Writing is what Joan Rosier-Jones does. When she's not writing, she's teaching others to write or keeping busy with all things literary.
Sooner or later she had to write Literary Whanganui: A Reader's Guide. It took years, but now she has and next month it will be launched.
Published by Tangerine, Literary Whanganui is a collection of articles about writers with strong Whanganui associations. Many lived and wrote here at some part of their lives, and many still do. Others found inspiration here or became part of the Whanganui writing community in some other way. Mark Twain warrants a mention, even if only some of what he wrote about the town was complimentary.
Others include one-time Listener editor Ian Cross, author of The God Boy. Ian grew up in Castlecliff. Robin Hyde, alias Iris Wilkinson, came here in the 1920s to work on the Wanganui Chronicle. James K Baxter walked Whanganui streets while living upriver at Jerusalem. He wrote beautiful poetry while he was here.
The book is filled with the stories of people who enriched this community with their writing. With each name is an address or location, a place where they lived or wrote, or had some connection.
"I had to put people somewhere and that was a difficulty."
Joan has created three fold-out maps on which are located places for people to visit and see where their favourite authors lived or worked. For example, Charlotte Warburton (1883-1961), who wrote Wanganui River, the Rhine of New Zealand, spent a lot of time sailing on the Wairua. The Wairua, then, is her mark on the map.
