Annaleese Jochems
Born1994 (age 29–30)
Whangārei, New Zealand
Occupation
  • Author
  • bookseller
EducationMA, International Institute of Modern Letters (2016)
Notable worksBaby (2017)

Annaleese Jochems (born 1994) is a New Zealand author and bookseller. Her debut novel Baby (2017) won the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing and the Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Life and career

Jochems was born in Whangārei in 1994, and grew up on a farm in Pakaraka.[1][2] Her father is a beef farmer and her mother is a teacher, and she has two younger brothers.[2] She has said she decided to become a writer when she was 14.[3]

Jochems studied creative writing, first at the Manukau Institute of Technology and subsequently at the International Institute of Modern Letters where she completed a Master of Arts. She was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing in 2016 for her draft manuscript, which was published as Baby by Victoria University Press in 2017.[1]

Baby is about a young woman who steals her father's money and runs away with her female personal trainer; the two purchase a boat named Baby. Jochems has said that the novel was inspired by criticism of Fifty Shades of Grey and a desire to subvert stereotypical gender dynamics, as well as by her inability to find a job and a feeling of being "surplus" to society.[4][2] Fellow New Zealand author Eleanor Catton has described the book as "sultry, sinister, hilarious, and demented".[2] The Guardian described the novel's main character, Cynthia, as "a memorable addition to the growing coterie of unapologetic antiheroines (dis)gracing the pages of contemporary fiction".[5]

In 2018 Baby was shortlisted for the top fiction award at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and received the Hubert Church Award for the best first book.[1][6] It was also longlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime novel.[2] The film rights were acquired by Wild Card Films in 2018, and Scribe published the novel in the UK and United States in 2019.[7][8][9]

In June 2018 Jochems and her mother opened a secondhand bookshop called Book Hound in Newtown.[1][10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Jochems, Annaleese". Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Herkt, David (14 July 2018). "Annaleese Jochems' prize-winning novel Baby was borne from a fruitless job search". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  3. ↑ "Bad baby". Victorious. Spring 2017. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  4. ↑ Cain, Sian (19 September 2019). "Annaleese Jochems: 'I identified with everything that people don't like about 50 Shades'". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  5. ↑ Silcox, Beejay (15 August 2019). "Baby by Annaleese Jochems review – a cabin-fever dream". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  6. ↑ "2018 Awards". New Zealand Book Awards Trust. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  7. ↑ Mansfield, Katie (10 December 2018). "Scribe wins Jochems' debut novel as film rights sold to Wild Card". The Bookseller. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  8. ↑ Gilmartin, Sarah (24 August 2019). "Baby review: Sharing a boat with a memorable psychopath". Irish Times. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  9. ↑ "Baby by Annaleese Jochems". Kirkus Reviews. 15 July 2019. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  10. ↑ Perrott, Alan (25 September 2018). "An ode to the joy and persistence of secondhand bookstores". The Spinoff. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
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