A brief word with four non-fiction writers hoping for an Ockham award

Ahead of the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Kete meets the shortlisted contenders for each of the four categories. This week, Dave Lowe, Patricia Grace, Charlotte Grimshaw and Vincent O’Malley - in the running for the General Non-Fiction Award - talk about discoveries, books they wish they'd written and what they're reading now.

The Alarmist: Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change by Dave Lowe

Could you describe your book for us in ten words? A journey of despair observing damage to our only atmosphere.

 Tell us about a discovery made during the course of writing this book that surprised you. Researching archived material for the book helped me appreciate that adversity can bring out extraordinary ingenuity in human beings. We already have the tools to reduce carbon emissions and there is still hope – but the window to avoid dangerous climate change is closing fast.  

What book do you wish you had written? My personal journey through many trials in The Alarmist and the underlying message of the urgency of reducing carbon emissions resonated with readers all over Aotearoa and overseas. For me the issue is not so much ‘what book I wish I had written’ but that I wish I had written The Alarmist years ago.

What other shortlisted book do you most want to read? Entanglement by Bryan Walpert.

What are you reading right now? The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. 

From the Centre: A Writer’s Life by Patricia Grace

Could you describe your book for us in ten words? The book is about me. It has photographs.

Tell us about a discovery you made in the course of writing this book that surprised you. Some things that I felt would be difficult to write about were not difficult after all.

What book do you wish that you had written? Aesop's Fables.

What other shortlisted book (in any category) do you most want to read? Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka.

What are you reading right now? Losing Battles by Eudora Welty.

The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw

Could you describe your book for us in ten words? This is the story of the creation of a self.

Tell us about a discovery you made in the course of writing this book that surprised you. In the course of researching, thinking about and writing The Mirror Book, I changed the way my mind worked. This was more than a surprise; it was a revelation.

What book do you wish that you had written? I love many books but I don’t wish I’d written them myself. I’m happy to admire their authors.

What other shortlisted book (in any category) do you most want to read? Of the shortlisted fiction, I’ve read and enjoyed – and reviewed – Rebecca K. Reilly’s Greta & Valdin. Next, I might try A Good Winter by Gigi Fenster.

What are you reading right now? I started re-reading Henry James, because one of my sons is thinking of doing a PhD in English literature and was getting us to bring him Henry James novels in MIQ. He left me James’s The Art of Fiction when he went back to Los Angeles. I’ve just read The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove. I’m now re-reading Putin’s People by Catherine Belton, about Putin’s rise to power.

Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley

Could you describe your book for us in ten words? Our history, unvarnished, introduced and told through vivid eyewitness accounts.

Tell us about a discovery you made in the course of writing this book that surprised you. We tend to assume all of the sources historians might be interested in are sitting in libraries or archives or digitised and available online. But there are lots of things held privately by families; two of the extracts that appear in the book came to me through members of the public who got in touch with material in their possession.  One was written by a journalist who had defied government orders and sneaked in to Parihaka in time to watch its destruction by John Bryce and 1600 constabulary and volunteers in November 1881 while the other is a remarkable account of the terrible attack on women and children at Rangiaowhia in February 1864 from a young girl who recalled the painful details decades later.

What book do you wish that you had written?  Alan Ward’s A Show of Justice: Racial ‘Amalgamation’ in Nineteenth Century New Zealand. Nearly 50 years after it was first published, it is still the go-to book on the topic.

What other shortlisted book (in any category) do you most want to read? I don’t read nearly enough fiction so if I had to select just one, I would say Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka.

What are you reading right now? I’m well into John Summers The Commercial Hotel – the short essays are great for dipping into.