UNSETTLED

Name: UNSETTLED
Start: 2024-10-29T18:00:00+12:00
End: 2024-10-29T19:00:00+12:00
Location: TE NONINGA KUMU – MOTUEKA PUBLIC LIBRARY

Cristina Sanders + Lauren Keenan

Ngā Toi Māori Writers + Kōrero

Cristina Sanders and Lauren Keenan are two of Aotearoa New Zealand’s preeminent historical fiction writers. Journey back in time with them to experience life through the eyes of those who history books have, to date, largely neglected. Chaired by Sylvan Thomson.

Set in New Plymouth on the brink of the First Taranaki War, Lauren Keenan’s novel is told through the eyes of two women: English-born and raised Frances Farrington, who is forging a new life in the colony, and wāhine Māori Matāria White, who has been cast out by her whānau. As English settlers wage war upon the local iwi, the two women must confront their pasts to survive the present.

Set on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson in the 1840s, Cristina Sanders’ latest book returns to the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, when a whaler washes up on the beach. Calling himself Ōkiwi Brown, he sets up a pub with a nasty reputation and finds himself a woman who had been abandoned on his beach. Nearby, children sing dark nursery rhymes of murder. One afternoon Ōkiwi is visited by a pair of ex-soldiers, a bo’sun looking for a fight, and itinerant worker William Leckie with his young daughter Mary. When a body is discovered on the beach, it could be that a drunken man has drowned. But it could be that the gathered witnesses know something more.

Cristina Sanders (she/her)

Cristina Sanders is an historical novelist, book reviewer and trail runner who grew up in Wellington and now lives in Hawke’s Bay. She is a volunteer crew member for the Spirit of Adventure Trust, and a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors.

Lauren Keenan (she/her)

Lauren Keenan (Te Āti Awa ki Taranaki) is a writer of creative non-fiction, novels, short stories and popular psychology. Lauren was a winner at the 2017 Pikihuia Awards for Māori writers and a finalist in the 2019 awards. She was also a participant in Te Papa Tupu mentoring programme. Her children’s novel Amorangi and Millie’s Trip Through Time was a finalist in the 2022 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and longlisted in the ARA Historical Novel Prize. Her debut adult novel, The Space Between, has been in the NZ Fiction Bestseller list since it was published in March this year. Lauren has a Master of Arts in Taranaki Māori History.

Sylvan Thomson (he/him)

Sylvan Thomson is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. He has taught creative writing at the University of Michigan. His fiction and essays have been published in New Zealand and the USA and his work can be found in Sport, Metro Magazine, The New Zealand Review of Books, Best New Zealand Non-Fiction, and A Public Space (USA), among others. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the IIML at Victoria University and an MFA from the University of Michigan. In 2020 he was awarded the Todd New Writer’s Bursary and is currently hard at work on his first novel.