Hearty congratulations to Shayne Carter who has won the 2020 Ockham New Zealand award for best book of non-fiction with his 2019 publication Dead People i Have Known.

In Dead People I Have Known, the Flying Nun musician tells the story of a life in music, taking us deep behind the scenes and songs of his early bands, Bored Games and the Doublehappys and his best-known bands Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer. He traces an intimate history of the Dunedin Sound—that distinctive jangly indie sound that emerged in the seventies, heavily influenced by punk—and the record label Flying Nun.

As well as the pop culture of the seventies, eighties, and nineties, Carter writes candidly of the bleak and violent aspects of Dunedin, the city where he grew up and would later return. His childhood was shaped by violence and addiction, as well as love and music. Alongside the fellow musicians, friends and family who appear so vividly here, this book is peopled by neighbours, kids at school, people on the street, and the other passing characters who have stayed on in his memory.

Dead People I Have Known by Shayne Carter (Victoria University Press, $38) is available in all good bookstores.

Photo: Ebony Lamb