We're not 100% sure about this, but there's a very good chance that Cristina Sanders is the busiest and most energetic person we know. We dragged her out of the wild outdoors – she's a trail runner, a sailor, a whitewater rafter, a photographer, a traveller – for long enough to answer a few questions.
We can't wait to hear Cristina talk about her novelised account of one of New Zealand's most notorious shipwrecks and its survivors. Her love of the outdoors heavily informed her writing in Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant. Only someone who has herself been at the mercy of the elements could write so viscerally of the sense of dislocation and constant threat for those stranded on a subantarctic island.
1. What is your favourite writing snack?
I’m not much of a snacker, but like to try “method writing” so for Mrs Jewell that would have to mean seal blubber and rancid goat.
2. When do your best ideas come?
At inappropriate times. Up a ship’s mast, on a run, at a meeting. Nothing ever comes conveniently in a dream, though I do keep a blank, but hopeful, notebook by the bed.
3. What is your best trick for overcoming writer's block?
Running.
4. What are you reading at the moment?
I’m on holiday with my daughter and we have just discovered how to sync Kindles, so I’m working through her library. Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie now, just finished Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. She has an eclectic mix.
5. Which writers would you take on an epic road trip?
Smart, funny, Kiwi women. Fiona Kidman, Charity Norman, Mary-Anne Scott (with guitar), Eileen Merriman, Catherine Chidgey, Mary McCallum, Vanda Symon, Catherine Robertson… how big is the car?
6. Who would play you in the movie of your life
Uma Thurman, please. (Oh, come on, I’m writing fiction!)
7. What are you looking forward to most in Queenstown?
Catching up with my interviewer, Bill Day – a man of epic sea stories and guru of the General Grant shipwreck.
— Cristina Sanders joins Wanaka adventurer and shipwreck hunter Bill Day for a conversation about sailing and shipwrecks at 2pm on Saturday 11 November 2023 at Te Atamira.