26 Jun 2022

Clare Moleta discusses her novel Unsheltered at the Verb Readers and Writers Festival 2021

From Smart Talk, 7:05 pm on 26 June 2022

Unsheltered is the riveting story of one mother’s search for her child across a climate-ravaged continent in a dystopian future.

Clare Moleta talks with Pip Adam about her inspirations, the impact of climate change on her world-building, and how parenting can make for good fiction. 

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 Clare Moleta Photo: supplied / Ebony Lamb

Set in a non-existent place that has echoes of the Australian landscape, the story is told from the point of view of Li, a resourceful woman whose eight-year-old daughter Matty goes missing after fire engulfs their camp.

Clare Moleta

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 Clare Moleta Photo: Stan Alley

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Clare Moleta was born in Aotearoa, grew up in Whadjuk Noongar Country in Western Australia and has lived in Pōneke since 2005. Her fiction has been published in literary journals and broadcast on RNZ. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington. Unsheltered is her first novel.

This session was broadcast in association with Verb Wellington