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…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
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…
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…
J.P. Pomare’s Debut a Powerful Thriller
“Touted as a ‘literary thriller’, a genre classification often used to characterise a book written by an author who does not usually write crime fiction, Call Me Evie might best…
The Tattooist of Auschwitz Translated into Persian
Recently claiming top spot on The New York Times paperback bestseller list, New Zealand author and screenwriter Heather Morris’ historical novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz has now been published in Persian and is available…
Bill Manhire’s Antarctic Poems Spare and Tender
Ernest Shackleton’s account of his mission and New Zealander Bill Manhire’s Field Notes are among Canadian author Jean McNeil’s favourites about the Antarctic continent. “Antarctica is the fifth largest continent, but it is home to almost…
Wonky Donkey Makes UK Christmas Bestseller List
The tale of a three-legged donkey has become a surprise Christmas bestseller thanks to a viral video of a grandmother reading it to her grandson. The Wonky Donkey, written by New Zealander Craig Smith,…
Redmond Wallis Diaries Enable Leonard Cohen Book
The research for Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni’s book Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964 has uncovered and drawn on many new first-hand accounts of Hydra’s artists and writers,…
Poet Nina Powles Wins New UK Prize
Wellington-born Nina Powles is one of the three recipients of the inaugural Women Poets’ prize, which aims to celebrate the empowerment of women and reward “creatively ambitious practitioners who are making or are capable…
On Hydra with Writer Redmond Wallis
New Zealander Redmond Wallis plays a role in the new book, Half the Perfect World, which tells the story of the post-war international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra, and…
Writing Saved Author Janet Frame
Spanning unusual cruelty and extraordinary kindness, authors from New Zealander Janet Frame to Briton Pat Barker explore an unsettling branch of medicine. The Guardian looks at the top ten books about psychiatry and includes Frame’s…
Paul Ewen’s Francis Plug Saviour of Comic Fiction
New Zealand-born author Paul Ewen’s creation Francis Plug, sociopathic stalker of literary celebrities, returns in, Francis Plug: Writer in Residence. Ben Myers reviews the book for The Spectator. “Plug first appeared as the unhinged narrator of 2014’s…
Ashleigh Young’s Evocative Prose is Irresistible
“New Zealander Ashleigh Young’s Can You Tolerate This? is an extremely charming essay collection, comprised mainly of snapshots of Young’s life from childhood onwards; walking across gravel roads hand in…
Video of One Honky-Tonky Wonky Donkey Goes Viral
A Scottish grandmother’s reading of New Zealander Craig Smith’s 2009 children’s picture book The Wonky Donkey to her grandson in a home video has seen demand for it skyrocket around the…
Heather Morris on the Books That Have Inspired Her
At first, New-Zealand-born Heather Morris hadn’t intended on writing a novel. When Morris first struck up a friendship with an elderly man named Ludwig Sokolov, she had imagined his incredible story as a screenplay. Sokolov…
Adapting Ruth Park’s Novels for the Stage
New Zealand-born author Ruth Park’s novel, The Harp in the South caused an uproar in 1948 for its portrayal of working-class life. Now, the Sydney Theatre Company has turned it into an epic stage…
Author Eleanor Catton on the Books That Changed Her
New Zealand Booker Prize-winning novelist Eleanor Catton recently spoke with The Guardian on the crackpot astrological study she’d like to write, and the book she finds “dishonest, pious and vengeful”, for the newspaper’s regular…
Ali Smith Marvels at Katherine Mansfield’s Letters
New Zealand novelist Kirsty Gunn was in London recently listening to Scottish author Ali Smith talk about Katherine Mansfield. Gunn’s article about the event appears in The Scotsman. “ talk, hosted by the
Ashleigh Young Turns a Lyrical Eye
“When I uprooted my family from Seattle this year to move to Wellington, I knew little of the foreign, faraway place beyond its reputation for grey days and great coffee,” Maggie Trapp writes for…
Ashleigh Young’s Essays Praised in New Yorker
Wellington writer Ashleigh Young’s debut essay collection Can You Tolerate This? is New Yorker-recommended summer reading. “Two things happened the first week I moved to New York, in February. I met up with a friend…
Academic Peter Fleming’s Earthy Economics
Peter Fleming, an amiable-sounding New Zealander, professes for a living at the Cass Business School at City University London. Once, business schools taught accounting, finance, and profit-and-loss. Nowadays the institutions seem to specialise in profit-IS-loss critiques…
Q&A with Instapoet Star Hera Lindsay Bird
Acclaimed by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, as “the most arresting and original new young poet”, New Zealander Hera Lindsay Bird, 31, is one of the stars of the new generation of “Instapoets”…
Brent Williams Charts Journey Through Depression
Ten years after his symptoms first took hold of him, New Zealander Brent Williams has written a graphic novel that is part memoir and part self-help book. Out of the Woods: A Journey Through…
Contesting New Zealand’s Discovery
A history book by New Zealander Winston Cowie called, Conquistador Puzzle Trail, which suggests that the Spanish or Portuguese may have discovered New Zealand before the Dutchman Abel Tasman is causing a new stir….
