Write stuff TESSA DUDER

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