November 9, 2025 • 24 mins
Sonya is a former TV reporter who became a writer, charity founder, and author. After more than 20 years in broadcast journalism — reporting and presenting for programmes such as One News, Breakfast, 20/20, and Sunday — she completed a Master of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland. There she wrote Spark Hunter, an adventure-fantasy novel for readers aged ten and up, set in Fiordland National Park. The book became a bestseller and won the NZSA Best First Book Award at the 2022 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, as well as a Storylines Notable Book Award. Its sequel, The Secret Green, was published in July 2025 by Allen & Unwin.
She also writes creative non-fiction, essays, and reviews, and regularly gives talks, workshops, and chairs sessions at writers’ festivals — blending her love of journalism and literature. Passionate about the power of books to build empathy and wonder, she founded Kiwi Christmas Books, a charity that gifts brand new books to children who might otherwise go without. Originally from the Deep South, she now lives in Auckland with her husband Pete, their two sons, a cat named Graham and a dog named Dusky.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Talk zed B. Gooda, Welcome to real Life. I'm John
Cowen and one of my passions is photography and I
used to earn a living for a while from it.
And one thing I used to say about photography is
(00:43):
that it taught me how to actually see. And my
guest tonight can certainly see and wonder and has the
word power to write beautifully about what she sees. Welcome
broadcaster and author Sonya Wilson. It's lovely to have you
in the studio.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hi John, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
And congratulations on your latest book.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Tell us a bit about what.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
My latest book is called The Secret Green, and it's
a sequel to my first novel, which was called Spark Hunter.
Both books are set down in the wonderland of Fjordland
National Park. They're sort of Kiwi adventure fantasy stories and yeah,
you're right, they've got wonder at their heart and they're
(01:29):
set in the forest, and the forest becomes very much
a or Fiordland itself becomes sort of a character.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And the book will. You'll be hoping that it'll do
as well as your first book, which really went well
and made it to the best seller lists and won
all sorts of prizes, the NZ Essay Best First Book Award.
They don't have a Best Second Book award to that.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I might suggest that to them most.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
In the twenty twenty two New Zealand Book Awards for
Children and Young Adults or all sorts of awards and
things anyway, So best best of luck with the new one.
I suppose you're thank you traveling around promoting it doing reading.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, a little bit. It's been a busy few weeks. Actually.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
I've been doing a few school talks to kids, and
I've just come back from the Queenstone Writers' Festival, which
is great because we're generally talking to audiences there who
you know, Fieldland's not too far away from where that
festival is based, so lots of South Islanders who know
the places that I'm referencing. Yeah, and I did another
(02:36):
big event with the Women's Bookshop for two hundred and
fifty or three hundred people on Sunday talking about Fieldland
and my work and writing. So, yeah, it's busy, but
it's good not complaining.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah. Now I read an essay you wrote, because as
well as writing books, you also write essays and reviews
and things from magazines, and in it you are describing
how you stopped and stared at a piece of moss
also for twenteen minutes, and I'm thinking, needs a life
on drugs, what's going on here? But it was just
(03:16):
a sense of being able to When I started the
program tonight, I talked about being able to see, and
you were grateful for what learning to write had taught
you to do.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
So there's a great quote from the Roau who says,
it's not about what you look at, but what you see,
you know.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And yeah, what did you see sting at the bat?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Yeah, I mean I just kind of, you know, had
had this moment of wonder. Really just I was sort
of scrambling up a hillside a few hours out of
Glen Orchy in the Paradise Valley, and I had a
notepad pencil because I was doing a bit of research
for my book while I was down there, and just
(03:57):
just sort of watch this sort of steam, just sat
down for a bit and watch the steam rising from
the lump of moss, and it doesn't sound so spectacular,
but when you sort of what I've learnt was writing.
And as you mentioned with your photography, writing has taught
me how to see as well, because writers are people
who notice things. Writers are observers, and you need to
(04:20):
notice the detail of the work of the world. And
my writing in particular focuses a lot on landscape and
setting and the details of those places. And I just
find places like that so utterly awe inspiring and wonder filled,
(04:42):
you know, the fact that you can sit there and
sort of notice these things. And it was actually about
forty minutes I sat there twenty so I'm double the
crazy you think I am. But really, you know, when
you do sort of slow down and stop to notice,
and there's just there was just these you know, sort
of a robin that sort of came up and jumped
on my shoe, and there was a billboard going and
(05:04):
a fantawel flitting round. And when you do just stop
and look and just see, there's you know, there's sort
of myriad tiny wonders that are around you, from the
tiniest little lichens and mosses to you know, the big,
a red beach forest, predominantly all of these things. And
we are so lucky in New Zealand to have these
(05:25):
wild places still, although probably not as many as we
should have, and we need to, you know, work pretty
hard to protect the ones we have left, but they
are so important. And their essay you reference was me
really trying to talk about. You know, I talk a
lot to kids about writing and noticing the world, and
(05:49):
it's you know, I've got kids of my own, so
I know how difficult it is to kind of sit
down and just kind of notice the world when there's
all of this noise and and and all of these
screens around us, and then in a world that feels
like it's full of many difficult things, you know, big
things like climate chain and various tyrants around the world politically,
(06:13):
all of these things that make the world feel really hard.
