Introduction: Rosetta Allan, Writer

Hello, fellow artists around the globe at this troubled time of COVID-19. I am a writer of fiction, so far, historical fiction. I spent a wonderful time in residence in SPAR back in 2016, where I began my second novel ‘The Unreliable People’. This novel was about the exile of the entire community of Koryo-saram by Stalin in 1937 and the effect the significant intergenerational trauma it caused a young woman in art school in St Petersburg in 1992. Currently, I am writing a novel based in provincial NZ, set in the 80s at a time when a massive change occurred politically that both saved our country from bankruptcy, but also changed the lives of people on the ground. And it is always the people these times affect that I am interested in writing about.

New Zealand is currently in the last of four weeks of lockdown, and our curve has dipped, but not disappeared, so we may be here a little longer. I am a writer, so being shut away from the business of social connection means that I get more work done. I am at home with my husband and adult son with his enormous dog. Walks are a highlight of the day and the treasures we find.

I hope your day is lovely. I look forward to seeing your work and stories here on this virtual space. Thank you once again, SPAR. X