Find out how Dame Fiona Kidman’s mind really ticks.
To offer a bit of insight into the mind of one of New Zealand’s best-loved writers, we sent her a version of the Proust questionnaire*. Here are her answers...
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
To sit quietly and look at the sea on a sunny day. Any sea, anywhere.
2. What is your greatest fear?
Being found out.
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I couldn’t possibly say.
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
A lack of generosity.
5. Which living person do you most admire?
If I said Ian Kidman, I’d probably give him a swollen head. I’ll settle for Nelson Mandela, who I met once.
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
Buying books.
7. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Piety.
8. On what occasion do you lie?
That would give the game away if I told you.
9. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My butt, of course.
10. Which living person do you most despise?
Oh no. Too cruel.
11. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
The fact is...
12. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Ian Kidman. I’m married to him.
13. When and where were you happiest?
When I first saw my beautiful children. And, perhaps, during the 6 months we lived in Menton on the French Riviera.
14. Which talent would you most like to have?
To be a good singer.
15. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Every time I finish a book it feels like my greatest achievement. I always wonder whether I will ever have the strength to write another one.
16. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
A Thai swimming cat. It has fun in the water and is more dangerous than it looks.
17. What is your most treasured possession?
A handwritten book my mother wrote telling the story of her life and those of hers and my forebears.
18. Who are your favourite writers?
Alice Munro, Joan Didion, Carol Shields, just lately Elizabeth Strout, Marguerite Duras, Colette, Chekhov, Graham Greene, Owen Marshall, Vincent O’Sullivan, Michael Harlow (the last three are also among my favourite people), Billy Collins. Dozens. Just dozens.
19. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Ha. Joan of Arc, perhaps! Oh, all right, Katherine Mansfield.
20. Who is your hero of fiction?
Oliver Twist. A little more is always useful.
21. Who are your heroes in real life?
Nelson Mandela. Barack Obama (although I wish he could be just a little more heroic sometimes). Ian Kidman because he was a courageous teacher for 53 years. Alice Munro. Jean Watson, the Wellington writer who opened an orphanage in India.
*The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlour game popularised (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.
Irish author John Boyne discusses the role of the elements in his new books, and the inspiration for his new book Earth.
Learn what a day in the life of a senior designer at Penguin Random House looks like.
We caught up with Tobias Madden to learn about his new novel, Wrong Answers Only. Plus, discover his secrets for tapping into your creativity and his top tips for aspiring authors.
Find out why Georgia Harper’s writing routine ruined her mum’s idyllic vision of a writerly life. Plus, learn about her love for Anne Rice and her unlucky skill for attracting strangers’ stories.
Sarah-Jane Collins shares how her background as a reporter inspired her to write her debut novel, Radiant Heat.
Plus find out why he’d choose to live in Middle Earth and main difference between him and Hugh Jackman.
The debut author also shares the fictional character she’d most like to meet and why she loved Lemony Snicket’s writing as a child.
Plus, find out why he taught himself to memorise an entire deck of cards while researching for the novel.
Plus, learn about which fictional character he’d like to dine with and the musician he always turns to when singing karaoke.
Plus, the cosy fictional world she’d most like to live in.
She took up a few new hobbies, including horseback riding, sewing and Georgian dance.
We caught up with debut author Ela Lee to learn about how she made time for writing while working full-time, her ‘big break’ into publishing and more.