JCL (Jenny) Purchase is a senior secondary teacher of English, French, and ESOL, but has also taught an eclectic range of subjects in the tertiary sector. Possessing extensive academic and business writing experience, since completing a master’s degree in creative writing at AUT in 2010, and a further Post-Graduate Diploma in Communication Studies in 2011, she has branched increasingly into fiction, scriptwriting, reviewing, and article writing. Some of her work has been published in journals, publications, anthologies, and online, and in 2022, she released a collection of short stories, Transit Lounge. Jenny talks to NZ Booklovers about Rere Takitahi / Flying Solo.
Tell us a little about the anthology RERE TAKITAHI/FLYING SOLO.
Rere Takitahi Flying Solo is a multi-genre anthology that focuses on the topic of single parenting and alternatively structured families in Aotearoa New Zealand. It includes the work of fifty writers of all ages and ethnicities — new, emerging, established, and veteran — who have contributed short fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, reportage and even song lyrics on the subject. The book is accompanied by an introduction by well-known demographer Professor Paul Spoonley, in which he discusses why this book is a meaningful contribution to contemporary social and cultural discourse.
What inspired you to begin this collection?
As with many things in life, it grew out of personal experience. I arrived in New Zealand in 1998 with three young children and four suitcases, a solo mother fleeing a traumatic past and seeking a brighter future for my young family. Later, I co-parented my children with a partner who was not their biological father. Navigating these experiences afforded me personal insight into the challenges and rewards of solo parenting and being part of a non-traditional family.
What finally prompted me to put the anthology together was a growing awareness that non-traditional families no longer make up a small minority on the fringes of society but are a rapidly growing sector that is becoming increasingly mainstream. Professor Spoonley’s research corroborates this fact and discusses it in the anthology’s introduction, where he describes how varied and diverse the modern family has become.
I was also aware that themed anthologies had become very popular in the New Zealand book market in recent years and knew that this topic hadn’t yet been explored, so I believed that an anthology on this subject would fulfil a cultural and social need.
My fellow editor, Angela Woolf, was also a solo parent before she, too, went on to form a blended family. This was the reason I invited her to assist me in this project, aside from the fact that she has excellent editing, design, and planning skills.
How did you choose the contributors?
I advertised through the NZ Society of Authors and other writers’ groups, as well as at universities and polytechnics, and approached community groups made up of solo parents or grandparents raising grandchildren. I also actively began to solicit work from writers I knew to be solo parents or members of differently structured families. In addition, I searched for relevant and suitable material in previously published work and online. Something that worried me all along was how I would turn people down if their work wasn’t on topic or up to scratch, but fortunately, we were able to include everyone who submitted, save for a few who decided to withdraw for personal reasons.
What was your process when collating and editing this book?
The quality of submissions was generally excellent, although some needed varying degrees of editorial input. However, in those cases, the content justified putting in the work, in collaboration with the author, to bring their submission up to publication standard. Hundreds of emails went backwards and forwards as we liaised with the submitters and sought permissions for previously published material.
Last year we ran a Boosted campaign to raise funds to pay our authors an honorarium and cover the cost of gifting them each a copy of the book. We also researched the publication process and eventually decided to self-publish, creating Olearia Press to do so.
The final pieces then needed formatting, with each writer’s biography included as an accompaniment to their writing. Deciding the order of contents was tricky as we realised we needed to vary the tone of the book across its length and diversity of genres.
It took a year of intensive work to finally get everything in place, ready for publication; the book is pretty comprehensive at 120,000 words and almost 350 pages.
There is no shortage of material, and we could have continued indefinitely adding more, but late last year, we decided to call a halt and begin preparing to move into the publication phase. This took a few more months as we progressed through the proofreading, design, printing, launching, and marketing stages of publication. We have joked about perhaps putting together a Volume II, but we’ll first need to take a well-earned break!
Can you tell us about your own writing that is included in the book?
