Annaleese Jochems
Annaleese Jochem was born in 1994 and grew up in Northland. She won the 2016 Adam Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters for Baby, which is her first book.
‘Cynthia can understand how Anahera feels just by looking at her body.’
Cynthia is twenty-one, bored and desperately waiting for something big to happen. Her striking fitness instructor, Anahera, is ready to throw in the towel on her job and marriage. With stolen money and a dog in tow they run away and buy ‘Baby’, an old boat docked in the Bay of Islands, where Cynthia dreams they will live in a state of love. But strange events on an empty island turn their life together in a different direction.
Baby is a sunburnt psychological thriller of obsession and escape by one of the most exciting new voices in New Zealand fiction.