What I was trying to express in that essay was about, well,
maybe we all need to get better at noticing these
sort of tiny wonders of the world. And the more
we notice these sort of things in the natural world
around us, you know, the happier we are, the more
we fall in love with the world, the more inclined,
we are to want to save it. And maybe that's
(06:35):
the first step towards resistance, you know, towards these sort
of insidious, creeping technologies.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The word yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Doesn't seem to sit on a Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Very well, no, And it sounds terribly sort of wide
eyed and naive, doesn't it. And usually I'm a very
cynical person.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Actually, it doesn't fit on an Excel spreadsheet, but it
does fit into a novel. And I guess this is
what your books do of it, if it alerts people
to a sense of wonder.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, well, this is the joy of books. Rights They
are long. They invite you to sit down and read
a long, full story where you immerse yourself in someone
else's point of view. And whether that is someone else
from another country, or a different social socioeconomic background to you,
or a different social group to you, or a different anything,
(07:26):
it opens your will, your eyes to other people's perspectives
in a way often that nonfiction and the news and
so on. Can't you know, a little bit of a cliche,
but I believe it's true that you can tell a
lot of truths with fiction, you know, in a way
(07:46):
that you can't when you're writing seemingly.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
The truth, right, Well, that sense of wonder, that sense
of awe that you can get from just pondering something
like a rock or a piece of bark or a
small bird or something like that. I mean it's easy
to sense or when you're standing on a mountaintop or
ye have the Grand Canyon or something. But to actually
have that sense of awe, and that came through very
(08:12):
clearly in your writing. Some people would use religious terms,
it would pluck something spiritual in their heart. I don't
think that that's the type of language that you use,
but you do sort of sense as sort of a
something esthetic or something.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah, No, I'm not a hugely religious person, so I
don't use those terms. But and I'm not sure I
would even use the term spiritual either.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
But it's.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
You know, it's nature and it's wonder and it's awe,
and it does the same sort of thing for me
as I imagine that does for other for you know,
a belief in a higher being does does for other people.
And it's you know, I don't have to an elevating experience,
and you know you don't, you don't have to be
(08:59):
at the top of a mountain pass in the Southern
Alps to get that, you know, sit in that piece
of writing I can find, or in a fence post
these days, you know, sort of wondering about this amazing
little like and growing on.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
A you must be very frustrating to walk with.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, my kids get she's staring at a bit of
like and not on you. And my dog gets frustrated too. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Well they get fascinated with certain things too, don't they
perhaps not the same thing?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yeah, yeah, And it's something you have to work hard
at to do. You know, we all do, I think
is we all sort of tell children to turn off
their phones or their devices and pay attention. Well, we
adults all need to do that as well, right, we
all need to sort of just notice stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Was the something natural to you or did you learn it?
Did I know you've done courses on writing. Was that
something that you learned then? Or was it something you
always had? Did you from your parents or whatever?
Speaker 4 (09:51):
I suppose what I've always had is a sense of story,
and that possibly runs alongside you know, that that sort
of noticing of details. But it's definitely since since learning.
You know, I was a journalist for twenty five years.
But I was a broadcastingist, so I was writing words
(10:12):
to be spoken on a screen, very different obviously to
writing pros, very different discipline. And because I worked in television,
I had pictures there for me, so I didn't need
to work very hard to describe what the viewer was
seeing because it was there in front of them. So yeah,
I had to work hard to learn how to notice
(10:33):
things more, particularly when I came to writing, and not
just you know, what a leaf looks like or what
some bark on a tree looks like, but also noticing people,
you know, because characters are king and factually that.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It's a skill that you can you can actually learn
to to actually be alive to what's.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Around and you have to work hard to maintain that,
you know, we all do.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
My guest tonight's Sonia Wilson. She's had a long time
career in television more than twenty years and now turned
a hand to being an author, and her second book
has just come out, The Secret Green, a book for
young adults or teenagers, and I'm sure adults would enjoy
it as well. And we're talking a bit more about
(11:15):
aspects of the book, aspects of writing in a career
in television. This is real life on News Talks EDB.
I'm John Cowen, be back with you in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Blackbirds singing in the Dead n take the sunken eyes
and learn to see all your life. You were only
waiting for this moment to be free.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Black bird fly ba bird live into the line.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Welcome back to real life. I'm talking with Sonia Wilson,
author and broadcaster. And you've chosen this music for us.
