Graeme Lay is a travel writer specialising in the Pacific Islands, and his novels include the best-selling historical fiction trilogy based on the life of Captain James Cook. He was born in Foxton in 1944. Photo credit: The Listener
Ahead of the Ockham national book awards in May, Graeme Lay shuddered to recall the time the award for best novel went to a bogan - and Steve Braunias barges his way in at the end of the story, and adds a highly unusual postscript.
Graeme Lay bids a belated farewell to the Downtown Shopping Mall, central Auckland's least glamorous but most useful shopping centre.
Graeme Lay meets John Dunmore, the 92-year-old world authority on Pacific exploration - who has also written thrillers on the side, like the one about an assassin sent to New Zealand to kill Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.
Craig Marriner! What a dude. He dressed like a "Rotorua pig hunter", apparently, and shocked everyone by winning the 2002 national book award for best novel. Graeme Lay and Steve Braunias have rather different versions of a most curious case.
Graeme Lay gets to grips with Simon Winchester's epic tale of the Pacific Ocean.
An essay by author Graeme Lay on how he came to write his best-selling trilogy of novels about Captain James Cook.
