01-08-2025
‘Even when I hate it, I love it': Rachael Craw and Hannah Marshall in conversation
Writers Rachael Craw (The Lost Saint) and Hannah Marshall (It's a Bit More Complicated Than That) discuss AI, teaching teenagers, and snobbery around writing for children and young adults.
Rachael Craw: Hi Hannah, I get a little thrill when I go into the bookstore and see your lovely bright yellow cover with my blurb at the top. It makes me feel fancy! How does it feel seeing your name on a book cover for the first time?
Hannah Marshall: It's a bit strange seeing my name in print. I feel like I'm harbouring some kind of secret when I'm in a bookstore full of people and my book is right there and nobody knows it's mine. You, on the other hand, are a veteran writer, with five books now to your name. Do you find that writing novels gets easier over time?
RC: Oooh, yes, it is such a funny, secret feeling! No, it hasn't gotten easier for me at all. HA! Soz. I always find writing hard. I love it. Even when I hate it, I love it – but I almost never find it easy. I don't think I have a very orderly brain. I do love seeing my book on a shelf though!
Did you always know you would write a young adult (YA) novel?
HM: I can hard relate to the love-hate aspect of writing. It's so frustrating, and most of my writing process is scribbling down problems on a whiteboard, staring out my window in dismay, and stress-watching YouTube shorts when the story feels too impossible to fix. And yet it's my favourite thing to do in the world. It makes no sense.
I didn't necessarily intend to write for the YA market, but it naturally slot in there since I was a teenager myself when I wrote the book – the characters were teenagers going through the same teenage problems and joys and dilemmas that I was.
It's a little bit disheartening seeing how much harder it is to get YA taken seriously. Do you feel like writing YA is a losing battle? YA is a harder sell, and I've definitely noticed just how much less coverage YA books and authors get over those who write for adults. There are also some pretty patronising views about those writing for younger audiences held by some big names in the NZ literary world (anyone who's read the Surrey Hotel writers residency pitch will know what I mean).
What motivates you to keep writing YA when the environment can feel so discouraging?
RC: (Cue manic cackling) Indeed. Literary snobbery is alive and well. People are well entitled to like what they like but the snide can get in the bin. Firstly, massive respect and admiration for you, writing a whole bloody novel as a teenager!
I do think YA and children's books are given little credit by the fancy higher ups but I really can't be arsed giving that sort of nonsense attitude the time of day. I love writing for teens. It's joyous. Even writing hard, difficult things! But I don't know that I am always thinking about writing for teens – I just go with the voice that presents itself in the world of the story. My current WIP is an adult horror.
For The Lost Saint, I knew I wanted to take a heartbroken character on an adventure and I just drew on my first devastating heartbreak (I was tragically dumped) to inspire the voice.
Your Zelle goes through a dumping! Did you find it hard to write her experience with disappointing romance?
HM: It was a little bit hard. I think the worst part of being dumped is that it almost feels like a loss of your dignity – you feel safe and secure and happy and then suddenly someone just takes that from you. It's brutal, especially when you're young and experiencing that pain for the first time. Heartbreak can really shatter your confidence. I felt really bad putting Zelle through that! I guess as Hemingway (supposedly) said, writing is just letting yourself bleed.
I do find it a bit jarring, though, when people ask me about the aspects of my own life that have informed my writing, especially with the trickier issues in the novel like alcohol abuse.
How do you maintain that boundary between the personal and the fictional?
RC: I think it's a gift you give to others, sharing that pain because it gives people permission to be vulnerable. However, for yourself as a public author, you don't owe people anything you don't want to share. Keeping healthy boundaries is very important. It can be handy to pre-prepare some diplomatic responses to inevitable inquiries.
I think writing can be a lot like method acting. You're trying to reach authentic emotion and truth in the words and actions of your characters. It can feel mighty raw sometimes.
In It's a Bit More Complicated Than That, Zelle's friendship with Callum is the heartbeat of the story. I really appreciated the way you explored a complex platonic relationship. My dear sister-in-law invokes the saying: 'Friends for a reason, friends for a season, friends for life.' Which I always loved! It's like giving yourself permission to move on, or let certain relationships go because your worlds no longer intersect. But then there are people who you can always come back to because the bonds are deep and essential. Is that the nature of Zelle's friendship with Callum? Friends for life?
