FOR THE LOVE OF IT

One-time cleaner now award-winning writer Anne Cleary’s lifetime of storytelling is finally paying off.

WORDS HAYLEY BARNETT
PHOTOS GISELLE BROSNAHAN

Anne Cleary didn’t set out to become a prize-winning novelist. Always a hobby, and a way to take the edge off life, writing has simply been slotted between jobs and family life.

“I’ve always just been a recreational writer,” she says. “People often ask why I didn’t pursue it as a career, but I’ve never wanted writing to become a job.”

Her pastime has now culminated in a major literary win. At the beginning of the year, her novel The Nowhere Boy won the Allen & Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand 2025 Fiction Prize, but the path to publication was far from easy.

Anne has worked a string of jobs, from cleaner and Salvation Army store worker, to caregiver and photo lab assistant, alongside raising her children.

“You just grab the time when you’ve got it, and ideas come when you’re not sitting there forcing them,” she explains.

A mentorship that began through a library writing group stretched over years and shaped her understanding of the craft, pushing her work toward publication standard. Anne credits that long-term support with helping her find her footing as a novelist.

It wasn’t until later in life, after her children were grown and she moved from West Auckland to Tauranga, that writing became something she felt she could seriously develop.

The Tauranga Writers’ group proved pivotal by offering feedback and, more importantly, belief.

“There’s a real focus there on getting people published,” she says. “That made a huge difference.”

Though the award may have brought recognition, and a nice monetary prize, it has also highlighted the industry’s unpredictable nature.

“It’s important not to think about money,” Anne advises novice writers. “There’s not a lot in it. You do it because you love it. If you’re writing for the market, you lose something essential.”

The Nowhere Boy began with some real-life inspiration passed to Anne through a friend, who told her about a memory of child who briefly went missing in the US in the 1960s. From that seed, Anne built a novel that's driven by character rather than plot, and explores the emotional fallout from the disappearance.

“I just wrote a short story from what she told me, then it kept expanding,” she explains.

Winning the prize came at an unexpectedly emotional time. Anne had been caring for her father in his final months, and he died just weeks before the announcement. The phone call from Allen & Unwin arrived the day before she left New Zealand on a long-planned overseas trip.

“I just sat there thinking, ‘What? I’ve won?’" she says. “And then I was just sad that he wouldn’t know.”

The loss, and the win, only provide more motivation to keep writing.

“I have more in the works,” hints Anne, “something I’ve been working on for a long time.”

While more prizes might be on the horizon, for the meantime, she'll continue writing for fun, between everything else.