THINGS I LEARNED AT ART SCHOOL

FQ caught up with Wellington-based writer Megan Dunn on the release of her second book, a part memoir, part coming-of-age essay collection on life in Aotearoa in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.

Q: You consider yourself a cross between Fran Lebowitz and Anne of Green Gables. Can you elaborate on this observation? A: Well, I was kiddin’. If you crossed Fran and Anne, I reckon you’d get a wisecracking redhead who can write a mean joke and is urbane, but not that urbane. I said I was like Fran crossed with Anne via Huntly. I don’t think you could put Fran in Huntly, though god knows I’d watch the Netflix documentary if someone did!

Q: You’ve previously written about mermaids, art and bookselling. What was it like to change tack and write about your own life?

A: Mermaids, art and bookselling are my life! If a subject doesn’t have me in it, I won’t touch it. I tried for years to write

novels about other people, but no one wanted to read them, and I often couldn’t finish them either. Now, I write about being Fran Lebowitz crossed with Anne of

Green Gables, and I’m in Fashion Quarterly! You can’t make this stuff up.

Q: What’s something you learned through writing this book?

A: Lots of people love their mothers. Including me. Art is deep and pre-verbal. It is a place where you can wrestle with the irreconcilable sides of your nature and with existence itself. I learned that so much of my childhood has stayed with me, and it shocked me that humble little plaques like The Prayer of Serenity, which was on the wall of my family home, still mean so much to me. A sentence from childhood can stick in your mind forever, waiting to be transformed into a story. Like my piece ‘Desiderata with Reverb’ on page 284, which begins, “I’m not sure this is going to go placidly…” Life doesn’t go placidly!

For more from Dunn, including her advice for those thinking of going to or still studying at art school, read the full Q&A online at FQ.co.nz.