What's the significance of this piece.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Well, it's I don't know if you've heard of this
band called the Beatles, but it's by a band called
the beat Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, they were quite big, Yeah, I hear. I mean one.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
It's just it's just a lovely song. It mentions a bird,
and birds are some of the biggest characters in my
both of my books, so I thought that was appropriate.
Although it's not a native bird. But yeah, that song
is a favorite of my husband's as well, and our
very good friend Liam played it. Our played it at
our wedding for us.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Australian those are not so melodious the Australian. Yeah, and
then I've got a I've got a son who plays
guitar now and and he's learned to play Blackbird on
the guitar. So yeah, brings me a lot of pleasure
to hear it again.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, it is a beautiful song. And so as you say,
Bird Star and your books, because it's set in the
wilds of Fjordland. Fjordland, that's off as part of the
Star of both your books, Wife Jordland. What's the drawer there?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah, it's just it's just my favorite place in the world.
And again, it fills me with so much awe in
wonder that honestly it hurts sometimes, you know, I feel
like I can't take in enough of the view.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
It's just it's so amazing.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
But I grew up in Southland and grew up in
Vcago specifically, and we would go to Tiano, to the
lakes and Manipoti when I was a kid to camp
and just wander around the forest that surround those lakes.
And I don't know if you've ever walked in a
forest in Fieldland, but they're utterly astounding. And when I
(13:52):
was a kid, I would spend a lot of time
sitting there thinking that the forest was so beautiful that
surely there must be something else at play, that surely
it can't be just nature that's responsible for this, And
maybe if I sat here for long enough, some sort
of magical creature would reveal itself to me.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
So the germs of a story that you've written about,
because your books are about magical creatures in the Fieldland forest.
These ideas were planted back when you were a twelve
year old.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Yeah, even younger, probably probably eight or nine. Yeah, And
then I went off to my school camp and Deep
Cove and Doubtful Sound and my form two year eight
as they say these days, when I was twelve and
had this amazing experience at the school camp, and that
became a scene in the book as well, and sort
(14:43):
of went from there. My Dad's got she has and
old diesel launch and Doubtful Sounds. I still get to
go down there a bit and little bit of crayfishing
and just be amongst the wonder of that place.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Books and what they do to kids and do four kids.
You were a bookworm growing up. You loved books.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, not as much as would I certainly wasn't you know.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I often hear authors do interviews and talk about how
that's all they did as a child and sort of
sat in the library and read and read. And I
wasn't that, okays, I was a bit more of an extraverte,
I think. But I did read, and I loved reading,
and I loved storytelling in all its forms.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
And I did.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Lots of stuff when I was a kid, lots of
sport and lots of theater, sport and drama and debating
and all of that sort of stuff. But I think
what I loved about all of those things was the storytelling,
you know, and storytelling is inherent in sports, even in
terms of the glorious battles and glorious defeats, you know.
That is what I loved about all of that stuff.
So yeah, and then then when I came to sort
(15:50):
of try writing a book for myself, I cursed the
fact that I didn't read more as a child, because
I felt like I needed to, you know, I needed
to catch up and read more and read more.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
It's not as easy as one would hope to sit
down and write.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I wouldn't have thought that was the hardest thing. I
think the thing. I mean, I've helped write a couple
of books, usually as a ghost writer for people, but
it's always a collaborative thing because I just don't have
the discipline. Yeah, just to sit down. I think they
call them, you know, the sit muscles, which you need
to actually sit down hour after hour. Yeah, right, you
must have that. You must have that driver finishing things
(16:28):
when you start them.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, I'm very stubborn like that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
And it was particularly hard from me coming off a
background of news reporting and then current affairs, where obviously
you're working to deadlines that are usually very tight and
very quick, and everything is very fast, to then sort
of be dealing with what felt like a sort of
an octopus of a project that was, you know, sixty
seventy eighty thousand words long, so that even just to
(16:55):
read it through once takes you a couple of days,
let alone rewriting the whole thing. So yeah, I think
for writing a book in general, you know, some of
it is talent, but most of it perhaps is perseverance.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, it's a very long road.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Well, you were saying that you wish you'd read more
so you could inject it into your own books. But
you drew so much on your own experiences, and I'm
sure you've had lots and lots of other experiences for
future books. How about fainting in a hard jib somewhere
in her arm?
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Oh gosh, you've really done your research, haven't you. My goodness, yeah,
I got that was very did a lot of a
lot of travel through my twenties, including spending a lot
of time in Iran, and yes, painting and my hedjob
at the at the airport.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
That wasn't much fun, no, I mean you've had better
fun than that.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, but that had a great time in the Middle East.
