Dame Fiona Kidman’s award winning novel This Mortal Boy, about the life and death of the real life ‘jukebox killer’ 18 year old Albert (Paddy) Black, has been described as remarkable and compelling. It is a masterpiece from one of New Zealand’s finest writers. In conversation with broadcaster and writer Karyn Hay, she discusses the story of Albert Black and his place in New Zealand’s social history. 

A prolific writer and national treasure, Kidman has often written about outsiders trying to navigate a conformist society. This Mortal Boy mines this same rich vein, delving into Black’s short life and his 1955 murder conviction and execution which sat at the centre of a widespread moral panic. Ultimately, his execution led to a tide of disgust which resulted in the abolition of the death penalty for murder in New Zealand.

Dame Fiona Kidman writes novels, short stories, poetry and memoir. She has published more than 30 books, of which several are in translation in other countries. Her novel, All Day at the Movies, won the New Zealand Heritage Prize for Fiction in 2016,  and was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Prize. This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction and the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. Her home is in Wellington.

Karyn Hay is an award-winning novelist: her debut novel Emerald Budgies won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award in 2001. She is a Frank Sargeson Fellow and is currently a literary advisor to the Frank Sargeson Trust. Her last novel The March of the Foxgloves, was a No.1 bestseller on the New Zealand Fiction list.