The Devonport Flagstaff Page 18
Interview
June 12 2015
Devonport gives birth to new writers
The Devonport peninsula has been a writers’ haven for close to one hundred years – and it still is. Before the Harbour Bridge was built, the quiet and beach suburbs attracted writers such as Rex Fairburn, Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame, and Kevin Ireland Arrivals since include Graeme Lay, Michelle Leggot, Sue Orr and Shonagh Koea. Last month, the Flagstaff caught up with three emerging and recently published local writers – Hanna Tunnicliffe, Karen Breen and Anna Glamuzina. All three were charmed by Devonport as youngsters. After extended travels across the globe, and previous careers, they too have found the peninsula a great place to live and write. Hanna Tunnicliffe is a former HR Director and career coach and has just published her second novel, Season of Salt and Honey, in New Zealand. She launched it at Devonport’s Paradox Books and during its first week on the market, it made it to second place on the Independent Bookshop Bestsellers List. The coming-of-age story follows a woman called Frankie as she starts her life again after her childhood sweetheart and fiancé dies in a surfing accident. Frankie escapes her Italian-American family and good-girl persona and heads to Washington State’s coastal rainforest. There she comes to terms with her loss and meets an eclectic group of people. The novel will be published in the US this September. Tunnicliffe moved to Stanley Bay two years ago from Vancouver, Canada. Before that, she lived in Melbourne, Sydney, London and Macau. But the pull to Devonport was long-standing and strong. “I grew up in Campbells Bay and have wanted to live in Devonport since I was six. I don’t even know why. I have done a lot of travelling and lived in lots of places but being back home is heaven to me - having kids here, the community and just the beauty of the place,” she says. Anna Glamuzina’s story is a similar one. She has lived in the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK. She says she took flight from a past life as a lawyer “running and screaming.” After years as an immigration consultant she decided to give writing a go. Glamuzina moved to Hauraki twelve years ago. Of Dalmatian descent and raised in West
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Following the Devonport literary tradition, local writers… (from left to right) Hanna Tunnicliffe, Anna Glamuzina and Karen Breen Auckland, she visited Devonport as a child to go to swim at the beach. “We took the ferry across and I thought Devonport was so exotic,” she says. “Now I think it is a great place to bring up kids and a great place to be writer. You can look out at Rangitoto, walk the beaches and there are lots of great writers living here,” she says. Glamuzina just published her second book and first novel, Rich Man Road, the story of two very different immigrant women and their shared search for belonging. Olga is a traumatised Dalmatian World War Two refugee. She meets Pualele, a young Samoan woman who arrived in New Zealand in an illegal adoption during the 1970s. Glamuzina was one of the first graduates from Auckland University of Technology’s brand-new Master in Creative Writing degree set up in 2008. She says it is one of the best things she has ever done, in part because she met other writers there, including Narrow Neck local Karen Breen. Breen’s connection to Devonport goes back a generation. “My mother grew up in Stanley Bay and I lived in Belmont and went to Westlake Girls. When I was growing up I couldn’t wait to get off the Shore but after 10 years in London and then with a new baby, I just wanted to pop my baby in the buggy and go down to the beach or pop round to my mum’s,” she said about her return 13 years ago.
During the 10 years she spent in London, Breen worked as a television producer and director for Channel 4 and 5 and the BBC, doing documentaries. She returned to New Zealand after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and began her career as a novelist after graduating alongside Glamuzina. “It was helpful to have the external structure of a degree. It pushed me to put those words down and deliver and was a good start to make it my job,” she says. Breen published her first novel, Sleep Sister, this March. “It’s primarily set in 1987 and is about two sisters, Gilly and Marina, who are young women and have grown up during the late 70s, a time when children were allowed to roam freely and only came home for dinner,” she says. A recent death in the family ends the silence around a tragic Northland camping trip in 1979 and blows the sisters’ relationship apart. Breen and Glamuzina are not only authors but also directors of Eunoia Publishing. They launched the new independent publishing company with three fellow writers last year, and have already published four books, including their own. Starting Eunoia was half necessity, half opportunity and is their response to the changing publishing landscape. “At the moment in New Zealand it is pretty dire for publishing in some respects. A lot of the big internationals are either exiting New Zealand or contracting, so it is really difficult for first-time writers to get