Had a wonderful time going through the air.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Oh, another book shaping up there? Perhaps maybe in the Himalayas.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Maybe in the Himalayas.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yes, yes, yes, we've also done a bit of walking
through the Himalayas, which which was amazing.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
I do.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I do love walking, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
I love that sense of only having your only job
of a day is to get from A to B.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Know.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
That's why I love tramping and love doing.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Those big walks, because that's and this is what I
tell kids when I speak to them about writing at
school as well. This is when you're sort of when
you've got nothing else to worry about and nothing else
to distract you, but getting from A to B and
you're in this place of wonder generally on these walks,
and this is when your imagination can really take it
south for a walk as well, and where all your
ideas start to pop and fizz and you know you've
(18:32):
just got all this wonderful time ahead of you and
all you've got to do is get to the next place,
with often some dire consequences if you don't get there,
if you're walking mountain passes, but otherwise pretty simple, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, tell us about key We Christmas Books, Kee We
Christmas Books. This is a charity you started.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, so this.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
I started this charity back in twenty nineteen, and actually
we were talking about this just before. But basically I
was doing a course at the university about writing short
stories and essays, and I had a short story due
for my course, and I was lying in bed at
about three o'clock in the morning lamenting the fact that
I hadn't read more because the story I was trying
(19:15):
to write was so terrible and going so terribly, And
then sort of got to thinking about my kids and
all these books that they're surrounded by it at home,
and then about all these kids around our country who
have not a single book in their house and generally
no access to books.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
And I had come to learn.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
The value of books and the value of reading fiction
in particular, you know, and that I mean, there's heaps
of research around that shows that children who read for
pleasure are far more likely to succeed in life. And
that's not just succeeding academically and having a better vocabulary
and being better at English, but they're generally better at maths,
(19:56):
they're more empathetic, they're more emotionally intelligent, they're more likely
to take part in their communities later on, you know,
when they get older, they're they're less likely to suffer
from cognitive decline. All of that, you know, all the
research shows that reading for pleasure, this is stories, made
up stories, you know, fairy tales, fiction. It's a bigger
(20:16):
indicator of future success than just about anything else, including
socioeconomic backgrounds. So in my mind, it is not fear
that lots of kids have access to that tool of
fiction and books, and many many kids do not. So
that's why it started just let's get a few books
out through various charities that work on the ground with families.
(20:38):
And to begin with that was the City Mission and
the Women's Refuge, and then see how it goes, and
it just snowballs that idea. I ask friends and family
to donate some books to me as well. And it's
a pretty easy co Pappa to get on board with
right kids and books, everyone, no one's going to argue
against it.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
So feedback from the kids.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, So through through the charities that we work with,
we get amazing feedback. So they tell us that parents
burst into tears when they see the books because they're
too children have never owned something new and something of
their own. We have stories of kids clutching their new
books to their chests and not letting anyone else touch them,
(21:19):
or not letting their social workers touch them because they
want them. Another woman told me a couple of months
ago that one of the families she worked with had
an eighteen month old that was given the Gruffalo and
it's now his absolute favorite thing and he takes it.
Do we revisitor that arrives and makes them read it
to him and then kisses the Gruffalo good night. On
the last page of the book every night. I mean,
(21:41):
you know, yeah, it'supposed pretty good feedback, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, So two books out there, a television career over
twenty years. Any TV work going at the moment or
do you hope to turn your books into something on screen?
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:56):
They've been optioned for adaptation, which is great. But you know,
my stipulation is that they are filmed in Fiordland, you know,
not amongst the Nico Palms of the White Tarkety Rangers,
so that's double your budget, White, But they're not it's
(22:17):
not Forijordland. You know, it's not Forjudland. We don't have
Nico Palms and Fiordland on the whole. But you know,
and you know, they feature a cast of small, supernatural
forest creatures. So you can imagine the cost involved in
actually making a TV series or a movie like that.
But but there are people that want to do it,
(22:37):
and I'm going to have a crack at doing the screenplay.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
So yeah, who knows.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
If anyone out there has got to spare you know,
thirty forty million to send our way to make the movies,
then you know, get in touch.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I'll just check my wallet May Yeah maybe the producer producer. No,
neither of us are got that at the moment, but
wishing you all the best on that and all the
best of your success. So look out for the Secret
Green sequel to what was your first recording in back
Hunter spark Hunter Lovely Stories for Kids say ten and older,
(23:10):
set in Fiordland, Sonya, it's been wonderful talking to you.
