Eleanor Catton Guest on New York Times Podcast
The New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2013 for her novel The Luminaries, discusses her latest book, Birnam Wood, with New York Times Book Review podcast host Gilbert…
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Granta Names Eleanor Catton a Best Young Novelist
Literary magazine Granta has announced its 20 most significant British novelists aged under 40, which, for the first time, includes international writers who view the UK as home, the BBC’s culture and media…
Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood Does the Improbable
“Eleanor Catton’s third novel, Birnam Wood, is a big book, a sophisticated page-turner, that does something improbable: It filters anarchist, monkeywrenching environmental politics, a generational (anti-baby boomer) cri de coeur and a downhill-racing plot…
Katherine Mansfield, A Magician with Words
American author Roberta Silman reviews Claire Harman’s new biography of Katherine Mansfield, All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything, for The Art Fuse. Silman speculates,…
Mansfield’s “Bliss” considered a “paragon of modernist literature”
“Influence in writing is often spoken about as something dirty or shameful, something to be avoided, but here it offers a way for artists to connect across decades, to find courage and company outside…
Reading Bliss and Bending Time with a New Story
“Now widely anthologised, taught, and considered a paragon of modernist literature, ‘Bliss’ seems to prove what we have discovered as editors of NOON – that a story that generates powerful feeling,…
Birnam Wood a Gripping Explosive Thriller
“It’s taken Eleanor Catton 10 years to follow up on her Booker Prize winning novel of 2013, The Luminaries. Fortunately, her latest offering, Birnam Wood, begins with a bang, quite literally. A series of…
Eleanor Catton’s Latest Has a Serious Message
It has been 10 years since New Zealander Eleanor Catton became, at 28, the youngest writer to be awarded the Booker prize, Lisa Allardice writes in a profile piece for The Guardian. Her third…
On the Brilliance of Katherine Mansfield
“The Katherine Mansfield Memorial Garden is a peaceful, oblong-shaped park set in the midst of Thorndon, in Wellington. It is named after the city’s most famous daughter, the short story writer Katherine Mansfield, whose…
Why Katherine Mansfield Still Divides Opinion
In an edited extract from her foreword to Wild Places: Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield, English author Helen Simpson asks: “How and why did Katherine Mansfield provoke such violent extremes of admiration and hostility, both…
Mansfield Left Other Modernists in the Dust
“This year, we celebrated the annus mirabilis of literary modernism, whose greatest novel, Ulysses, and greatest poem, The Waste Land, both turned 100 … This year will see another modernist milestone. 9 January 2023 will…
Literary Review Looks at Mansfield and the Movies
“One of Katherine Mansfield’s defining characteristics was her restlessness, both personal and artistic: she was always most at home when on the move,” Claire Harman writes for the Literary Review. “It helped that she…
Juliette MacIver Writes Romping Rhyme for Kids
“‘When darkness falls in rising mist, Beware the gruesome grizzled grist.’ Watch little smiles light up when they get their hands on this fun-filled picture book featuring a school trip that turns into a…
Discovering New Zealand Crime Fiction
Waitara-born writer Jacqueline Bublitz discusses New Zealand’s “significant contribution to the cannon of popular crime fiction” and recommends four authors “you should be reading now” in an article for CrimeReads. They are: Rose Carlyle…
Poūkahangatus by Tayi Tibble a New Yorker Fave
Wellington-born Tayi Tibble’s poetry collection Poūkahangatus has been included in the New Yorker’s ‘Best Books of 2022 So Far’ list. The influential magazine writes: “Our editors and critics choose this year’s most captivating, notable, brilliant,…
Poet Hera Lindsay Bird Rides Wave of New Platforms
In an article about 30-year-old Russian-born British poet Arch Hades, “the highest paid living poet of all time” and the “new meta verse”, Financial Times Baya Simons mentions Wellingtonian Hera Lindsay Bird, 35, part…
Tayi Tibble’s Poūkahangatus Reviewed in New Yorker
Wellington poet Tayi Tibble’s award-winning first collection Poūkahangatus has been described by The New Yorker magazine as “smart, sexy … fanciful and dramatic”. “This collection’s title poem, which describes itself as ‘An Essay About Indigenous…
Class Consciousness in Mansfield’s Classic Story
In a recent Forbes column, usually “devoted to Western (and sometimes Eastern) ‘Great Books’ or ‘Classics”’, contributor David Bahr this time examines the “minor Classics”. “These books or authors are not quite in the…
Author Janet Frame On Cover of Turkish Newspaper
A portrait of Janet Frame by American celebrity photographer Jerry Bauer recently featured on the front page of Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet Kitap. Several of Frame’s titles are currently being reprinted in Turkish, her official…
