New Plymouth author Emma Hislop, (Kāi Tahu), will have her debut collection of short fiction, Ruin and other stories, published by Te Herenga Waka in March. She is now working on her first novel.
Why did you decide to start writing?
Writing is my way of working things out. I write to work out how I feel about something.
When I was accepted onto the Masters Creative Writing course at the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2013, I started writing seriously.
I started writing stories about things that interested me, or made me angry, and the things I was frustrated about. All my rage about marginalised individuals and communities being silenced, due to power and race and intergenerational trauma went into these stories. Anything can happen in fiction.
