Karyn Hay is an award-winning novelist. In the distant past she fronted Radio with Pictures and now she is General Manager of the musically adventurous and gratifying KiwiFM. She never wanted a career though and despite her profile, her secret desire is to gather all her belongings in a little bundle on a stick and escape to somewhere quiet to write another novel.
Image: Karyn Hay (with husband Andrew Fagan lurking in her shadow).Karyn Hay is an award-winning novelist. In the distant past she fronted Radio with Pictures and now she is General Manager of the musically adventurous and gratifying KiwiFM. She never wanted a career though and despite her profile, her secret desire is to gather all her belongings in a little bundle on a stick and escape to somewhere quiet to write another novel.
Image: Karyn Hay (with husband Andrew Fagan lurking in her shadow).What's the best time of day for you?
10.30am.

What's your earliest memory of New Zealand music?
My uncle Frank (Hay) when I was about 5 or 6 maybe; he was the bass player in Tauranga band the Four Fours, who later became Human Instinct.

You know a lot about New Zealand music. Why is it so important for New Zealand musicians to do well overseas and is it realistic?
Bigger markets, more recognition, time and space to make music. Realistic? Only if you have the business contacts and - unfortunately in today's 'shelf-life' marketplace - youth on your side.

You have moved from television to novel writing to radio. Which one has the biggest pull for you?
Writing, a million times over.

Which writers do you currently rate?
I've been somewhat disillusioned with my own writing lately (not having the time to pursue it) so I'm fixating on that, rather than anyone else.

Which musicians do you currently rate?
I like anybody quirky and real. I hate 'music by numbers' - fame school stuff.

What's your dream commission?
A five-novel book deal with a rich publishing house, who love everything I do, even my emails.

What aspect of your writing drives you most?
This is very hard to answer in that it's the old 'creative process' reply. I am happiest upon the creation of a sentence that has no flaws (even if it appears that it might do, like this one.) The mastery of the written word so that it seems seamless.

What's the best thing about managing KiwiFM?
Working with some great 'talent'.

KiwiFM has received quite a lot of flak and been subject to misinformation in the media. Is there anything (or anyone) you would like to address right now?
Shit, yes! All those self-serving hacks who just chuck a line out there about KiwiFM with no factual information to back it up, just to make a weeny splash of their own. Those whose 'vested interests' are so glaringly apparent you want to put your sunglasses on.

Where would you like to see KiwiFm in five years time?
Pretty much doing what it's doing now: giving musicians a chance to hear their stuff on the radio, whilst providing radio that tries to have a brain.

Do you see yourself as a global thinker or a details person?
Both actually, which can drive me INSANE (and probably everybody around me, given that I bounce about between the two).

Describe the ways in which your childhood play has influenced how you work as an adult.
I don't give up easily, which may be something instilled in me during childhood.

Which of your projects to date has given you the most satisfaction?
Writing.

If you could go back and choose a completely different career path to the one you've chosen, what would it be?
I've never wanted a career as such.

What's the best way to listen to music, and why?
Unexpectedly. I tend to listen to it 'for work' which is no way to listen to music.

What place is always with you, wherever you go?
Eh?

What are you afraid of regarding the future?
Dying before it's all done.

You are given a piece of string, a stick and some fabric. What do you make?
An old-fashioned bindle to all my worldly possessions in (it's one of those things hobos used to carry their stuff around in) and then I'd run run away (to write books).

What's great about today?
The autumn sun; my boys being happy when they left for school.

Interview by Jacquie Clarke