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'Deep and bitter disputes have always intrigued me. Both parties can't be right, so where does truth lie? For writers of my ilk, high-profile disputes are magnifying glasses through which we may bring into sharper focus matters which in the normal course of life remain blurry — matters of human nature, of right and wrong, of good and evil.
'Researching and writing A City Possessed began with the question: "What did or didn't happen at the Christchurch Civic Crèche?" My seven-year search for answers took me far beyond the crèche case and far beyond my personal comfort zone. I found myself digging through layer upon layer of unsuspected cover-up and unimagined scandal. In the process my desire to explain the crèche case expanded into a solemn responsibility: to bear witness to what I had found, and to do so in a way that could not readily be discredited, trivialised or ignored.'
A City Possessed won both the Montana New Zealand Medal for Non-Fiction and the Reader's Choice Award at the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Lynley Hood is the author of Sylvia: the Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner which won
the 1989 Goodman Fielder Wattie Award and the PEN Best First Book of Prose. She
followed this with Who is Sylvia? The Diary of a Biography and in 1994 Minnie Dean: Her
Life and Crimes, a finalist in the NZ Book Awards.
A new edition of Who is Sylvia? The Diary of a Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner has been released at the end of July 2008.
Lynley Hood held the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1991. She is the widowed parent of three adult children and grandparent of two. She holds a MSc in Physiology, has been active in several voluntary organisations concerned with parenting and early childhood issues, and has written many articles and delivered numerous lectures to scientific, medical and lay audiences on various health issues. In 2003 the University of Otago awarded Lynley Hood a Doctorate of Literature based on her four books including A City Possessed. She lives in Dunedin.
A City Possessed
Who is Sylvia? The Diary of a Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner