![]() I’ve always been firmly in the camp that reading is reading, and it doesn’t matter what you’re reading, as long as you’re doing it. ![]() I read poetry and non-fiction, literary fiction and chick lit, biographies, science writing, nature writing, graphic novels. I read my way through high school then headed to university to study English Literature, where I discovered and developed a love for New Zealand, Māori and Pacific literatures. At home I scoured our ample bookshelves, taking in Noel Streatfeild, Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories, illustrated children’s encyclopaedias, and memorising multiple poems from A.A. I worked my way through the catalogues of Roald Dahl, Maurice Gee, Judy Blume, Paul Jennings and Ann M. After school I’d go to the library and stock up on books each day before catching the bus home. Apparently I could already read when I started primary school, where I then spent years joining the older classes when it came time for reading. ![]() I was teaching a workshop at a Writers Retreat recently when one of the participants asked me: “Would you say that smut is your slam dunk?” This sentence sounds absolutely bonkers out of context, so let me rewind for you and let you know how it came about. ![]() ![]() Gem Wilder tracks her personal history of reading: from Dahl, Blume and Gee, to an English Lit degree, to the unabashed joys of smut. ![]()
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