University of Kent Creative Writing (Paris) graduate Tom Baragwanath‘s crime novel Paper Cage has been published in Australia and New Zealand by Text Publishing. Winner of the 2021 Michael Gifkins Prize, the book is scheduled to be released by Anchor in the United States (2023) and by Baskerville in the United Kingdom (2024).
University of Kent staff spoke to Tom about his new book and how his time at Kent’s Paris School helped shape his novel.
Why did you choose to write this book? I wanted to write something set in my hometown of Masterton, New Zealand, which is so very different from where I’m living now, in Paris. Being in a city with a lot of bustle and action, and a city that is all too present within the global consciousness, I felt drawn to sketching the quieter, less seen parts of the world, and celebrating the smaller stories that exist there – stories which in reality aren’t so small at all. Beyond that, I just wanted to spend time with characters that were familiar to me, both real and invented. During the COVID lockdown, it was also the cheapest form of travel – mental travel, in any case.
Paper Cage…concerns a series of child abductions in small-town New Zealand, and one woman’s efforts to balance her loyalties to her family and community against her obligations to the state. Living in Paris, I found myself thinking often of the Wairarapa region in New Zealand, which is my home, and where the novel is set. There is a certain gorgeous emptiness there, and working on this story was a chance to experience that environment every day.
How have you felt since its publication? It’s all rather surreal, seeing the book in people’s hands and knowing they’re engaging with the story. I’m sure this is a feeling common to novice writers, but it’s been more than a year since I finished the book, and it almost feels like someone else wrote it. Hearing reactions from friends, family, and strangers about the story and particular scenes has been a real thrill – though my stepfather was quick to point out a typo he found on page 173.
How did the MA in Creative Writing help with this particular book? I wouldn’t have been able to think through what I really wanted to achieve with this story without having the rigorous classroom environment of the creative writing MA. There were so many potential directions this story could have gone, and being able to check in with a steady group of attentive and talented readers and writers each week really helped me to refine the voice of the book and understand how it was coming across to my intended audience. It also made me understand how much local slang an international audience might be willing to tolerate.
The guidance and feedback from my teachers and fellow students during my year at Kent helped me to test and refine new ideas and approaches to my characters, and to find the confidence I needed to tell this story.
The University of Kent is incredibly proud of Tom’s achievements and we offer him our heartfelt congratulations!
