It seems appropriate that Elizabeth Knox‘s inaugural Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture took place on a Sunday morning. Despite an audience so packed there were barely enough seats, we all sat still and quiet. We were so spellbound by her memories, funny and sad in equal measures, that when at the end Kate de Goldi tentatively opened the floor for questions there was only the collective held breath of a room full of people. I hardly know how to describe it — Elizabeth Heritage likened it to a religious experience, which is probably as close as I can get to conveying the atmosphere that a matter-of-fact writer created in a small, stuffy room.
This year has been the raven on my shoulder.
A refrain, repeated three times over the course of an hour. How to untangle the references to Odin and God, twined together with anecdotes of chemical-green glowing farts and a family of ghosts who lived among the convulvulus?
Knox discovered Mahy late, stumbling across The Changeover in her early twenties and describing her writing as “opening up a room in New Zealand literature I wanted to hang out in.” With so many books to her credit, ranging over several genres…
I write with genre, hand in hand with it, rather than within genre.
…I think we can safely say Knox has found her place in this unreal room filled with storms.
While the lecture won’t be published in the immediate future, it should be available soon on National Radio. Look out for it.
- Search our catalogue for Elizabeth Knox
- Search our catalogue for Margaret Mahy
- Explore our Margaret Mahy pages
- Read more WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival posts
- Our page on WORD Christchurch
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 
I read your blog in a cafe on the way to work, and I just want to say that you totally succeeded in conveying the atmosphere of a festival event I had to miss. Thanks.
It wasn’t at all what I expected! I’ll be interested to see what you think when it’s available online.