I wish you all the success you deserve for your
books and for the first charity that you're doing.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Thank you so much for having me John. And yes,
we're running our Christmas donation campaign at the moment for
Kiwi Christmas Books, So if anyone would like to donate
a book to our cause, please look us up the
websites just Kiwi Christmas Books dot org dot nz. We'd
love any support from any of your listeners out there
who wish to donate a book that a.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Great idea and a song to go out on.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Yeah, so we've got Homeland and see by Trinity Roots
and this is just to acknowledge the importance of our
land and landscape, which, as I've said, our big factors
in my writing.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Wonderful I guess tonight's Sonya Wilson. I'm John Cowen, looking
forward to being back with you with more real life
next Sunday Night.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Talking about over Home.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
There for more from News Talks at b Listen live
(24:46):
on air or online, and keep our shows with you
wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Talk zed B. Gooda, Welcome to real Life. I'm John
Cowen and one of my passions is photography and I
used to earn a living for a while from it.
And one thing I used to say about photography is
(00:43):
that it taught me how to actually see. And my
guest tonight can certainly see and wonder and has the
word power to write beautifully about what she sees. Welcome
broadcaster and author Sonya Wilson. It's lovely to have you
in the studio.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hi John, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
And congratulations on your latest book.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Tell us a bit about what.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
My latest book is called The Secret Green, and it's
a sequel to my first novel, which was called Spark Hunter.
Both books are set down in the wonderland of Fjordland
National Park. They're sort of Kiwi adventure fantasy stories and yeah,
you're right, they've got wonder at their heart and they're
(01:29):
set in the forest, and the forest becomes very much
a or Fiordland itself becomes sort of a character.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And the book will. You'll be hoping that it'll do
as well as your first book, which really went well
and made it to the best seller lists and won
all sorts of prizes, the NZ Essay Best First Book Award.
They don't have a Best Second Book award to that.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I might suggest that to them most.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
In the twenty twenty two New Zealand Book Awards for
Children and Young Adults or all sorts of awards and
things anyway, So best best of luck with the new one.
I suppose you're thank you traveling around promoting it doing reading.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, a little bit. It's been a busy few weeks. Actually.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
I've been doing a few school talks to kids, and
I've just come back from the Queenstone Writers' Festival, which
is great because we're generally talking to audiences there who
you know, Fieldland's not too far away from where that
festival is based, so lots of South Islanders who know
the places that I'm referencing. Yeah, and I did another
(02:36):
big event with the Women's Bookshop for two hundred and
fifty or three hundred people on Sunday talking about Fieldland
and my work and writing. So, yeah, it's busy, but
it's good not complaining.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah. Now I read an essay you wrote, because as
well as writing books, you also write essays and reviews
and things from magazines, and in it you are describing
how you stopped and stared at a piece of moss
also for twenteen minutes, and I'm thinking, needs a life
on drugs, what's going on here? But it was just
(03:16):
a sense of being able to When I started the
program tonight, I talked about being able to see, and
you were grateful for what learning to write had taught
you to do.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
So there's a great quote from the Roau who says,
it's not about what you look at, but what you see,
you know.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And yeah, what did you see sting at the bat?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Yeah, I mean I just kind of, you know, had
had this moment of wonder. Really just I was sort
of scrambling up a hillside a few hours out of
Glen Orchy in the Paradise Valley, and I had a
notepad pencil because I was doing a bit of research
for my book while I was down there, and just
(03:57):
just sort of watch this sort of steam, just sat
down for a bit and watch the steam rising from
the lump of moss, and it doesn't sound so spectacular,
but when you sort of what I've learnt was writing.
And as you mentioned with your photography, writing has taught
me how to see as well, because writers are people
who notice things. Writers are observers, and you need to
(04:20):
notice the detail of the work of the world. And
my writing in particular focuses a lot on landscape and
setting and the details of those places. And I just
find places like that so utterly awe inspiring and wonder filled,
(04:42):
you know, the fact that you can sit there and
sort of notice these things. And it was actually about
forty minutes I sat there twenty so I'm double the
crazy you think I am. But really, you know, when
you do sort of slow down and stop to notice,
and there's just there was just these you know, sort
of a robin that sort of came up and jumped
on my shoe, and there was a billboard going and
(05:04):
a fantawel flitting round. And when you do just stop
and look and just see, there's you know, there's sort
of myriad tiny wonders that are around you, from the
tiniest little lichens and mosses to you know, the big,
a red beach forest, predominantly all of these things. And
we are so lucky in New Zealand to have these
(05:25):
wild places still, although probably not as many as we
should have, and we need to, you know, work pretty
hard to protect the ones we have left, but they
are so important. And their essay you reference was me
really trying to talk about. You know, I talk a
lot to kids about writing and noticing the world, and
(05:49):
it's you know, I've got kids of my own, so
I know how difficult it is to kind of sit
down and just kind of notice the world when there's
all of this noise and and and all of these
screens around us, and then in a world that feels
like it's full of many difficult things, you know, big
things like climate chain and various tyrants around the world politically,
(06:13):
all of these things that make the world feel really hard.
