The Devonport Flagstaff Page 18
Interview
March 11, 2022
Former US newspaperman wins local literary acclaim Bryan Walpert’s Entanglement has just been shortlisted as one of four fiction finalists in the Ockham Book Awards. He talks to Helen Vause about his journey in literature.
Write stuff... As a creative-writing teacher, Bryan Walpert stresses the need to take criticism on board When he was a gutsy and dogged young reporter bailed up in a phone box by a couple of approaching villains, poetry and novels were a long way from Bryan Walpert’s mind. The recent graduate was every bit the young newspaperman, with a lust for nailing a great story and getting it into print fast. Back then, that was the way words worked for him. Decades and many stories later, American-born-and-educated Walpert is a university professor living in Devonport with a couple of teenagers at Takapuna Grammar School. And now, when the Flagstaff talked
to him, excited and delighted to have his novel Entanglement in the shortlist of four in the fiction category of the Ockhams, the country’s premier literary awards. “It’s a real honour,” says the modest professor who teaches creative writing at Massey University’s Albany Campus. “I had no expectation but every writer has a hope.” Walpert’s time-travel novel has had enthusiastic reviews since its publication at the start of summer. When the awards shortlist was announced last week, Rob Kidd, convenor of the judges for the category, called the book: “Dazzlingly intelligent
and ambitious in scope.” Walpert’s tertiary education began in Rhode Island, at Brown University, where he saw himself preparing for a career in media by studying international relations. As a young graduate, he first found work in community newspapers and then moved into the more specialised world of business journalism. The reporter’s life saw him chasing after good guys and bad, asking the tricky questions in the very competitive quest for good copy. “At the time, I loved it.” But as he crept up the ranks as an editor
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