Exclusive interview: Jacinda Ardern on her book, crises & regrets
Former prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern returns to the New Zealand spotlight this month to talk about her best-selling memoir, A Different Kind of Power. The book, part-written while she was living in the United States and working at Harvard University, is one of four finalists in the general nonfiction section of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, which will be announced during the Auckland Writers Festival in May, where Ardern will appear.
But first, the now Sydney-based Ardern will be a guest of both Verb Wellington (on April 15) and the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival (April 16), where she’ll appear with old friend and former deputy Grant Robertson.
A Different Kind of Power is also about to published as What If You Could, described by publisher Penguin as a “guide for young readers on chasing your dreams and embracing the unexpected qualities that truly make a person strong”. It has been adapted by former Clinton White House staffer Ruby Shamir, who specialises in editing adult non-fiction bestsellers for younger readers. It follows Ardern’s first children book, Mum’s Busy Work, released last September.
Ardern says when she wrote her memoir, she told a friend that, in part, it was aimed at her 14-year-old self. What If You Could will be released on June 2.
Ahead of her visit, Ardern responded by email to the Listener’s questions.
Many famous memoirs have a ghost writer helping to shape the content. Were you confident about going alone and sorting out the structure yourself?
Confident probably isn’t the right word. I would say I went from denial (I didn’t think I should write a book at all) to defiance (if I was going to write one, I was going to do it myself). But my experience with writing came in the form of speech writing, which I quickly learnt is such a different craft. With the spoken word, you have the ability to create emphasis with a pause or convey emotion with tone. Suddenly I was having to learn how to do that through text alone. That’s why I am so grateful to Ali Benjamin, who I have called a teacher, editor and coach. An overseas editor I worked with told me very early on that a memoir “should be chronological unless there is a good reason for it not to be”. That certainly made the structure of the book much easier to grapple with.
How did you cope with the switch from political communications to book-writing?
It felt different to anything I had done before: it was both personal, and at times, lonely. You’re calling on your own memory and experience for the most part, whereas communication projects are often something widely socialised. There were a few tactics from my own world I brought with me. When I wrote speeches, I always read them aloud before delivering them, to sense-check my work. So I started a habit of reading every chapter aloud before submitting it to the editors, and when the first draft was completed. That second-to-last read-through actually gave rise to a whole set of new pages when I realised how heavy some of the text in the middle was becoming. It needed to be broken up, even if it was 1am when I discovered it.
Are you a reader of political biographies and memoirs? Were there any that inspired you?