Release

2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Shortlist Announced

Four of the country’s most respected novelists are in the running for New Zealand’s richest fiction writing prize with today’s announcement of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlist.

Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize 2017 Shortlist

Commonwealth Prize-winning novelist Catherine Chidgey’s The Wish Child is one of the contenders for the $50,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, as are multi-award winning writer Owen Marshall’s Love as a Stranger, critic, poet and novelist C.K. Stead’s The Name on the Door is Not Mine, and critically acclaimed poet and novelist Emma Neale’s Billy Bird.

The prize, now in its second year, is awarded through the generosity of one of the Acorn Foundation’s donors.

The Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize judges’ convenor, Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb, says all four finalists demonstrate compelling writing, surprising plots, sudden poignancies, sharp humour and beautifully observed characters. “These are the books that we loved, that provoked, that excited us, and that we are still thinking about.” Read more »

Media Release

Books Festival | Queen’s Birthday | Tauranga

Escape to Tauranga for Queen’s Birthday weekend and an ideas and books-focused festival that includes performance, discussion, story-telling, workshops and an Italian-theme morning tea.

Speakers include award-winning scientist Dr Siouxsie Wiles; New Zealand’s leading authority on Shakespeare, Professor Mark Houlahan; food writer and restaurateur Peter Gordon; award-winning author-illustrator Donovan Bixley; award-winning journalists Steve Braunias, Rod Oram and Aimie Cronin; novelists Greg McGee and Nicky Pellegrino; and historian, anthropologist and former New Zealander of the Year Dame Anne Salmond.

“We’ve tried to offer a programme that is a form of escapism,” says festival director Claire Mabey. “Speakers can take their audiences to other times and places, into different realms or consider a subject in depth.

“We’re excited about our ‘big ideas’ panel on June 4 that will discuss some of the grassroots problems afflicting us as New Zealanders – we’re really hoping the audience will jump into the conversation.”
Tackling the issues are law professor and former Cabinet minister Margaret Wilson, Awanui Black from the Tauranga Moana Iwi Leaders Forum, business commentator Rod Oram and actor, writer and producer Charlie McDermott.

Escape! also includes a free Human Library event where a ‘living book’ can be checked out for a one-on-one conversation, workshops by Donovan Bixley (for 7 to 11 year olds) and Steve Braunias (travel writing) and performances by Michael Hurst (No Holds Bard) and the Panhandlers.

http://www.taurangafestival.co.nz/

Book television, aka The Book Show, is coming to Aotearoa New Zealand, on screen at FaceTV, now on the Sky platform, as well as online.

Carole Beu and Graham Beattie in a promo video for their upcoming show.

Carole Beu of The Women’s Bookshop in Auckland, Graham Beattie of The Book Blog and producer Deb Faith of FaceTV have raised enough money via crowd funding at Boosted – just under $7,000 so far – for 12 episodes, which begin production in September, and will be on screen later that month. The Book Show will feature “author interviews, reviews and great reads from both NZ contributors and visiting international book people.”

Faith says the show will screen at prime time (no day set yet), with a daytime repeat. It will also be available online at FaceTV’s YouTube channel, Beattie’s blog and Carol Beu’s bookstore website.

Book lovers may remember Lindsey Dawson’s show Let’s Talk, that featured books and authors, among other things, and ran on FaceTV for two years, ending with last year’s digital switchover.

Dawson told Scoop Review of Books that the show had NZ On Air support, but that ended because funding can only cover shows on free-to-air platforms, and since the switchover, FaceTV has only been available on Sky, which requires a paid subscription. The show was something of a labour of love for Dawson, who said the pay barely covered petrol to get the studio.

“I do miss it, as I met some great creative and gifted people, and it kept me up with the play on various fronts.”

Dawson says she’ll still do the occasional interview for the show “if authors pop up in whom I’m really interested or have a previous link with”.

“It would be great if there was a well-resourced local book show on free-to-air TV, but mainstream TV is simply not interested,” Dawson said. “For them it’s all about how much advertising they can sell around shows, or how much corporate sponsorship is available, and with books/arts/ culture in general, that is thin on the ground in NZ.”

“However, Carole Beu and Graham Beattie will be great on the new show at presenting the best of what’s on offer in print, given Carole’s long history in book selling and Graham’s prominence as an all-round publishing expert,” she said.

– by Alison McCulloch

Living in a Warmer World by Jim Salinger (Bateman, $39.99)

Reviewed by John Lang

How is climate change going to affect our lives? According to Living in a Warmer World, it won’t just be changes to the weather, but also changes to our water, our wheat and even our wine.

