You know it, you love it—it’s the Mahy Questionnaire! This month we are featuring former educator turned multi award-winning author Mandy Hager! She tells us all about recurring newborn nightmares, sweet-talking cars and desiccated skinks, among other things. Her latest YA release Gracehopper can be found here, and our review of it here.
1. Describe yourself in three words:
Introverted keyboard worrier.
2. During the height of adolescence, was it a good changeover?
It was claustrophobic, growing up under the critical gaze of small-town gossips. I still can’t drive through that town without feeling slightly sick.
3. Are you haunted by a particular memory?
As a small child, I had a recurring nightmare of falling down a particularly steep staircase, with a grandfather clock at the bottom. When I was old enough to describe it in detail, it turned out I was describing the clock and staircase in my grandparents Dunedin house, which I only visited once when I was three months old, carried up and down the stairs in a carrycot, obviously feeling insecure.
4. MM: “Imagination is the creative use of reality.” Is this true for you?
Absolutely. Lived experience is what breathes life into fictional characters.
5. Have you ever owned a rattlebang car?
Several! One needed to be hit with a hammer to start, one had to be cranked, and one would only start if you stroked its dashboard and asked it nicely!
6. Which witch? Identify a favourite one from literature.
Esmerelda ‘Esme’ Weatherwax (also Granny Weatherwax or Mistress Weatherwax) from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.
7. “Come dance all around the world. And see all the beauty that surrounds us.” Words for a romantic or just being mindful?
Mindful. Today that feels more important than ever, as we slide into the horrors of mass extinctions.
8. A lion in the broom cupboard or a lion in the meadow?
Definitely a lion in the meadow. I was one of those kids who had to check my wardrobe every night in case something dangerous lurked there.
9. When have you been at your most discombobulated?
When I was 31 my first husband died. Nothing can prepare you for the bleakness of that pain.
10. What is your most favourite thing to do on a summery Saturday morning?
Riding my bike along the beach, Kapiti Island anchored in the mirror of sea beside me.
11. In what way might you be a trickster?
I look like a boring old lady, but I have a radical teenage activist boiling away inside!
12. Have you ever been rewarded when looking down the back of the chair?
Sadly, no. But I did once find a perfectly desiccated skink in the corner of my son’s bomb-site bedroom when I finally fought my way in to clean it.
13. A pirate for a mother or a jester for a father?
My mother really was a pirate, fearless in her protection of her ‘crew’, always searching for the treasures in people’s hearts.
14.Would you babysit someone else’s shadow?
I’ve done so several times.
15. “Horrakapotchkin,” said the cat. “I want to write a poem.” Is that how it works for you?
If, by this, you mean that a spark of magic can ignite a creative project, yes, one hundred percent. I can’t express how exhilarating it is to be delivered up these creative sparks.
16: What I like for dinner when I am on my own is… (entertain us)
A good vegetarian pie! As a teen, I loved meat pies, once eating five in a row as a bet. When I stopped eating meat, it was pies I missed. Nothing beats flaky pastry!
17. If you find yourself nose to nose with a shark, the only thing to do is…
Tell him you didn’t vote for him, find his policies cruel and racist, and hope to god he’s exposed as the venal liar and dangerous creep he is. 😊
18. MM: “ If things were fair, all stories would be anonymous… set free from the faults that go with its author’s name.” Would you set your stories free in the name of anonymity?
Publishing in NZ feels a bit like that anyway!
19. You’re at a party and someone finds out what you do. What is the question they invariably ask?
‘What do you write?’, to which I answer, ‘nothing you’ll have heard of.’
20. Who do you go to be entertained by linguistic pyrotechnics? Or entertained by songsense nongs.
Thanks to my grandchildren, I’m often entertained by Dr Suess and his tongue-twisting rhymes.
21. Which way does your heart lie: between the stars or anchored to the trapeze?
Between the stars, in that place of endless possibility.
22. Would you rather be followed home by hippos or giraffes?
Giraffes. How I’d love to see them loping between our big trees.
23. Never mind a baby in the bubble. Would you rather—rice bubbles, bubble gum, Bubble O’Bill ice cream or Michael Bublé?
Bubble gum—nothing more satisfying than blowing a bubble so big that when it pops it shrouds your face!
Mandy Hager
Mandy Hager is a multi-award winning writer of fiction, predominantly for young adults. In 2015 her novel Singing Home the Whale was awarded the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award, and the Best Young Adult fiction Award from the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
May 2017 sees the publication of her historical novel for adults, Heloise, published by Penguin NZ. It tells the life story of Heloise D’Argenteuil, famed lover of 12th century French philosopher Peter Abelard.
(Photo by David Hamilton 2017.)