Cooking up a literary treat: Julie Biuso graduates in creative writing

Julie Biuso is the author of 17 award-winning cookbooks, has had a successful career in food journalism, including extended stints on breakfast TV, was a long-time editor of Cuisine, and is now the creator of food website Shared Kitchen, alongside her daughter Ilaria. But she says writing fiction has always been her dream.

“I’ve wanted to do it ever since I heard about Bill Manhire’s International Institute of Modern Letters. I’ve made my career writing about food because I could cook and write, so it was easy; I had a family to support, and work came my way. I’d wanted to apply for the Auckland course a few years ago, but timing is everything: with Covid and my daughter having a baby, I let a few years slide by. But 2023 was the year!”

She says she liked the rigour of the University of Auckland one-year masters, which is a competitive course that attracts plenty of applicants but only accepts around 12 each year.

“You had to write, critique your peers’ work, and sit there without saying a word while they discussed your efforts. That toughens you up. I was sad when it ended. I wanted more.”

The course, taught by New Zealand author and essayist Paula Morris, an associate professor of English, requires applicants to have already progressed with a writing project that they’re expected to refine during the masters year.

“I’ve stuck with my original project, a work of fiction, although I changed it along the way,” says Julie.

“When I started, I had the story told through three women, not all in the first person, and it was non-linear. But after a lot of culling, I stuck with the strongest protagonist and made it about her. It’s a contemporary coming-of-age story about a young woman who’s unable to reach her full potential. It is a love triangle puzzle with a catastrophic end.”

And coinciding with May graduation was the deadline for completing the novel to first draft, which she’s just done.

“It’s a huge accomplishment for me to get it to this point. I’m now working with a mentor and taking it to the next stage.”

Julie says she found the transition from non-fiction food writing to fiction familiar in some ways, but “a different beast” in others.

“A book is a book; that’s the easy part. You need a concept, an idea to sell to a publisher that they believe will sell to the public, then there are the logistics, timelines and deadlines and research.

“But with a cookbook, there are recipe formulas to work out, recipe testing to do and photography. These days, you don’t even have to be a good cook to have a successful cookbook, but you do need a following. But with a work of fiction, you can’t take someone’s scone recipe, jazz it up and publish it as your own.

“You need a unique story or a different way of looking at an old one, and an intriguing but believable cast of characters. There has to be a reason for the reader to turn the page, to carry on with the story. In a cookbook, it is often visual: yum, I want to eat that!”

However chapters in cookbooks and chapters in novels work very differently, she discovered.

“A new chapter in a cookbook allows you to go in a new direction – think soup to dessert, or summer salads to autumn pies. It is all very fluid; you can do what you want, say, five soups, and ten meat dishes, then seven desserts, and a recipe for chicken stock at the back, in case it’s needed. There is no law to how you construct a cookbook.

“But chapters in a novel are bound together closely; they have a purpose. There’s nothing random or included ‘just in case’. Like a skein of wool, you can stretch it a little or unravel some of it, but at the end, you need to be able to pull it all back into a tight ball, leaving no loose ends. There needs to be a reason for every paragraph, every sentence, and every word. This makes the writing more exacting.”

Julie says her own pile of bedside books favours New Zealand fiction, and she’s read all the novels on the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlist, and quite a few on the long list.

“I generally read two or three books at a time. I’m finishing Butter by Asako Yuzuku [who is a guest at the Auckland Writers Festival] which is quirky and, at three-quarters of the way through, I’m unsure how it will end, which is good; The Royal Free by Carl Shuker, which isn’t a good night read as I have to concentrate too much!; The Letters of Seamus Heaney edited by Christopher Reid, an indulgent in-between book, which can, if I’m not careful, take over.

And next on my list is Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt and Route 52 by Simon Burt. I’ve just finished The Mires by Tina Mākereti, which I loved.”

And as for graduation day itself, she’s very excited.

“At my age, you have to be determined if you want to go back to university – dreaming about it won’t get you there. Graduating validates the work I’ve done so far; I’ve met some amazing people and the future is rosy.”

Julie Biuso graduates with a Master of Creative Writing from the Faculty of Arts and Education at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland on Tuesday 13 May at Spark Arena.