Alice Fairley
Alice Fairley is a novelist and poet based in Whangārei, New Zealand. She has a diploma in applied writing from NorthTec Tai Tokerau Wānanga as well as an MA in classical studies from Victoria University of Wellington, where she also studied Latin and ancient Greek. Her work has been published in various places in print and online, including Australian Poetry Journal, Turbine | Kapohau, Tarot Poetry Journal, The Otago Daily Times and more. Yellow Flower is her first novel.
Do you try more to be original, or to deliver to readers what they want?
I try to write the stories I personally want to read, and hope that others want to read them too. Originality is nice, but I don’t put it front and centre. Of course, I don’t want to copy anyone else, but I love when a story riffs off other stories that came before it. Some stories never get old, no matter how many times they’re told.
What was the first book that made you cry?
Maybe not the first, but the first one I remember—John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. I read it when I was 18. Started crying 1/3 of the way through and didn’t stop until the very end.
Are there any secrets in your books that only a few people will find? Can you tell us one? Or give us any hints?
Not a secret exactly, but a few of the characters in Yellow Flower are real historical people. I’ll let you figure out which ones…
How did publishing your first book change your writing process?
I now plan everything out in much more detail than I ever used to. Yellow Flower is the first book I’ve taken beyond the first draft stage all the way to publication, and I realised how much persistence and discipline is required to get a book from an idea to draft 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc until it’s actually decent enough to be read by others. With my next book, I was able to write the first draft relatively quickly because I know it’s only the first stage—the real hard work is now, when I have to return and gut the whole thing to turn it into something worthwhile.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters of the opposite sex?
Actually, for reasons I’m still not sure I completely understand, I find writing male characters much easier. Writing female characters is tricky—I feel that there is more at stake. How a writer portrays their female characters often seems to mean something. Is she too waif-like? Is she too “strong”? There are so many stereotyping traps to fall into. I have high standards for female characters in books, and I’m frequently disappointed.
But when they’re done right (to my mind), with the perfect blend of strength, vulnerability and development, I can never forget them. Lyra Silvertongue, Sabriel, Canny from Mortal Fire, Cassandra from I Capture the Castle, to name a few. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that those are all YA novels!