NIGHT, MA
Elizabeth Knox
Twelve years in the making, Night, Ma is Elizabeth Knox’s intimate account of how she and her family contended with a series of calamities in rapid succession. With Kim Hill guiding the conversation, Elizabeth will dive deep on the process of bringing this daring, revealing and compassionate memoir into the world.
Between 2008 and 2012, Elizabeth had to grapple with her sister’s psychotic break, her brother-in-law being killed in Raratonga and the decline and death of her mother, following her motor neuron disease diagnosis. To tell the story, Elizabeth realised she had to go back to the beginning, and she had to be radically honest. The result is a masterpiece of a memoir that captivates the reader and reminds us that, with the actual daily work of love, it is possible to endure.
‘Armed with inimitable wit, the consolation of cats and a forensic gaze that spares no one, least of all herself, Knox interrogates the act of caring; the ties that burn and bind, that somehow we survive.’ – Diana Wichtel
‘The mood swoops from elegiac to confrontational to grittily immediate to almost visionary, without any lapse of control. There’s even room for comedy.’ – David Hall
‘An unforgettable record of love and pain, as wide and deeps as the ocean and as mighty. There is such life in this, such wit and goodness.’ – Noelle McCarthy
Elizabeth Knox
Elizabeth Knox is an acclaimed novelist and essayist. Her novel The Vintner’s Luck won the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize, and is published in 13 languages. Dreamhunter won the 2006 Esther Glen Medal, and its sequel, Dreamquake, was a Michael L Printz Honor book for 2008 and, in the same year, was named an ALA, a CCBC, Booklist, and New York Library best book. A collection of essays, The Love School, won the biography and memoir section of the New Zealand Post book awards in 2009. Mortal Fire won a NZ Post Children’s book award and was a finalist in the LA Times Book Awards. Elizabeth’s most recent novel is the bestselling The Absolute Book and her memoir Night, Ma was published in May 2026. Elizabeth is an Arts Foundation Laureate, was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002, a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020, and was awarded a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2019.
Kim Hill
Kim Hill is an iconic New Zealand broadcaster and formidable interviewer. Born in the English county of Shropshire, Kim Hill moved to Ōtorohanga at age 15. Her acceptance into Canterbury University’s Postgraduate School of Journalism set her on a path that would shape New Zealand’s broadcasting landscape. Her early career with Radio New Zealand began in Gisborne in 1985, followed by stints in Greymouth, and then time in print journalism in Nelson, the UK and Australia. Returning to RNZ in Wellington, Kim’s sharp mind and unflinching style earned her national attention on Checkpoint, then as co-host of Morning Report alongside Geoff Robinson. From 1993 to 2002 she was the host of the daily morning ‘Nine to Noon’ programme. Notable interviews from this time included the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Jeffrey Archer, and Monica Lewinsky. In April 2002, Hill began hosting ‘Saturday Morning’, where her long-form interviews delved into science, literature, politics, history and music until she retired in 2023. In 2024, Kim returned to RNZ to host occasional episodes in a podcast series titled Kim Hill Wants To Know.
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