Chris Stuart
|
I have always been a storyteller. In the throes of youth, mainly around the campfire of here and overseas, I told stories that made people laugh, cry and think. Now I have put pen to paper.
I returned to New Zealand after more than twenty years and decided to settle in Nelson, which has a strong arts and craft culture and a lifestyle which I was sure would nurture my writing skills. I started off writing non-fiction and short stories and won the Elyne Mitchell Writing Award (Short Stories) and have been a judge for this since 2013. I recently completed a crime novel which was launched in July 2020. This novel started out as an autobiography, but I didn't have enough faith in who I was to write about myself and I was in a situation where I had no one to talk to about the process so I gave up in despair. However, I am not a quitter and I believed I had a good story to tell, and one which incorporated the humanitarian world, a world in which I spent many years working. The result is For Reasons of their Own, the story of a tenacious, yet flawed policewoman who finds a body in a mud filled swamp on the outskirts of Melbourne and sets out to prove that the murder is personal and not political. This is the first of a planned series featuring DI Gray and her colleague Constable Pip MacMahon. For Reasons of their Own won the Best First Novel category in the 2021 Ngaio Marsh Awards. |
Listen here to Chris's interview on Fresh FM
Community Radio on 29 August 2020 |