Bay writer Cristina Sanders finalist for $64,000 prize package

Havelock North writer Cristina Sanders has been selected as a finalist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for her novel Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant. Photo / Supplied

A finalist in one of New Zealand’s richest writing prizes says when she found out the news she panicked a bit and “drank a bit of wine”.

Havelock North writer Cristina Sanders has been selected as a finalist in the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction category for her novel Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant, in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. This year’s winner will take home $64,000.

“I was a bit bewildered when I found out. I feel like the new kid on the block — it’s very exciting,” Sanders said.

“I’ve had such a great response to the news, I’ve never been so popular,” she laughed.

Sanders said Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant has been several years in the making.

It came about after Sanders learned about the General Grant, which sank off the Auckland Island’s western shore in 1866. The five survivors were cast away for months.

“I thought a shipwreck story was a great opportunity. I only had a cast of 15 people so it was difficult. But I had Mrs Jewel and her husband along with a mixture of miners and sailors.

“Imagine a Victorian woman who had been taught to be demure and modest in her fine frocks being thrown into an incredible situation like that. She is also the only woman on the island.”

Stephanie Johnson, judges’ convener for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, had this to say about Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant: “Based on the true story of an 1866 shipwreck, this retelling of the endurance of the survivors on a sub-Antarctic island is impeccably researched and peopled by rounded, realistic and complex characters. Dramatic and well-paced, it is rich with vivid descriptions of sea, land and weather and Cristina Sanders offers insight into the physical and psychological effects of being stranded in an inhospitable environment. Historical fiction at its best.”

Sanders is no stranger to winning awards for her historical novels. Her first novel Jerningham, about Jerningham Wakefield and the recklessness of colonial New Zealand, was shortlisted for the NZ Heritage Literary Awards.

In 2020 she won the Storylines Tessa Duder Award for an unpublished YA manuscript, with a novel about immigrant families in the 1870s. This became Displaced which was shortlisted for the NZ Heritage Literary Awards and was a finalist in NZCYA.

Sanders will be releasing the sequel to Displaced later this year.

She says she has had some great feedback from her latest novel.

“It’s got a bit of a fan base. There have been lots of great reviews. They like the whale blubber and dysentery,”

Sanders has a fantastic sense of humour which had me chuckling my way through our chat.

She says the book community in Hawke’s Bay is really supportive of each other.

In her spare time, she crews for Spirit of New Zealand and sits in the riggings plotting her next novel.

The 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards winners, including four Best First Book Awards recipients which are this year supported by the Mātātuhi Foundation, will be announced at a public ceremony on May 17 during the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.