Vastly experienced climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger, who lives in Auckland, has gathered essays from the who’s who of climate specialists in a fast-paced book that moves beyond our preoccupation with the causes of climate change. Rather, it combines observation and foresight to evaluate the looming effects on our world.

Former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark, now head of the United Nations Development Programme, provides a useful foreword. From there, 20-plus experts across various disciplines leave little unexplored in a series of short (albeit technical) chapters, and help the reader understand the enormity of adapting to a warming planet, with effects on such critical areas as our fisheries, food supplies and access to fresh water.
Read more »

‘Brash and fearless’, is how the New York Times described Carl Shuker‘s first novel, The Method Actors, which won him the 2006 Prize in Modern Letters. His latest novel, Anti Lebanon, has just been published in the US, where Publishers Weekly reviewed it as ‘a haunting and riveting account of war, loss, and exile’. Shuker is this year’s Creative New Zealand/Victoria University Writing Fellow.

Chair: Damien Wilkins
DATE: Monday 15 July
TIME: 12.15-1.15pm

VENUE: The Marae, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington
(please note that no food may be taken onto the Te Papa Marae).

The Writers on Mondays series is presented with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and additional support from Circa Theatre and the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Admission is free and all welcome.

americano

in his mephistophelean slink
toward some visceral glimmer
of ‘democracy’

+++++in this ‘failed state’,

americano
pauses to pat
his shades
I+ n+ t+ o+ p+ l+ a+ c+ e.

he redeems his
brusque suit collars
with a residual slap
Read more »

Speaking in Tongues: Michael Hofmann

In the year New Zealand takes centre-stage at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it’s a pleasure to present one of the world’s most highly-esteemed translators of German literature. Michael Hofmann has translated many of the greats (Roth, Brecht, Kafka, Eich, Süskind), including his own father, the novelist Gert Hofmann. He is an award-winning poet in his own right, as well as an astute poetry critic and editor. He appears in conversation with Bill Manhire.

Date: Monday 13 August
Time: 12.15-1.15pm
Venue: The Marae, Level 4, Te Papa (please note that no food may be taken onto The Marae).

Writers on Mondays is presented with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and additional support from Circa Theatre, City Gallery Wellington and the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria University. These events are open to the public and free of charge.

WRITERS ON MONDAYS

I Come from Palmerston North: James Brown

This month sees the release of James Brown’s fifth poetry collection, Warm Auditorium. We thought it was time to find out more about the man behind the poems, and tease out the shifts and changes in the work itself. Chair Fergus Barrowman drags the poet away from his desk at Te Papa to consider how work, world and words have cohabited and evolved between the covers of his books, and to give the new poems a hearing.

DATE: Monday 30 July

TIME: 12.15-1.15pm

VENUE: The Marae, Level 4, Te Papa
(please note that no food may be taken on to The Marae)

Writers on Mondays is presented with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and additional support from Circa Theatre, City Gallery Wellington and the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria University.

6 AUGUST Bohemian Girl: Terese Svoboda
New York writer Terese Svoboda has a body of work that includes poetry, novels, memoir, translation and over a hundred published short stories. Black Glasses Like Clark Kent is a memoir of her uncle’s chilling experience as a military policeman in occupied Japan, and Weapons Grade uses poetry to interrogate the power of occupation – both political and personal. Svoboda’s latest novel is Bohemian Girl, ‘a cross between True Grit and Huckleberry Finn’. She talks with Mary McCallum.

Date: Monday 6 August
Time: 12.15-1.15pm
Venue: The Marae, Level 4, Te Papa (please note that no food may be taken onto The Marae).

Writers on Mondays is presented with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and additional support from Circa Theatre, City Gallery Wellington and the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria University.
These events are open to the public and free of charge.

We Are Immortal Launches Today

Friday 27 April
Media release
For immediate release

A limited edition journal showcasing the work of two local artists will launch in Wellington this evening.

We are immortal is the collaboration between photographer Emma Anderson and writer Jenah Shaw, both recent graduates and young artists at the beginning of their careers. The book, which combines three short stories with a series of black and white photography, went to print with funding raised on PledgeMe – New Zealand’s first crowdfunding website.

The launch will be followed by a city-wide poster exhibition displaying imagery from the book. Supported by Phantom Billstickers Ltd, this very public exhibition will run for three weeks from mid-May.

We are immortal will launch at 7pm this evening, Friday 27 April, at Wellington’s The Russian Frost Farmers Gallery. The book will be available for purchase through the project’s website, www.weareimmortal.co.nz, and stockists to be confirmed.

ENDS