Cover reveal interview — Lee Murray, Kim Lowe and Christine Ling on the art for Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud

Alongside our cover reveal for Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud the book’s author Lee Murray, artist Kim Lowe and designer Christine Ling discuss creating cover art for a book that bends genres and blends mythology, poetry and the true stories of women of the Chinese diaspora in Aotearoa.

Scroll to the end for a large image of the cover and more about the book.

Lee, we are revealing the cover of your new book today. Tell us how Kim Lowe and Christine Ling came on board as artist and designer.

It was a game of snap. I put together a mood board of disparate ideas, a montage of images, colours and styles which might represent the book and appeal to readers, and at the bottom of my document I included the names of dream designers and artists with whom I would love to work. Both Christine and Kim were at the top of that list. I pored over their respective portfolios of provocative, startling images and design, noting the ways their Chinese Aotearoa perspectives influenced their work. Of course, I didn’t have any expectations as a book’s cover is the publisher’s prerogative, so it was a delight to learn that publisher Mary McCallum at The Cuba Press was also thinking of Christine and Kim. I held my breath while Mary reached out to check their availability. Engaging a high calibre design team comes at a cost, and the NZSA and the Laura Solomon Trust, kindly stepped up to fund the extra design costs, including the stunning gold foil accents you see on the final cover.

How did it feel to you to have Kim and Christine work on your cover? How much were you involved?

The old adage about not judging a book by its cover doesn’t really apply in publishing, where the cover design is the publisher’s first opportunity to make an impression and the readers’ first experience of the work. It’s the picture that needs to paint a thousand words, including: mood, theme, context, genre. The problem was that Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud is an unusual book, a prose-poetry novel-in-verse blending memoir, history, Asian myth and magical realism in an Aotearoa context, so designing artwork which conjured all those elements was always going to be a tall order. Mary kept me updated at each stage of the process, asking for my input and suggestions, so I felt included and involved, but ultimately the cover art is Christine and Kim’s collaboration and a work of magical realism in itself. I’m in awe of their talent.I should note that it is rare for cover artists to read the books they work on—they typically draw their inspiration from a jacket blurb, a set of keywords, and guidance from the publisher—so the fact that Christine and Kim took the time to immerse themselves in the stories in Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud was especially humbling, and I think that deeper reflection shines through in the design, in the way they have captured the Asian symbolism, the ephemeral essence of the fox spirit and the isolation of our Aotearoa landscape with verve and poignancy. It’s a design which truly embodies ‘the unique and original vision’ that the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize seeks to highlight.

Kim and Christine can you talk about how you created this striking imagery and design?Christine:

Kim’s beautiful cover art is a response to one of three concepts I envisaged for Lee’s cover – a bird’s eye view of a woman with long black hair in a traditional Chinese gown is walking through mists (or cloud), the mists swirling away from her, but also fanning out behind her to form nine long white tails, curling and flowing. Placed in the lower quarter of the cover, I envisaged her taking up less than half of the space – silent, small, mouse-like – with gold threads flowing from her dress throughout these mist/cloud tendrils, forming traditional patterns and also the title. (I thought these could then be gold foiled, to catch the sun at different angles.) The image needed to be highly illustrative – no heavy blocks of colour, but pencilly/charcoal textures, perhaps a mix of linocut/ukiyo-e/Chinese traditional paintings. To subvert this traditional lens, I envisaged the colours using a mix of cyan and shocking pink – lending a modern tone to the concept and setting it apart.

Christine Ling with the cover design work for Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud

Kim: I tried more literal paintings to meet Christine’s brief but my favourite is the image we decided on. It is open-ended, allowing the reader/viewer to interpret or read into the motif however they want. The motif comes from ancient bird script (Western Han BCE 100), which is also a nod to New Zealand fauna, and I’ve added the nine ‘tails’ of the Fox Spirit. It is reminiscent of a figure on bended knees. The gold stamp Christine has used for the title contrasts well with the heaviness of the brooding sky.

Artist Kim Lowe with the cover artwork

Lee: The design is moody and poignant and conjures all the aspects we had hoped for – the strong Chinese aesthetic,  the cloud-covered Aotearoa landscape (with Taranaki and also Lake Taupō recognisable) and a colour palette which will appeal to both mainstream and horror readers. I love the fox-demon-girl abstract design in her elaborate koru curves and nine fern tails. Kim's note that the figure is on bended knee is culturally perfect, because the Chinese symbol/character for 'woman' is derived from a figure on bended knee. I especially love the stamp which is so appropriate for a text mining Asian narratives.

Lee, you are known internationally as a writer of horror, but Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud is a literary work set in Aotearoa. Is it a huge departure from your previous work?

Most of my horror and speculative work does have an Aotearoa context, and in recent years I have been braver about exploring aspects of my Chinese heritage through prose and poetry, so on one level Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud is in line with my previous work. However, in terms of structure and style, and given its very lyrical and literary approach to women’s narratives, it is also a significant departure. This work felt intimate and personal—focusing as it does on issues of otherness and isolation here at home—making it one of the hardest manuscripts I’ve ever embarked on. I think when an author or poet wrestles their work from a place of vulnerability, it lends a certain power to the narrative. I hope readers of Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud will agree.

Where did you find the stories of the Chinese women in Aotearoa and how much did you adapt and change them to create your poems?

As for any work, I did a lot of research. I trawled New Zealand’s Papers Past archives, books, newspaper articles and history sites, as well as interviewing women and their families, including Chinese women in other diasporic communities, looking for parallels and differences. Some snippets are my own observations, with the entire narrative overlaid with imagery, proverb,and anecdote, so Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud cannot really be called non-fiction, but then again, it can’t really be called fiction either. It’s a strange and wonderful creature, a little like the fox spirit herself.

After winning prizes overseas for your horror writing you've recently won two significant NZ prizes: the 2023 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize for the Fox Spirit manuscript. How much did it mean to you to receive this recognition?

Writers don’t write for accolades, but I can admit that those acknowledgements have been both humbling and uplifting. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for genre writers in New Zealand, which is why I have tended to take my work abroad, discovering a keen interest in this country and our stories among overseas publishers and readers, but I’ve always dreamed of having a stronger presence here at home. Authors love seeing their work offered in the local library and in their favourite bookstore, for example, and thanks to the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize, Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud will be my first book released by an Aotearoa publisher in over a decade. It feels very special.