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Writer. Teacher. Fan of hot pineapple.
Writer. Teacher. Fan of hot pineapple.
In Aspiring Daybook, poet Annabel Wilson tells of a year in the life of Elsie Winslow, who has just returned from Europe to Wānaka to take care of her terminally ill brother and finds herself thinking about love in ways she didn’t expect.
Like the mountains that surround her and the lake that greets her every morning with a different face, Elsie’s story is a fractured, sedimentary and reflective thing, exploring the hidden darkness inside the beauty that is everywhere.
Elsie’s story is told in the form of a diary packed with poems, snapshots, conversations and letters. The result is an immersive, genre-bending book that shines with a particular light only found in the deep South.
On your side, twilight bathes paddocks Steinlager-green all the way to those wedding cake Hawkduns, the white crown in the distance. The human need to see shapes in things: a rock that looks like a wing. We carry on, not speaking. We carry on not speaking. You know I want to ask you something.
Available at all good bookstores in NZ, and online through Mākaro Press.
Fiction Award - 2018 NZ Mountain Film & Book Festival