HM: I hope so! I think their friendship is super layered because it's not just that they get along and have fun together, but they also have a lot of shared pain, and they have to help each other. I think going through such major challenges with a friend bonds you for life, even if you do eventually lose contact, because those experiences are extremely formative.
I partly wrote the novel to resist that kind of toxic positivity mindset that had such a huge hold on popular culture while I was at uni: the idea that you shouldn't maintain connection with someone who 'doesn't serve your needs' or whatever. I feel like that mindset basically encourages giving up on a friendship when the going gets tough or you're forced to step up a bit. I think that's so harmful. I know some people will probably think Callum should cut Zelle loose because she's so messy – but their love for each other runs deeper than that.
RC: Something I thought about a lot while reading your novel was the power of forgiveness. I noted often amongst my students how sad it was when they would bust up over an offence and then cut their 'bestie' out of their lives, and treat them like a stranger because forgiveness was seen as weakness. I would sometimes have conversations with students navigating friendship implosions and say – this person has been your closest confidante for this many years and that's it? One strike and they're out?! Okay, I'm missing complexities and I'm not talking about putting up with being repeatedly used/abused but being willing to forgive and move forward can actually deepen a friendship.
For Callum and Zelle there's a whole lot of forgiveness needed all over! Zelle has to learn to forgive herself, right? In The Lost Saint, Ana's hurt, humiliation and resentment towards her ex is buried deep behind a brittle facade of indifference – but it's all just self protection. How would you describe Callum or Zelle's masks?
HM: I wanted to show two people harbouring the same hurt but hiding behind it in very different ways – Callum is very internal and tends to shut down, whilst Zelle is very much the opposite, impulsive and destructive. They need to forgive not only each other but also themselves. Self-forgiveness is probably one of the hardest things you ever have to do; confronting your mistakes and shame and guilt whilst also letting yourself believe you deserve self-love. I still struggle with that.
We both work in high school education, so we both know our audiences very well. I don't know how I feel about all the moral panic that kids these days are getting 'dumber' and losing their ability to focus, especially when it comes to reading.
What are your reckons about the state of the modern teenage psyche?
RC: Hmmm, I sometimes feel very glum about it. I am reaching the Crone end of the spectrum. When I started teaching in the late 90s I could generally expect my junior classes could read a novel by themselves and write, with guidance and scaffolding, for themselves. There might be some cases where kids needed extra support with different learning needs or disabilities. Now, I have to read the whole novel to the class – which I don't mind because I love reading aloud and I'm really good at it and should be a voice actor for sure. HA! I only have a handful of students who read ahead and finish it themselves. And for many of them – hearing that novel will be the only book they read all year. It makes me really sad.
Then there's the joy of marking 30 essays and having to check them for AI use which takes ages and of course you can't really be sure and it's so so depressing how much is simply generated by bots. Like crushingly depressing.
Oh no, I'm going to get on my soapbox now. But the thing that makes me so, so sad is how easily we abandon process for the sake of speed and 'efficiency'. We are losing something so integral to our humanity. It's the ultimate capitalist scheme to make us consumers. The first thing to suffer is the arts. We are eating our own faces and the bots keep us quiet and compliant and we give away our spark and let the Zuckerbergs and Musks pillage it all, grind it up and sell us a facsimile of 'spark'.
HM: I can't even talk about AI to my students because it makes me SO ANGRY and I cannot have a rational discussion about it. I am naively hopeful that in a world increasingly saturated by AI, human-made art will increase in value. Like, I watched this influencer go crazy about a tiny business in Italy that's been making leather sandals by hand for hundreds of years. I think people will always appreciate a book written by a person who slogged through years of research, drafts and edits more than some slop regurgitated in five seconds by ChatGPT.
RC: Gosh, I hope you're right. I worry that 'real' art will become more and more separated from the people. Like only the rich will be able to afford it and the common folk are left with the mass-produced dross – like an extreme version of what is already happening.
HM: This has turned very existential very quickly.
RC: That's because we are very deep and erudite YA authors.
HM: That's so true. People who don't take YA seriously have clearly not read this interview.
RC: This will change everything. The literati will come running. *sits back and waits for invitations to literary soirees*
The Lost Saint by Rachael Craw ($30, Allen & Unwin) and It's a Bit More Complicated Than That by Hannah Marshall ($25, Allen & Unwin) are both available to purchase at Unity Books. Rachael Craw will appear at WORD Christchurch in an event called 'The Romance of Fantasy' on August 31.
