"The only writer to inspire jealousy in Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield hung out with the modernists, dabbled in Alistair Crowley's druggy occult gatherings and spent her last days in a French commune before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 34.
Having written, Oh to be a writer, a real writer, she became as famous for her letters and diaries as for her short stories. She is regarded as a literary giant in her native New Zealand, but she had to leave the country to become one.
Sarah Laing wanted to be a real writer too – as famous as Katherine Mansfield, but not as tortured. Mansfield and Me charts her journey towards publication and parenthood against her hero’s dramatic story.
A mix of memoir, biography and fantasy set in London, Paris, New York and New Zealand, it examines how our lives connect to those of our idols."