australia and has lived in Pōneke since 2005. Her fiction has been published in literary journals and broadcast on RNZ. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington. Unsheltered is her first novel.

This session was broadcast in association with Verb Wellington

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details