I have included three pieces that originally appeared in my collection of short stories, Transit Lounge, published by Lasavia Publishing in December 2022. One is a creative non-fiction piece titled ‘The Journey,’ about my family arriving in New Zealand. The other two are short stories which focus on non-family/surrogate parents stepping in to raise children who have been neglected or orphaned. This is another kind of ‘alternative family’ situation about which we sadly, and all too often, hear negative stories; yet there are many caring people out there who step in to rescue and support at risk children and do an exemplary job of it. (I was pleased to be able to give these stories another airing as my collection was not properly marketed at the time — it came out just before Christmas and missed being reviewed by mainstream media. And then, of course, nothing happens in January, so it never received the exposure it deserved, even though it later went on to receive some good reviews.)
If a soundtrack were made to accompany this book, name a song or two you would include.
‘We Are Family’ by Sister Sledge
‘Grandma’s Hands’ by Bill Withers
‘Teach Your Children’ by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young
‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ by Harry Chapin
‘Hey Jude’ by The Beatles
‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ by The Hollies
‘Living On a Prayer’ by Jon Bovi
‘Daughters’ by John Mayer
‘Blended Family (What You Do For Love)’ by Alicia Keys
What did you enjoy the most about organising this anthology?
The most rewarding part about putting together this anthology was giving a voice to those who have suffered through extremely challenging situations and survived to tell the tale. As an educator, my goal has always been to encourage others to develop their innate abilities and grow their self-confidence (I am a senior secondary English and French teacher by profession, although I have also taught a variety of courses at tertiary level). I have really enjoyed watching the many new and emerging writers who are published in this book take a great leap forward through sharing their personal stories or creative responses to the subject. This will have a positive and lasting impact on their lives and their well-being going forward.
It has also been extremely rewarding providing an alternative publishing route for well-known New Zealand authors who, sadly, lack opportunities. We have an incredible depth and range of talent in this country, not only in creative writing, but in music, art, and theatre. Yet, as is widely acknowledged, there is a dearth of funding and lack of opportunities to adequately promote and support that talent.
What did you do to celebrate finishing this book?
We held five launches across the country in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Timaru, and Dunedin during launch week, the first week of July. Being Matariki, it was an ideal time to reflect on the path to publication and to push this pukapuka out of the nest and into the world. These launches were well attended by our writers, their families, friends, and supporters, and the general public.
After speeches introducing the anthology and thanking all those involved, our writers read from their work, and then we mixed and mingled, celebrating what had been achieved. The launch trip was a real high point for Angela and me as we hadn’t yet met all our authors — holding multiple launches across the country gave us an opportunity to do so, and to celebrate the enduring relationships formed during the process of creating the anthology.
For interested readers we have a Facebook page ‘Flying Solo Rere Takitahi Anthology’ where there are loads of photos, extracts from the book, and links to reviews and interviews:
What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?
I haven’t read many notable books as I’ve been so busy working on Rere Takitahi Flying Solo. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading, however, because I’m one of those people who panic when they don’t have a pile of reading material, so I’ve got through a lot of ‘quick and easy’ novels and short stories.
But over the summer I took a couple of weeks off and read the Wolf Hall trilogy back to back in the wake of Hilary Mantel’s tragic and untimely death. In fact, I should say I devoured it – it was so compelling I spent days on end doing hardly anything else other than reading. I was absolutely enthralled. She is certainly a brilliant storyteller and a consummate stylist. Since I have been working (in the background and for quite some time!) on an epic novel with multiple characters in a unique and complicated historical setting, the trilogy was the perfect inspiration for how to conjure up a different time with multiple characters and storylines, and loads of political intrigue.
What’s next on the agenda for you?
As mentioned above, I have been working for a number of years now on an epic historical novel with a large cast of characters set in 1930s pre-apartheid South Africa. I also continue to regularly produce short stories, and hope to soon have enough to publish a second collection. I am also compiling an autobiographical/philosophical collection of vignettes about my life and times. And, as mentioned above, there may well be a second volume of Rere Takitahi Flying Solo in the near future to add to the workload! In addition, Olearia Press has been approached by a few writers seeking publication since Rere Takitahi Flying Solo was launched. If money was no object and I had all the time in the world, I would say “YES” to all of them!
Olearia Press
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