Recently Deborah read a personal response to the Christchurch Earthquake at the Writers' Read In staged in libraries throughout Auckland to raise money for the Christchurch Earthquake appeal.
I was born in Christchurch. It is the city of my childhood and my girlhood. I went to school at the old Christchurch Girls’ High School on the corner of Cranmer Square. I studied at Canterbury University on the Ilam campus and worked in the central city in the Town Planning department and later at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in my early twenties. I was married in Canterbury and began raising my family there. I have a deep attachment to Christchurch and wince always when people denigrate the flatness, the boring culture, the sinister underbelly. I have always loved Chch to my wider whanau, forged I think through loss in childhood but also through my love of beauty in the natural world and the built world. |
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