Award-winning Southland author's Invercargill book launch
Oh, to be twelve and reading Spark Hunter and its sequel, The Secret Green for the first time.
The Secret Green: Book Launch & Q&A with author Sonya Wilson.
Saturday July 5, 4-6pm at the Invercargill Public Library.
Louise Evans is hosting a Q&A with award winning author (and Southlander) Sonya Wilson in Invercargill on Saturday about Sonya’s latest young adult fiction, The Secret Green. Everyone is welcome.
Oh, to be twelve right now.
To be one of the lucky ones: packing a bag of thermals and DEET and snakes you’ll definitely eat before you reach Manapouri.
To be nervously excited, trying not to show it.
To be heading into Deep Cove with a class full of loud, awkward, brilliant humans, not knowing who you’ll be, away from the classroom, on the edge of everything.
To reach the top of Wilmot Pass and feel your breath catch,
To see the sound snake through the mountains like it’s trying to slip away unseen.
To watch waterfalls fall from the sky like they come from somewhere else entirely.
To wake up to mist, thick and heavy, right down to the water, the bush climbing straight out of it like a scene from Jurassic Park.
To feel small, and insignificant, and also like you might need to change the world.
To be sliding down a muddy track with your arms full of firewood and your head full of stories.
To be fighting the namunamu and spotting weka and sneaking extra baking when no one’s looking.
To be laughing at things that aren’t really funny. To be tired in your bones, but still not wanting the day to end.
To spend any alone time lost in a book.
To read late with a torch, even though you’ve been told to turn it off. To wander far without ever leaving the bunk room.
And oh, to be twelve and reading Spark Hunter and its sequel, The Secret Green for the first time.
Not as an adult, who notices craft.
But as a kid, who notices everything.
To read them in the place where the story lives: in the real bush, with the real rain, in the shadows that shift when you’re not looking.
To feel that maybe, just maybe, there is something out there.
Something flickering just out of sight. Something in the bush watching back.
If you’re 12 right now, I am wildly jealous of you.
You get the book and the bush, and all the wonder in between.
If you’re not 12, but you remember, join us. I have the absolute privilege of hosting a Q&A with award winning author (and Southlander) Sonya Wilson about her latest young adult fiction, The Secret Green.
All welcome. Especially the green and curious.