Vivid Encounters with Insects in Glass Wings
“It takes just four lines for ‘Alumnae Notes’ to transport us first to the schoolgirl in 40s New Zealand and then to her literary exile in London: ‘Beautiful Ataneta Swainson is dead….
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Parker Hulme Story Unfolds in Tabloid-like Detail
Former Hong Kong lawyer New Zealander Peter Graham’s “compelling read”, Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century, is awarded five out of five stars by reviewer Glen Young for northern Michigan publication, Petoskey…
Uninterrupted Writing Time Awarded for Belgian Story
Hastings author Anna Mackenzie, 50, is the first New Zealander to be awarded the writer’s residency in Belgium by Passa Porta, International House of Literature, which is offered to writers worldwide. Mackenzie…
Small’s Book One of Only a Few About Listening to Music
Palmerston North-born musicologist and writer Christopher Small’s book Musicking is one of three books, “and there aren’t many” – “about listening as process and reaction and ritual, how our listening might change music”– recommended…
Author’s Writing Endures in Latest Collection
Bygone New Zealand is well represented in Janet Frame’s Between My Father and the King: New and Uncollected Stories, the latest in a series of posthumous publications of Frame’s work that has included poetry,…
First Hand Account from the Top
Sixty years after Hillary and Tenzing reached Everest’s summit, a number of new books dissect the events of 1953, including two books by New Zealander George Lowe, who died in March aged 89, the…
Posthumous Novel Palpably Alive
“In the Memorial Room is not just a brilliant novel but a considered and poignant posthumous literary act, a curtain call by one of the world’s greatest authors, New Zealander Janet Frame, who died…
Novel Makes German Awards Shortlist
New Zealand author Lloyd Jones’ novel Hand Me Down World is one of six books to make the shortlist for Germany’s International Literature Award 2013. For the awards, 136 titles were submitted translated from…
Anniversary of Death, Memories of Love
“This year marks the 90th anniversary of the death of Katherine Mansfield, who was famous for her short stories, sexual ambiguity and string of lovers,” Adam Sonin writes for the Hampstead…
New Zealand Minister Sells ‘Donaldson’s Dairy’ to Chinese
New Zealand’s Tertiary Education and Science Minister Steven Joyce recently launched a Chinese version of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd, at an education event in Shanghai. Mr. Joyce was in China…
Adam Christopher – ‘the new future of science fiction’
New Zealand science fiction writer Adam Christopher is part of the ‘new future of science fiction,’ and an author who is breathing ‘fresh strength and vitality into science fiction and fantasy,’ according to…
Novel Makes Longlist
Emily Perkins’ novel The Forrests has made the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 longlist. The prize, known formerly as the Orange Prize, honours a work of fiction written in English…
Beautifully Scarce
Iranian-New Zealand artist Nabil Sabio Azadi’s travel book, For You The Traveller, is “probably the best guide book has ever seen.” “It is available in a strictly limited…
Critical Mass
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature edited by Jane Stafford and Mark Williams of Victoria University is reviewed by Peter Pierce for The Australian. He traverses the customary literary punch-ups that…
Quigley’s Own Heroic Symphony
New Zealand author Sarah Quigley’s novel The Conductor is a “vivid evocation” of winter in Leningrad during the years 1941-42. “As the German army besieged the city, her citizens starved, corpses clogged the snowy…
Through A Child’s Eyes
In Sailing the Unknown: Around the World With Captain Cook, American poet Michael J. Rosen imagines the journal of the real-life 11-year-old Nicholas Young, the youngest sailor aboard Captain Cook’s Endeavour. “We know very…
Outsider Looking In
“This smart and sophisticated novel by prolific New Zealand writer C.K. Stead surveys the atrocities of our time – the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, the Balkan and Iraq wars, the…
Collected Stories of Our Time
Auckland University has launched the first anthology of New Zealand literature bringing together fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose into one volume. The 1184-page Anthology of New Zealand Literature was edited by Jane Stafford…
What Stead Reads
