Write stuff TESSA DUDER

The author who inspired Kiwi girls to follow their dreams has achieved some very big goals of her own

- FLEUR GUTHRIE

She’s been a Commonwealth Games medallist in swimming, reporter, full-time mother and pianist, but Tessa Duder is best known for her literary achievements. Last year, the author of nearly 50 books received both the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and the Prime Minister’s Award for fiction. Her Alex novels inspired a generation of young female readers, which she was compelled to write after finding an absence of books about “feisty girls” for her four daughters to read. The Weekly catches up with Tessa, 80, at her seaside home on Auckland’s North Shore.

‘I was sick of reading books with my daughters that showed girls as passive’

Can you tell us something from your childhood?

I was born at the beginning of the war in 1940, and my father had left to serve as a doctor in the Middle East and Italy for five years. But I’m lucky, he came home. So during those five years my mother and I lived in Palmerston North with my grandmother because there was very little money. He came back late one night and my grandmother sent me into their room the next morning with a Union Jack flag in my hand to meet my daddy. And I came roaring out again, saying, “There’s a strange man in Mummy’s bed!” When my aunt told me this story, she said it took me a few days to talk to him. But I had a very close relationship with my father all my life.

He had a remarkable career, too, didn’t he?