NZer’s debut novel is feminist, climate change page-turner

For immediate release: 26th August 2016 - Auckland, NZ

New Zealander’s debut novel is feminist, climate change page-turner

First-time New Zealand author, Katherine Dewar, couldn’t have chosen a more topical time to launch her debut novel, Ruby and the Blue Sky. Described as a ‘feminist, climate change thriller’, the book has gone on sale as headlines and social media are busy with burkinis and equal pay, while latest NASA data shows the first six months of 2016 were the planet’s hottest half-year on record.

Dewar, who is Managing Director of ethical marketing firm GoodSense, immigrated to New Zealand twenty years ago, with the ambition to make more time to write. The novel is set in her former home city of Leeds, in the UK. Unlike most climate change fiction so far, often dubbed cli-fi, the novel isn’t based in a dystopian future; there are floods and heat waves but there is also still the potential for change.

“The main character, Ruby, is inspired by the people I see around me taking action and showing leadership on climate change in their own communities,” says Dewar. “I wanted to combine this idea with the power of celebrity and social media, so Ruby is a rock star. With powerful opposing forces at work, the book also asks how much sacrifice we are prepared to make to get the changes we want.”

Dewar writes about the novel’s feminism in her blog at KatherineDewar.net. Ruby, the protagonist talks about how society tries to control women’s choices and undermine their power: “Everywhere we relegate the awesome abundance of lust, fertility and birth to the bottom division. Sex is unclean, periods a curse and solo mums a burden or stone-able offenders, depending on where you happen to live. ... I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the harsher the heat waves and the fiercer the flooding and the more afraid we become, the more women are tied down.”

The novel wraps global, political issues into a plot and pace the UK’s Culture Vulture called “thrilling”, describing Ruby and the Blue Sky as “a big book not because of its size, but because of its content which is Feminist Fiction with a capital F.”

Ruby and the Blue Sky (ISBN 978-0-473-34550-1) is on sale worldwide as paperback, as an eBook and for Kindle and available by request at libraries and bookshops. Author Katherine Dewar has a BA (Hons) in Political Studies from the University of Leeds, and moved to New Zealand in 1996. She studied creative writing with Dame Fiona Kidman. This is her first published novel.

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Full author bio and book details at www.katherinedewar.net.

Twitter @KatherineDewar and www.Facebook.com/RubyandtheBlueSky.

Trade information at Booksellers.co.nz

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