Adam Christopher Discusses His Star Wars Novels
In an interview with American media website CNET, Auckland-born UK-based author Adam Christopher, 44, reveals how he came up with Rey’s parents’ names and how his latest Star Wars novel, Shadow of the Sith,…
Auē a Striking Tapestry of Fierce Love
Coming-of-age novels set among the Métis community in Canada, the Māori population in New Zealand and the Crow Nation in Montana were recently reviewed by The New York Times. According to Gregory Brown writing…
Author Meg Mason in Running for Women’s Prize
Sydney-based New Zealander Meg Mason, American Louise Erdrich, and Turkish-Briton Elif Shafak are among the contenders for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, offering an ‘escape’ from global crises, Lucy Knight reports for The…
Fiordland Bookseller Ruth Shaw’s Extraordinary Life
New Zealander Ruth Shaw has embodied many roles throughout her life: pig farmer, navy deserter, solo sailor, illegal gambler, environmentalist, chef to archbishops, psychiatric patient, failed escort. She’s been arrested twice and married four…
Ali Smith Discusses Mansfield, Woolf and War
In a piece for The Guardian, Orwell Prize winning author Ali Smith looks at how the first world war forced writers Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf to rip up convention – and asks if…
Becky Manawatu’s Auē an Enthralling Bestseller
Things have gone right for New Zealand author Becky Manawatu. “Spectacularly,” Tina Makeriti writes in a review for The Guardian. “Unusually for a first book, Auē won New Zealand’s most lucrative fiction prize, the…
Nina Mingya Powles Explores an Otherness
New Zealand writer Nina Mingya Powles’ essay collection Small Bodies of Water “just might change the way you see the world” the Star Tribune’s Cory Oldweiler suggests. “Powles was born in Wellington, and is mixed-raced,…
1922 – A Year of Katherine Mansfield and Other Great Modernists
“James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land are rightly hailed as masterpieces – but they unfairly overshadow 1922’s other great books,” writes John Self in a feature for the BBC, which explores…
Reappraising Unjustly Neglected James Courage
“New Zealand-born James Courage is one of those fine writers who, though he enjoyed considerable success in his lifetime, has now more or less slipped from view. None of the eight novels he published…
Hairy Maclary a New Zealander with Scottish Roots
Despite being one of Scotland’s most iconic children’s books, it has been revealed to the Scots that Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy is actually from New Zealand, Lisa Hodge reports for Edinburgh Live. “The beloved…
Berlin-Based Poet Hinemoana Baker on Connections
Ahead of her recent reading at Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin (ILB), mould-breaking poet Hinemoana Baker talked English-language magazine Exberliner through her new book, the New Zealand-Berlin connection and why Germans should stop doing the haka. Christchurch-born…
You don’t need physics to appreciate Katherine Mansfield
In an entertainingly self-deprecating essay for Oxford University’s independent student newspaper Cherwell, Ben Jureidini apologies to the ghost of New Zealand short story master Katharine Mansfield for almost submitting a terribly pretentious theory about…
Jordan Bartlett’s YA Fantasy Novel Cover Released
The cover of New Zealand-born author Jordan Bartlett’s young adult fantasy novel, Contest of Queens, has been revealed, Elise Dumpleton reports for entertainment site, The Nerd Daily. Bartlett, a speech language pathologist and certified…
An Excerpt From After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari
Fulbright winner Abbas Nazari was one of 433 refugees rescued by New Zealand from the Norwegian cargo ship, Tampa, in 2001 after leaving Indonesia in an unseaworthy boat with his Afghan family. Twenty years…
“Genius” Katherine Mansfield’s “frantic creative flourishing” collected in ‘Strange Bliss’
“One of the genuine, if frequently under-recognised, geniuses of 20th-century literature, Katherine Mansfield wrote the majority of her short stories during a frantic creative flourishing between 1920 and 1922 while suffering from the tuberculosis…
Authors Like Mansfield Found Solace in S France
“The shimmering azure of the Mediterranean, the dark green of the cypress trees, the scent of thyme, the sound of cicadas on the terrace at dusk … don’t we feel the pull of the…
Meg Mason’s First UK-Published Book Well Received
New Zealand author Meg Mason’s “moving novel”, Sorrow and Bliss, “about mental illness and sisterly love finds hilarity and wisdom in anguish, without ever diminishing pain”, Clare Clark writes in a review for The…
Dive into Your Superconscious with Chris Duncan
If you’ve felt like you’re at a psychological plateau lately, relief may be only a page turn away, Forbes contributor Serenity Gibbons writes. Gibbons has put together a list of books, including You’re Not…
Mansfield and Woolf’s a Transformative Friendship
“Stories of friendships between artists are often told as love stories: the chance meeting, the electric first encounter, the mysterious mutual recognition that would change everything,” Megan O’Grady writes in a feature about creative…
