Dreamers: Nga Kaimoemoea – Stories of the Hokianga was Susy’s first collection and was published in 2015 by Steele Roberts.
Another of her projects is writing a book on the history of the Hokianga and the descendants of the Waitangi Treaty, supported by a grant from the Copyright Licensing Trust. There is also Appalachian Spring, a personal narrative and a memoir of her time in the USA, told through a series of short stories.
Susy writes for a living and conducts interviews about local history and Māori history. Born in Wellington, Susy lived in the USA for decades.
Her writing life began when, on the advice of her teachers, Susy set out to be a writer and illustrator of children’s books. She studied at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, where she became seriously diverted by film-making and went on to enjoy a long career in film and television in New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the USA. Susy says she has, however, always maintained a parallel career in creative writing and has been published in numerous literary journals and short story anthologies in Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
Susy says she was three times a finalist in the Australian/Vogel Literary Awards and won the inaugural Annie Dillard Award for Creative Non-fiction in the USA in 1996. Since returning to New Zealand in 1997 she has had around 30 short stories broadcast by National Radio, some of which have been anthologised in Dreamers: Nga Kai Moemoea.
Her second collection of short stories set in the Hokianga, The Turn of the Tide: Te Huringa o Te Tai will also be published by Steele Roberts in February 2018. This will be followed later this year by a collection of personal essays, mainly set in the USA. She is also working on a novel set in Northland during the era of Treaty settlements and a history of the descendants of the Treaty in the Hokianga. If she can find the time, she will finally complete writing and illustrating her first children’s picture book about the God Pan. Susy supports her writing by documentary film-making, teaching in NorthTec’s Online Applied Writing Programme and at Hiwa-i-te-rangi, a school for young parents in Kaikohe.
Guest spot: The dream that sparked the book | Jenny Alexander's blog: Writing in the House of Dreams
I love the way you describe the vivid quality of the dream setting, Abi, and the sense of the voice of the dream. Thank you for a fabulous guest post!
Thank you Jenny. It’s amazing how when we wake from dreams we’re so often left with a sense of what has happened, even if we can’t remember all of the details. I was lucky with this one and remembered both! Thank you so much for asking me to do the post Jenny.
Have seen this book mentioned on Twitter a few times, and it caught my eye because I thought it was one I read recently in proof called “Buttercup Mash” retitled… but no! (I like your title much better, Abi!)
So in your book Buttercup is a dog? In Buttercup Mash, she is a girl. And straight after that one, I read an adult thriller with a minor character called Buttercup who is a homeless trannie living in San Francisco (young readers, don’t ask…) Very weird, since up to last month I don’t remember reading anything with a character called Buttercup, whether human, animal or other. Are buttercups are suddenly in fashion? Much nicer than vampires!
It’s the zeitgeist, Kath – always happens, doesn’t it? I remember a while back writing a fat slice of an adult novel about someone in a coma only to find two big sellers on exactly the same theme hit the shops before I could complete it. My YA novel about teen sibling suicide, which I did complete a few years ago, came close with two major publishers who eventually rejected it because they’d just taken novels on the same theme. Something similar happens, on a small scale, in dream groups – you find several people dreaming about the same theme or image at the same time. In Jungian terms, the collective unconscious, where we’re all joined…
That’s so interesting Jenny. And yes Kath, it is a strange coincidence. I found out about a month ago, that there was a book called Buttercup Mash and very nearly had a hissy fit! The publisher knew though, but because of Buttercup, in Buttercup Mash, being a girl, and the age group being different, they decided it would be fine. For me, Buttercup was chosen because I knew the dog (yes, Buttercup is the dog on the front) was going to be a golden retriever, and I wanted a flower to be associated with the dog (you will have to read the book to find out why) so Buttercup fitted perfectly! As for the homeless trannie, well, Buttercup does seem quite fitting doesn’t it?
It’s fascinating to hear how BUTTERCUP MAGIC came about (as I’ve heard so much about it in the waking world, and am really looking forward to reading it!). I would love it if I had a dream which sparked off a story, but my dreams seem to be either too weird or too vague – I sometimes have ones that ‘feel’ like stories, but when I wake up they don’t make any sense. Perhaps I need to try to be more aware in them, and see if that helps!
I don’t think you could usually use a whole dream narrative just as it is anyway, Emma, so it doesn’t matter if weird fragments are all you remember. They can still carry a charge. I’m struck by the way my guests have talked about vivid dream moments or feelings which have turned out to be the seeds of whole stories. If you recall and record your dreams regularly, you just have a lot more material coming through, and soon you can direct it, asking for information and ideas about the stories you’re working on.
Thank you, Jenny – that’s a really good idea. I’ve written down dreams in the past, but I’ve never done it regularly. I’ll try to do it more often and see what happens.
Let us know how you get on! I’ve just started a new dreaming-and-writing group and we generally find it takes a few weeks to get right into the flow…