25 Jul 2015

Rachel Barrowman: Maurice Gee

From Saturday Morning, 9:08 am on 25 July 2015

Rachel Barrowman and book cover

One of New Zealand's most successful novelists is also one of the most private, which makes the task of any biographer of Maurice Gee quite daunting.

Rachel Barrowman has written Maurice Gee: Life and Work, about the author of The Plumb Trilogy, Going West, The Fat Man, to name a few of his many award-winning books, both for adults and for young people.

She talks to Kim Hill.

Rachel will speak about her book at the Going West Books and Writers Festival.

Rachel Barrowman is a biographer and historian. In 2006 she received New Zealand's biggest literary award, the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship, to research and write Maurice Gee: Life and Work (VUP).

Rachel Barrowman is also the author of Mason: The Life of R.A.K. Mason, which won the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Biography and Memoir, A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand, 1930-1950, The Turnbull: A Library and Its World and Victoria University of Wellington 1899-1999, A History.