What I was trying to express in that essay was about, well,
maybe we all need to get better at noticing these
sort of tiny wonders of the world. And the more
we notice these sort of things in the natural world
around us, you know, the happier we are, the more
we fall in love with the world, the more inclined,
we are to want to save it. And maybe that's
(06:35):
the first step towards resistance, you know, towards these sort
of insidious, creeping technologies.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The word yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Doesn't seem to sit on a Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Very well, no, And it sounds terribly sort of wide
eyed and naive, doesn't it. And usually I'm a very
cynical person.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Actually, it doesn't fit on an Excel spreadsheet, but it
does fit into a novel. And I guess this is
what your books do of it, if it alerts people
to a sense of wonder.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, well, this is the joy of books. Rights They
are long. They invite you to sit down and read
a long, full story where you immerse yourself in someone
else's point of view. And whether that is someone else
from another country, or a different social socioeconomic background to you,
or a different social group to you, or a different anything,
(07:26):
it opens your will, your eyes to other people's perspectives
in a way often that nonfiction and the news and
so on. Can't you know, a little bit of a cliche,
but I believe it's true that you can tell a
lot of truths with fiction, you know, in a way
(07:46):
that you can't when you're writing seemingly.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
The truth, right, Well, that sense of wonder, that sense
of awe that you can get from just pondering something
like a rock or a piece of bark or a
small bird or something like that. I mean it's easy
to sense or when you're standing on a mountaintop or
ye have the Grand Canyon or something. But to actually
have that sense of awe, and that came through very
(08:12):
clearly in your writing. Some people would use religious terms,
it would pluck something spiritual in their heart. I don't
think that that's the type of language that you use,
but you do sort of sense as sort of a
something esthetic or something.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah, No, I'm not a hugely religious person, so I
don't use those terms. But and I'm not sure I
would even use the term spiritual either.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
But it's.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
You know, it's nature and it's wonder and it's awe,
and it does the same sort of thing for me
as I imagine that does for other for you know,
a belief in a higher being does does for other people.
And it's you know, I don't have to an elevating experience,
and you know you don't, you don't have to be
(08:59):
at the top of a mountain pass in the Southern
Alps to get that, you know, sit in that piece
of writing I can find, or in a fence post
these days, you know, sort of wondering about this amazing
little like and growing on.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
A you must be very frustrating to walk with.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, my kids get she's staring at a bit of
like and not on you. And my dog gets frustrated too. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Well they get fascinated with certain things too, don't they
perhaps not the same thing?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yeah, yeah, And it's something you have to work hard
at to do. You know, we all do, I think
is we all sort of tell children to turn off
their phones or their devices and pay attention. Well, we
adults all need to do that as well, right, we
all need to sort of just notice stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Was the something natural to you or did you learn it?
Did I know you've done courses on writing. Was that
something that you learned then? Or was it something you
always had? Did you from your parents or whatever?
Speaker 4 (09:51):
I suppose what I've always had is a sense of story,
and that possibly runs alongside you know, that that sort
of noticing of details. But it's definitely since since learning.
You know, I was a journalist for twenty five years.
But I was a broadcastingist, so I was writing words
(10:12):
to be spoken on a screen, very different obviously to
writing pros, very different discipline. And because I worked in television,
I had pictures there for me, so I didn't need
to work very hard to describe what the viewer was
seeing because it was there in front of them. So yeah,
I had to work hard to learn how to notice
(10:33):
things more, particularly when I came to writing, and not
just you know, what a leaf looks like or what
some bark on a tree looks like, but also noticing people,
you know, because characters are king and factually that.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It's a skill that you can you can actually learn
to to actually be alive to what's.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Around and you have to work hard to maintain that,
you know, we all do.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
My guest tonight's Sonia Wilson. She's had a long time
career in television more than twenty years and now turned
a hand to being an author, and her second book
has just come out, The Secret Green, a book for
young adults or teenagers, and I'm sure adults would enjoy
it as well. And we're talking a bit more about
(11:15):
aspects of the book, aspects of writing in a career
in television. This is real life on News Talks EDB.
I'm John Cowen, be back with you in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Blackbirds singing in the Dead n take the sunken eyes
and learn to see all your life. You were only
waiting for this moment to be free.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Black bird fly ba bird live into the line.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Welcome back to real life. I'm talking with Sonia Wilson,
author and broadcaster. And you've chosen this music for us.
What's the significance of this piece.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Well, it's I don't know if you've heard of this
band called the Beatles, but it's by a band called
the beat Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, they were quite big, Yeah, I hear. I mean one.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
It's just it's just a lovely song. It mentions a bird,
and birds are some of the biggest characters in my
both of my books, so I thought that was appropriate.
