The Great NZ Road Trip: Whanganui author Airini Beautrais finds small-city characters ‘keep you real’

The NZ Herald and editor-at-large Shayne Currie are on a two-week road trip to gauge the mood of the nation and meet everyday and notable Kiwis making a difference in their communities and the wider world. Today Currie visits the Wētā wonderland, in the heart of suburban Miramar, and talks to Sir Richard Taylor about what motivates him. Whanganui Chronicle reporter Eva de Jong catches up with Whanganui author Airini Beautrais (below) and we chat to Lucy Lawless for Nine Questions With...

Whanganui author Airini Beautrais. Photo / Bevan Conley.

Airini Beautrais says Whanganui “keeps you real”.

After taking out some of New Zealand’s top literary prizes, Beautrais could have ventured to bigger centres and closer to peers. But her hometown provides the right kind of inspiration.

“Talking to writers that live in Wellington, I think that sort of bubble happens where you can be surrounded by people who have the same academic background and can be in an echo chamber,” Beautrais says.

“There’s just so many different walks of life here.”

It also means she’s never short of interesting characters and stories. She’s written a book of poetry — Dear Neil Roberts — about the punk rocker who died trying to blow up the Whanganui police computer with a home-made bomb.

Small-city life means constantly bumping into people: “You go for some kind of medical appointment and think, ‘Oh, I know you’.”

Beautrais is a Landfall essay competition winner, and in 2021 took out the coveted fiction prize at the Ockham New Zealand book awards for Bug Week — her collection of short stories.

“After that, I felt like I kind of had to hide for a little bit. It was really strange,” she says.

But she hasn’t stopped writing. Her next book is in its final stages of proofreading before publication and is a series of personal and political essays.

Beautrais felt Whanganui was a hotbed for the tension brought about by the Covid response, with many members of families boarding buses to join the anti-mandate protests at Parliament.

“I don’t feel super-optimistic for what the next three years are going to look like, in terms of things like race relations and inequality, because the Government we’ve ended up with has run a campaign on trying to stir up latent racism or anti-beneficiary sentiment.”

Whanganui still had a long way to go when it came to biculturalism, Beautrais said.

“The colonial history of Whanganui - stuff happened that was pretty awful, and the wounds from that time are still present.”

Making the leap into non-fiction is scary and makes her feel “very naked”, but she wants to explore her ideas without the distance fiction offers authors.

Whanganui writer Airini Beautrais winning the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

“When you write fiction, it’s like you’ve got a mask on. You can always take a step back and say, ‘I’m making up these characters’, whereas as soon as you put that non-fiction genre label on something, it becomes true.”

She’s had to run some of the content in the book past family members, but says they’re very supportive.

In the essays, she deals with navigating spiritual beliefs and her upbringing in a Quaker community in Whanganui.

Beautrais’ house was one of 20 in a communal plot, which meant there were always neighbours knocking on the door. It taught her a lot about other people and their dynamics.

“You have to talk as a group until you reach an agreement, for anything, whether it’s where to plant or tree or what colour to paint a house, and that could take a really long time and be frustrating.”

But it did give her hope for humanity, the fact that people could co-exist in such a way, and the commitment of Quakerism to non-violence and pacifism.

It also means she’s never seen her parents drunk.

“There was no alcohol at any of the community functions, and I don’t think I realised until I was an adult that’s quite different to how a lot of people grow up.”

• Shayne Currie is travelling the country on the Herald’s Great New Zealand Road Trip. Read the full series here.

The Great New Zealand Road Trip heads to Palmerston North later today.

Receiving the Ockham has made her realise she’s not that relaxed about success.

“I guess it’s a New Zealand sort of cultural thing, that you don’t want to stick out, or you don’t want to put your head above the parapet.”

Beautrais is also a science teacher at UCOL Te Pūkenga and the mother of two boys.

Eva de Jong is a reporter for the Whanganui Chronicle covering health stories and general news.