Annaleese Jochems
Annaleese Jochems | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1994 Whangārei, New Zealand |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, bookseller |
| Years active | 2017–present |
| Known for | Novel "Baby" |
Annaleese Jochems (born 1994) is a novelist and bookseller from New Zealand. Her first novel, Baby (2017), earned her the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing as well as the Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Life and career
Born in Whangārei in 1994, Jochems was raised on a farm located in Pakaraka. Her family includes her father, who works as a beef farmer, her mother, a teacher, and two younger brothers. She made the decision to pursue writing at the age of 14.
Jochems pursued creative writing studies at the Manukau Institute of Technology and later obtained a Master of Arts degree from the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2016, she received the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing for her manuscript, which was subsequently published by Victoria University Press in 2017 under the title Baby.
The novel Baby centers on a young woman who absconds with her female personal trainer after stealing money from her father; together they purchase a boat named Baby. The story draws inspiration from critiques of Fifty Shades of Grey, aiming to challenge traditional gender roles, and reflects Jochems' own experiences with unemployment and social isolation. Author Eleanor Catton characterized the work as "sultry, sinister, hilarious, and demented." The Guardian commended its lead character Cynthia as "a memorable addition to contemporary fiction’s unapologetic antiheroines."
In 2018, Baby was shortlisted for the premier fiction award at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and secured the Hubert Church Award for best debut book. It was also longlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award recognizing outstanding crime novels. That same year, Wild Card Films acquired film adaptation rights, while UK and US editions were released by Scribe in 2019.
In June 2018, Jochems collaborated with her mother to establish Book Hound, a secondhand bookstore situated in Newtown.