Although it's not a native bird. But yeah, that song
is a favorite of my husband's as well, and our
very good friend Liam played it. Our played it at
our wedding for us.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Australian those are not so melodious the Australian. Yeah, and
then I've got a I've got a son who plays
guitar now and and he's learned to play Blackbird on
the guitar. So yeah, brings me a lot of pleasure
to hear it again.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, it is a beautiful song. And so as you say,
Bird Star and your books, because it's set in the
wilds of Fjordland. Fjordland, that's off as part of the
Star of both your books, Wife Jordland. What's the drawer there?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah, it's just it's just my favorite place in the world.
And again, it fills me with so much awe in
wonder that honestly it hurts sometimes, you know, I feel
like I can't take in enough of the view.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
It's just it's so amazing.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
But I grew up in Southland and grew up in
Vcago specifically, and we would go to Tiano, to the
lakes and Manipoti when I was a kid to camp
and just wander around the forest that surround those lakes.
And I don't know if you've ever walked in a
forest in Fieldland, but they're utterly astounding. And when I
(13:52):
was a kid, I would spend a lot of time
sitting there thinking that the forest was so beautiful that
surely there must be something else at play, that surely
it can't be just nature that's responsible for this, And
maybe if I sat here for long enough, some sort
of magical creature would reveal itself to me.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
So the germs of a story that you've written about,
because your books are about magical creatures in the Fieldland forest.
These ideas were planted back when you were a twelve
year old.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Yeah, even younger, probably probably eight or nine. Yeah, And
then I went off to my school camp and Deep
Cove and Doubtful Sound and my form two year eight
as they say these days, when I was twelve and
had this amazing experience at the school camp, and that
became a scene in the book as well, and sort
(14:43):
of went from there. My Dad's got she has and
old diesel launch and Doubtful Sounds. I still get to
go down there a bit and little bit of crayfishing
and just be amongst the wonder of that place.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Books and what they do to kids and do four kids.
You were a bookworm growing up. You loved books.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, not as much as would I certainly wasn't you know.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I often hear authors do interviews and talk about how
that's all they did as a child and sort of
sat in the library and read and read. And I
wasn't that, okays, I was a bit more of an extraverte,
I think. But I did read, and I loved reading,
and I loved storytelling in all its forms.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
And I did.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Lots of stuff when I was a kid, lots of
sport and lots of theater, sport and drama and debating
and all of that sort of stuff. But I think
what I loved about all of those things was the storytelling,
you know, and storytelling is inherent in sports, even in
terms of the glorious battles and glorious defeats, you know.
That is what I loved about all of that stuff.
So yeah, and then then when I came to sort
(15:50):
of try writing a book for myself, I cursed the
fact that I didn't read more as a child, because
I felt like I needed to, you know, I needed
to catch up and read more and read more.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
It's not as easy as one would hope to sit
down and write.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I wouldn't have thought that was the hardest thing. I
think the thing. I mean, I've helped write a couple
of books, usually as a ghost writer for people, but
it's always a collaborative thing because I just don't have
the discipline. Yeah, just to sit down. I think they
call them, you know, the sit muscles, which you need
to actually sit down hour after hour. Yeah, right, you
must have that. You must have that driver finishing things
(16:28):
when you start them.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, I'm very stubborn like that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
And it was particularly hard from me coming off a
background of news reporting and then current affairs, where obviously
you're working to deadlines that are usually very tight and
very quick, and everything is very fast, to then sort
of be dealing with what felt like a sort of
an octopus of a project that was, you know, sixty
seventy eighty thousand words long, so that even just to
(16:55):
read it through once takes you a couple of days,
let alone rewriting the whole thing. So yeah, I think
for writing a book in general, you know, some of
it is talent, but most of it perhaps is perseverance.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, it's a very long road.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Well, you were saying that you wish you'd read more
so you could inject it into your own books. But
you drew so much on your own experiences, and I'm
sure you've had lots and lots of other experiences for
future books. How about fainting in a hard jib somewhere
in her arm?
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Oh gosh, you've really done your research, haven't you. My goodness, yeah,
I got that was very did a lot of a
lot of travel through my twenties, including spending a lot
of time in Iran, and yes, painting and my hedjob
at the at the airport.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
That wasn't much fun, no, I mean you've had better
fun than that.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, but that had a great time in the Middle East.