US Production Company Snaps Up Meg Mason Book
“The production company behind movies such as 12 Years a Slave, Gone Girl and Bohemian Rhapsody has snapped up” the film and TV rights for Foxton-born Christchurch-raised writer Meg Mason’s latest novel – a…
Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book Wry and Precise
New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox’s 2019 novel, The Absolute Book, is reviewed alongside UK-based Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit, by Canadian writer Amal El-Mohtar for The New York Times. “Here are two novels that are, in some ways, opposites:…
Author Chloe Gong is a New York Times Best Seller
It’s not every day that a 21-year-old debut author lands near the top of the young adult hardcover list, Elizbeth Egan writes for The New York Times. Chloe Gong, a Shanghai native who grew…
Academics Affirm Influence of Katherine Mansfield
Two UK academics from Edge Hill University in Lancashire have taken over editorship of the respected Tinakori: Katherine Mansfield Society Critical Journal, and are hoping to draw further attention to Mansfield’s often overlooked importance…
Kendo Expert Alexander Bennett Has Hand in WWII Kamikaze Pilot’s Memoir
New Zealand-born scholar of Japanese history and martial arts Alexander Bennett has joined forces with fellow kendo practitioner, Shigeru Ohta, to write the English version of World War II kamikaze pilot Kazuo Odachi’s memoir,…
Katherine Mansfield and Another Edge of the World
“What does it take to decide to up sticks and live abroad? More than just a name, although I confess I liked the idea of living on the Avenue Katherine Mansfield – named in…
Katherine Mansfield Book Inspired Legendary British Agent in German Concentration Camp
Passages from a book of Katherine Mansfield’s letters published in 1918 helped a condemned British operative survive her death watch in the German concentration camp Ravensbrück. Odette Sansom, the most highly decorated spy of the…
Elizabeth Knox’s Masterpiece Lands US Publisher
Following a glowing review on Washington Post-owned online magazine, Slate, Wellington author Elizabeth Knox, 60, closed a deal for American and Canadian publication with Viking Penguin for her novel, The Absolute Book. “Every once in…
Lynley Dodd Reveals Secret of Hairy Maclary
The influence of Jane Austen on Hairy Maclary From Donaldson’s Dairy may not be immediately apparent, but it’s there. At least that’s what New Zealander Lynley Dodd said at the opening of the The…
New York Times Reviews Fiona Kidman Novel
“One December night in 1955, a 20-year-old Irish immigrant named Albert Black, wearing heavy boots to make his hanging snap, shuffled to the gallows of a dark prison in Auckland. He’d stabbed and killed…
New Penguins Book by Lloyd Spencer Davis Published
Napier-born Lloyd Spencer Davis is an award-winning scientist with many Antarctic field seasons behind him, Sara Wheeler writes for The Wall Street Journal. Wheeler reviews Davis’ new book, A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero…
Linda Collins Writes of Losing Her Daughter
Singapore-based New Zealander Linda Collins wrote Loss Adjustment, about the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, as part of a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the prestigious International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML)…
Poet Selena Tusitala Marsh Rails Against Racism
She blows in like a song carried on a powerful current: a wild-haired woman, larger than life, carrying a tall carved stick. She loses things in that hair, she says; finds pens in there…
Annaleese Jochems’s Debut Novel Alive and Squirming
“Cynthia, the simpering, scheming, covetous emotional sinkhole of New Zealander Annaleese Jochems’ assured debut novel, Baby, is alive and squirming; a memorable addition to the growing coterie of unapologetic antiheroines (dis)gracing the pages of…
Don’t Quit Day Job Says Author Brandy Scott
New Zealand-born Dubai-based radio presenter and author Brandy Scott sits down with reporter Ashleigh Stewart, who writes for The National, to talk about her critically-acclaimed first novel, and about her second one already in…
JP Pomare’s Debut Rated Highly by The Guardian
“Excellent characterisation and the ability to conjure cliquey, insecure adolescent world … add up to an immersive and exciting read,” Laura Wilson writes in a review of New Zealand author JP Pomare’s debut…
Author Heather Morris Discusses New Novel
After delivering one of last year’s biggest bestsellers with The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Te Awamutu-raised Heather Morris is ready to reveal Cilka’s Journey as a follow-up. Morris recreated the experiences of Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian…
Graeme Simsion Pens Final Rosie Instalment
Auckland-born IT consultant-turned-author Graeme Simsion’s mega-successful Rosie books have sold almost five million copies in 40-plus countries since The Rosie Project in 2013. Readers fell in love with genetics professor Don Tillman who developed a…
