Annaleese Jochems

Annaleese Jochems is a New Zealand thriller novelist who writes about the edges of society with unsettling precision. Her fascination with the "surplus population"—those deemed unnecessary—fuels stories that strip away comfort and expose raw human desperation. Born from a post-university job drought, her fiction explores what happens when privilege collapses and people are left adrift.

Her 2017 debut, Baby, introduced readers to Cynthia and Anahera, two women who steal money, abandon their lives, and escape to an old boat in a remote bay. What begins as a dream of love and freedom spirals into something darker when strange events on an empty island shift their trajectory. Jochems writes with a sharp, claustrophobic intensity that makes every page feel like a slow unraveling.

Baby earned her the Adam Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2018 Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction. Readers drawn to psychological tension and morally ambiguous characters will find Jochems' work impossible to put down. Start with Baby to experience her distinctive, disquieting voice.