INTERVIEW: Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites

Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites is one of the many authors I'm looking forward to hearing speak at the Sydney Writers Festival this year.

Born in Adelaide in 1985, she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange as a teenager, and there heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland. Hannah is the co-founder and deputy editor of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings, and is completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011 she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award. Burial Rites is her first novel.

Hannah is appearing at the following sessions:

• Historical Fact and Fiction

• People of Letters

• Stella Prize Trivia

• Love Letter to Iceland

Go to the Sydney Writer's Festival site for more information. 

What is your latest novel all about? 



Burial Rites is based on the true story of the last person to be executed in Iceland. Agnes Magnusdottir was a woman who was sentenced to be beheaded for her part in a gruesome double murder of two men, and the fire that was lit in an attempt to hide the evidence. My book, which is based on a great deal of research, imagines the last six months of her life, as she is held in custody on a farm in north Iceland. 



Much of the novel explores Agnes's relationship with the family who is forced to live with her, and the young priest who is assigned to give her spiritual care. As the months go past, Agnes starts to tell her side of the story, and they realise that not everything is as they originally thought. 








How did you get the first idea for it? 



I first got the idea for Burial Rites when I was an exchange student in Iceland, over 10 years ago. I lived in the north of the country for twelve months, and during that time I frequently passed the site of Agnes's execution. Hearing snippets of the murder story filled me with curiosity, and when my desire to know more increased rather than abated when I returned to Australia, I decided to research the events and write a novel. I wrote Burial Rites to address what I saw as some pretty wild assumptions about this elusive convicted murderess; to try and find answers for my questions.





What do you love most about writing? 



A hard question! I love so much about it. I love the research that goes into a book. I love the slow deliberation over what words to use and what order to put them in, so as to convey or suggest a very particular idea or feeling. I love the way it lets me inhabit other worlds and other lives. I love the fact that I can do it in my pyjamas. I love the feeling of connection it gives me - that through writing I can explore something bigger, more universal than myself. 





What are the best 5 books you've read recently? 



Another hard question. In the last two months I've read and loved Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, How to be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman, Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire (not a huge crime buff, but I loved this second novel in his Millenium series), Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, and Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Death in the Family.







What lies ahead of you in the next year? 



I'm very fortunate in that I have quite a bit of travel coming up. I'm looking forward to travelling to the UK in August for the release of Burial Rites there, and later to the US for the Sept 10 release in North America. Other than that, I'm hoping to have some time to knuckle down to my next book.



Hannah Kent's website