Time out for a big kids' book

By CATHERINE MASTERS

One of New Zealand's best-known children's authors has her sights set on writing an adult novel, and hopes a historic villa in southern France will be the place in which to do it.

Tessa Duder, author of 30 books, is this year's winner of one of New Zealand's top literary awards, the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship.

It will give her six months at Villa Isola Bella at Menton in southern France on the border with Italy.

The villa was Katherine Mansfield's favourite working place.

Duder has been rereading Mansfield biographies and her letters and journals.

"The voice is so strong and so clear after all these years. To be even remotely connected with still our greatest writer is just a huge honour."

Mansfield sets a standard to which all New Zealand writers aspire, she says.

But Menton has even more significance for Duder.

She has roots in France and Italy.

Last year, she travelled to Livorno on the Italian coast to research that side of the family's history, then wrote a book about it - In Search of Elisa Marchetti , her great-grandmother's maiden name.

Duder has written mainly for children, and has also published short stories and anthologies.

But she has never ventured into adult novels and thinks this may be partly why she was awarded the fellowship.

One of the criteria is to give people an opportunity to cross into another genre.

"In my application I said I wanted to have a crack at an adult novel."

She knows what it is going to be about but is not saying - authors do not like to talk about works in progress.

"Somehow it seems that if you talk about something, you take the emotional edge off it and the compulsion to get it out and on to a piece of paper."

She will have a busy time at home in Auckland finishing two books before she goes to Menton in April.

She passed through the village a year ago when she was on her way to Livorno.

She remembers looking up at the houses built high into the craggy rocks and thinking "well, it's probably an impossible dream ... "