Had a wonderful time going through the air.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Oh, another book shaping up there? Perhaps maybe in the Himalayas.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Maybe in the Himalayas.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yes, yes, yes, we've also done a bit of walking
through the Himalayas, which which was amazing.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
I do.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I do love walking, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
I love that sense of only having your only job
of a day is to get from A to B.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Know.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
That's why I love tramping and love doing.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Those big walks, because that's and this is what I
tell kids when I speak to them about writing at
school as well. This is when you're sort of when
you've got nothing else to worry about and nothing else
to distract you, but getting from A to B and
you're in this place of wonder generally on these walks,
and this is when your imagination can really take it
south for a walk as well, and where all your
ideas start to pop and fizz and you know you've
(18:32):
just got all this wonderful time ahead of you and
all you've got to do is get to the next place,
with often some dire consequences if you don't get there,
if you're walking mountain passes, but otherwise pretty simple, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, tell us about key We Christmas Books, Kee We
Christmas Books. This is a charity you started.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, so this.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
I started this charity back in twenty nineteen, and actually
we were talking about this just before. But basically I
was doing a course at the university about writing short
stories and essays, and I had a short story due
for my course, and I was lying in bed at
about three o'clock in the morning lamenting the fact that
I hadn't read more because the story I was trying
(19:15):
to write was so terrible and going so terribly, And
then sort of got to thinking about my kids and
all these books that they're surrounded by it at home,
and then about all these kids around our country who
have not a single book in their house and generally
no access to books.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
And I had come to learn.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
The value of books and the value of reading fiction
in particular, you know, and that I mean, there's heaps
of research around that shows that children who read for
pleasure are far more likely to succeed in life. And
that's not just succeeding academically and having a better vocabulary
and being better at English, but they're generally better at maths,
(19:56):
they're more empathetic, they're more emotionally intelligent, they're more likely
to take part in their communities later on, you know,
when they get older, they're they're less likely to suffer
from cognitive decline. All of that, you know, all the
research shows that reading for pleasure, this is stories, made
up stories, you know, fairy tales, fiction. It's a bigger
(20:16):
indicator of future success than just about anything else, including
socioeconomic backgrounds. So in my mind, it is not fear
that lots of kids have access to that tool of
fiction and books, and many many kids do not. So
that's why it started just let's get a few books
out through various charities that work on the ground with families.
(20:38):
And to begin with that was the City Mission and
the Women's Refuge, and then see how it goes, and
it just snowballs that idea. I ask friends and family
to donate some books to me as well. And it's
a pretty easy co Pappa to get on board with
right kids and books, everyone, no one's going to argue
against it.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
So feedback from the kids.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, So through through the charities that we work with,
we get amazing feedback. So they tell us that parents
burst into tears when they see the books because they're
too children have never owned something new and something of
their own. We have stories of kids clutching their new
books to their chests and not letting anyone else touch them,
(21:19):
or not letting their social workers touch them because they
want them. Another woman told me a couple of months
ago that one of the families she worked with had
an eighteen month old that was given the Gruffalo and
it's now his absolute favorite thing and he takes it.
Do we revisitor that arrives and makes them read it
to him and then kisses the Gruffalo good night. On
the last page of the book every night. I mean,
(21:41):
you know, yeah, it'supposed pretty good feedback, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, So two books out there, a television career over
twenty years. Any TV work going at the moment or
do you hope to turn your books into something on screen?
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:56):
They've been optioned for adaptation, which is great. But you know,
my stipulation is that they are filmed in Fiordland, you know,
not amongst the Nico Palms of the White Tarkety Rangers,
so that's double your budget, White, But they're not it's
(22:17):
not Forijordland. You know, it's not Forjudland. We don't have
Nico Palms and Fiordland on the whole. But you know,
and you know, they feature a cast of small, supernatural
forest creatures. So you can imagine the cost involved in
actually making a TV series or a movie like that.
But but there are people that want to do it,
(22:37):
and I'm going to have a crack at doing the screenplay.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
So yeah, who knows.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
If anyone out there has got to spare you know,
thirty forty million to send our way to make the movies,
then you know, get in touch.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I'll just check my wallet May Yeah maybe the producer producer. No,
neither of us are got that at the moment, but
wishing you all the best on that and all the
best of your success. So look out for the Secret
Green sequel to what was your first recording in back
Hunter spark Hunter Lovely Stories for Kids say ten and older,
(23:10):
set in Fiordland, Sonya, it's been wonderful talking to you.
I wish you all the success you deserve for your
books and for the first charity that you're doing.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Thank you so much for having me John. And yes,
we're running our Christmas donation campaign at the moment for
Kiwi Christmas Books, So if anyone would like to donate
a book to our cause, please look us up the
websites just Kiwi Christmas Books dot org dot nz. We'd
love any support from any of your listeners out there
who wish to donate a book that a.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Great idea and a song to go out on.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Yeah, so we've got Homeland and see by Trinity Roots
and this is just to acknowledge the importance of our
land and landscape, which, as I've said, our big factors
in my writing.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Wonderful I guess tonight's Sonya Wilson. I'm John Cowen, looking
forward to being back with you with more real life
next Sunday Night.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Talking about over Home.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
There for more from News Talks at b Listen live
(24:46):
on air or online, and keep our shows with you
wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com