Author C.K. Stead, 80, talks to the Financial Times about which books changed his life and what he’s currently reading. “The cat is on the bedside table, the books are on the floor,” Stead…
New Contemporary Novel
Award-winning New Zealand novelist C.K. Stead, 80, was a guest on BBC series The Forum talking about his latest novel, Risk, which tells the story of a lawyer who turns to banking…
Storytellers Converge
In an image from the Guardians’ “best news pictures of the day”, New Zealander Metini Mitai Ngatai poses prior to the official opening of the book fair in Frankfurt. The world’s largest book…
Wilkommen in Frankfurt
With New Zealand the Guest of Honour at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel showcased the country in its Sunday magazine section. “Whenever one thinks of New Zealand, one thinks about kiwis, sheep,…
Through a Pacific Lens
Auckland poet Courtney Meredith, 26, was at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week for the launch of her debut book Brown Girls In Bright Red Lipstick. Meredith has been described as leading a generation…
Challenging Perceptions
Academic and literary biographer Joanne Drayton who spent many of her formative years in Christchurch in the shadow of the infamous Parker/Hulme 1954 murder case, recounts the story in The Search for Anne Perry. Bestselling…
Taia o Moko
Dr Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, author of Mau Moko: The World of Maori Tattoo and essayist and commentator on Maori and feminist issues in New Zealand, memorialized the Maori Queens’s death by taking a traditional facial tattoo….
Writer Tells Stories in Berlin
New Zealand novelist and short story writer Paula Morris was a guest at this year’s International Literature Festival in Berlin on from 4 through 16 September. Morris read from Rangatira, which is based on episodes…
Mansfield Stories Uncovered
Four previously unknown stories written more than a century ago by Katherine Mansfield have been discovered by Chris Mourant, 23, a PhD student at King’s College London. Any new material by Mansfield, who had…
Writing Like a Virtuoso
New Zealand author Sarah Quigley’s latest novel The Conductor “reads like a proper up-all-night page-turner, but it also goes deeper than that, conveying the extraordinary life-saving properties of music, and hope,” Guardian reviewer Bella…
Solitary Homage to Storytelling
Queenstown-based artist Ivan Clarke’s book Alveridgea and the Legend of The Lonely Dog, co-written by with Stu Duval, is being developed as a feature film, with independent producer Jeff Kleeman. Clarke, previously best known…
Story Without Compromise
“I don’t think I’ve read any fiction that marries the strengths of the short story and novel quite as adeptly, and without compromise, as Emily Perkins’ The Forrests,” Sydney Morning Herald journalist and author…
Prize for Elegance and Economy
Wellington author Emma Martin has won the £5,000 Commonwealth short story prize for Two Girls in a Boat, which chair of judges Bernardine Evaristo described as “gorgeous, elegant and spare”. The story was chosen,…
Forrest Family Mesmerises
“Emily Perkins’ new novel opens with the making of a home movie and retains the feel of one, full of fragmentary impressions; momentary visual clarity mixed with the jumpy blurrings…
Owls Resonates Fifty Years On
Janet Frame’s debut novel, Owls Do Cry, released by New Zealand’s Pegasus Press in 1957, is the Frankfurter Allgemeine’s ‘Book of the Week’, reviewed by Sabine Doering. Doering writes that in the novel the…
Coffee Without the Schnauzer
Berlin-based New Zealand author Sarah Quigley pays a visit to Antipodes coffee shop in the German capital’s area of Prenzlauer Berg where NZEdge web editor Jane Nye and partner Paul Milne, both…
Entering The Pacific Century
“Characterized by initiative and aggressiveness combined with a chivalric ethos, a respect for the intellect, and an impatience with rank and hierarchy, New Zealand’s martial virtues have imbued Kiwis’ sense of fairness and decency…
What They’re Reading
Katherine Mansfield’s 1918 story Je Ne Parles Pas Français is included in the New Yorker’s ‘What We’re Reading’ column, a selection of notes from the staff on their literary engagements of the week. Andrew Mantz writes:…
Glue And Poetry In NY
For two years, owner of Christchurch-based Phantom Billstickers, Jim Wilson travelled throughout the United States putting poem posters by New Zealand poets on bollards, walls and in cafes and stores. As a result of…
Thank You New Zealand
