Nine To Noon Ingrid Horrocks takes top fiction prize with All Her Lives
May 13, 2026
Ingrid Horrocks, a writer and scholar who researches figures like Mary Wollstonecraft, discusses her prize-winning short story collection All Her Lives. She talks about linking nine women's lives across time. Conversations cover researching Truby King, fictionalising historical detail, recurring themes like housing insecurity and climate anxiety, and how landscape shapes character.
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Collection Built From Photo To Nine Interlinked Lives
- Horrocks moved from memoir to imagining other lives, conceiving nine women across different moments and places.
- The collection grew from a photograph (1919 Wairarapa) and a 2018 eureka of nine interconnected moments shaping identity.
Story Links Appeared Organically During Writing
- Connections between stories emerged organically rather than by plan, like Evie's arc linking a 1919 story to a later glimpse of her older life.
- Horrocks discovered links while writing new characters and then retrofitted backstories to create temporal echoes.
Local Garden Sparked A Story About Truby King's Influence
- The Truby King story grew from living next to the Truby King Garden and researching his mothercraft pamphlets.
- Horrocks used library research to reveal disturbing advice (e.g., claims women shouldn't be educated beyond 12) that shaped Kina's awakening.
