For any author, being surrounded by friends, family and fans is surely the way you want a launch to go. For a first-time author, seeing a bookstore packed out with people has to be a particularly wonderful feeling. On Monday 13th October, we launched Give Us This Day, Helena Wisniewska Brow’s ‘family memoir’, which chronicles the story of her Polish-born father’s journey to New Zealand as a child refugee seventy years ago. And it would be fair to call it a resounding success.
Publisher Fergus Barrowman, of Victoria University Press, kicked things off, describing the book as speaking not just to the Polish community of Wellington, but to families from all sorts of backgrounds – the sense of displacement that is explored being a sensation familiar to people from many walks of life. After effusive praise for Helena and her book, he introduced Harry Ricketts, who took on the role of official launcher of the book (after a resigned but good-natured comment: ‘Fergus always says what I want to say!’).
Harry was Helena’s supervisor in an undergraduate creative non-fiction course at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. Helena wrote the first iteration of what would eventually grow and evolve into Give Us This Day while taking the course, and Harry was pleased to tell the crowd that his portfolio report was glowing: ‘The writing is crisp throughout.’
Helena then stepped up for her own speech and reading, focusing on the writing and researching process. She made sure to acknowledge the influence and help of family members, mentioning that she couldn’t imagine how people could write a book without ‘a team of cheering and stroppy supporters’. She compared her own sense of feeling amazed and ‘a little bit frightened’ while facing the crowd with what she imagined the Polish refugee children arriving in Wellington would have felt.
She read excerpts to a spellbound audience, before undertaking a marathon signing session, with the crowd clamouring to chat with and congratulate her as well as have their copies of the book signed as a memento of the evening. It’s a story of one family, and while it is representative of the experiences of so many more, the evening was truly Helena’s and that of her gathered family members.
Reviewed by Briar Lawry//photos © Matt Bialostocki
Hot off the press
Fergus Barrowman, Victoria University Press
Harry Ricketts launches the book
Helena Wisniewska Brow in the spotlight