“Once again I am pleased to thank New Zealand. No country, outside of my native United States, has treated me better than New Zealand. New Zealand has added me to a list of many…
Excellent Website Banner
American Tom Peters, writer on business management practices and best-known for In Search of Excellence, is so enamoured with New Zealand, his website features a New Zealand-themed banner. The site announced: “Tom and his wife,…
Tracing A Seabird Legacy
Dunedin-born author and photographer Neville Peat’s latest book Seabird Genius: The Story of L.E. Richdale, the Royal Albatross, and the Yellow-eyed Penguin, is included in the Guardian’s Christmas ‘Birdbooker Report’. “ the first biography…
Wondering About Kaitangata
Margaret Mahy’s Kaitangata Twitch is reviewed on the Guardian’s children’s book site, a site “by kids, for kids”. “The Kaitangata Twitch is an earthquake that happens regularly,” Bookworm 88 writes. “The island of Kaitangata…
Time to Read the Tome
Hamilton Doctor Who fan and author of the ultimate guide to the time traveller’s adventures Jon Preddle began work on his two volume epic Timelink: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Continuity of…
Improving What We Have
President of the Tertiary Education Union at Victoria University, senior lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy, Sandra Grey writes that calling for expatriate New Zealanders to put money into the tertiary sector is possibly…
A legacy in literature
Acclaimed journalist Dame Christine Cole Catley has passed away at age 88, leaving behind a legacy in New Zealand literature. After making a name for herself as one of the nation’s first prominent female…
Almódovar’s Survivors
The autobiographies of New Zealand’s “greatest” author Janet Frame were part of an “esoteric selection of references” given to Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s new leading lady Elena Anaya in preparation for her role as…
Absent From the Circus
Wellington has been home to British thriller writer Neil Cross for the past eight years since he moved away from the wearying “circus” of the UK and a 24 Booker nomination for his novel…
Quitting his day job
New Zealand-born Stephen Daisley, winner of Australia’s 211 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, said the AU$8, tax-free prize would finally enable him to quit his weekend job selling second-hand clothes and focus exclusively…
Bewildering Benevolence
Janet Frame’s novel Living in the Maniototo is included in a Wall Street Journal’s ‘Novel Approaches to Kindness’ ‘Five Best Books’ feature as one of the “oddest acts of kindness in fiction.” “It seems…
Travel in Day-to-Day Iran
New Zealand author and journalist Jill Worrall’s travelogue Two Wings of a Nightingale: Persian Soul, Islamic Heart about her 8km road trip through Iran was unveiled during a recent ceremony at the…
Making Her Own Rules
New York Times best-selling author of the Psy–Changeling paranormal romance series New Zealander Nalini Singh has just finished her latest novel, Kiss of Snow, the tenth installment of the series….
Frankfurt Guest of Honour
New Zealand will be the guest of honour at the world’s biggest literary gathering next year, the 212 Frankfurt Book Fair. Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair Juergen Boos said the New…
Written Words Prevail
New Zealand author Craig Cliff has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize best first book award, worth £5000,, for his short story collection A Man Melting, which judges called “highly entertaining and thought-provoking”. Glasgow-born Aminatta…
Paradise In the 21st Century
“New Zealand may well be the most desirable tourist destination in the world,” author Michael Tobias writes. “It is certainly among the most beautiful island nations on the planet, its biodiversity magnificent…
South Pole Misadventures
A new book by New Zealand journalist and respected author on Antarctic explorers John Thomson says Edmund Hillary “cheated” his way to the South Pole in 1958. Thomson, author of Climbing the…
Beauty in Clamorous Times
Tim Radford is the only person British writer Peter Forbes can think of who has been both literary and science editor of the Guardian. Forbes continues, in a review of Radford’s new…
Me’a Kai Beats Usual Suspects
“You could call it the gastronomic upset of the night,” The Independent said. “New Zealand-born chef Robert Oliver beat out some formidable competition to land the title of best cookbook, which was announced last…