Hanging out with India Yelich in New York City
You’d think that spending your adolescence watching your sister – in this case, Lorde – become a world-famous pop princess might make you insecure, but 19-year-old India Yelich says no: She swears she won’t…
Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn Continues to Impress
Dame Ngaio Marsh’s skilfully completed “continuation novel”, set in a New Zealand hospital, is an exquisite reminder of the brilliance of Marsh’s London detective Inspector Alleyn, Sophie Hannah writes in a review of the…
Poet Ashleigh Young to Open Bathurst Festival
Wellington author, poet and literary editor Ashleigh Young will open the Bathurst Writers’ and Readers’ Festival on May 4. The festival consists of three days of live streamed sessions direct from the Sydney Writers’ Festival…
Corpses and Clues in Ngaio Marsh’s Posthumous Novel
“Roderick Alleyn, the ineffably posh Scotland Yard detective created by Dame Ngaio Marsh, returns for a posthumous outing with the help of Stella Duffy, herself a distinguished crime writer,” Andrew Taylor writes…
C.K. Stead’s Latest Novel Masterfully Structured
“The Necessary Angel’s literary preoccupations are familiar territory for Stead, a distinguished novelist, poet and critic who was for many years professor of English at the University of Auckland,” Financial Times correspondent Zoë…
Inspiring Cancer Story Written by Petra Kotrotsos
Wellingtonian Petra Kotrotsos is not your average 21-year-old, according to Melbourne-based Greek community newspaper Neos Kosmos. A video blogger and aspiring filmmaker, she’s also a cancer veteran, having been through various treatments since she…
Writer and Engineer Ben Sanders Ups the Stakes
For a couple of days a week, Ben Sanders, 28, is a mild-mannered New Zealand engineer; the rest of the time he’s dreaming crimes and mayhem on the mean streets of the United States….
WWII Love Story by Heather Morris Reviewed
Out of one of the worst periods of human history comes an inspirational story, a beacon of light amidst the dark ruins of the Holocaust. For three years before his death in 2006, Lale…
Superyacht designer Ron Holland Pens Memoir
“Given that his single-masted creation M5 is too tall to pass beneath Ron Holland had trouble holding a ‘personal memoir’ to 400 pages…
Competition Winner Liana Roberts-Letiu Validated
As the overall winner of the 2017 Samoa Observer Tusitala short story competition, Samoan New Zealander, Liana Roberts-Letiu, 21, is as intriguing as the title of her short story entry “An Elegant Tantrum”, Elizabeth…
NZ Escape Octopus Immortalized In Kids Book
“How many stories about octopuses escaping from their confines can there be,” writes Jacqueline Cutler in an article published on NJ.com. When she was one page into the kids book “
André Spicer Desperately Seeks Self-Improvement
Like a couple of lab rats, professors New Zealander André Spicer and Swede Carl Cederström have subjected themselves to every conceivable test in pursuit of perfection, hoping to become better human beings, smarter, more…
Shoshana Sachi Writes Inclusively from Los Angeles
Shoshana Sachi, 30, explains what it’s like for a New Zealander being a “triple threat minority” in Hollywood – an immigrant woman of colour in a Vice magazine opinion piece. “It’s not a new phenomenon…
Tidbits From the Late Great John Clarke
Photographing birds and tinkering with words were two of the late John Clarke’s favourite pastimes. In a Guardian article, they come together in excerpts from a new book showcasing the New Zealander’s body of…
Brent Williams Writes Himself Out of the Darkness
Graphic novel, Out of the Woods: A Journey through Depression and Anxiety, by New Zealand writer Brent Williams and Turkish illustrator Korkut Öztekin, is an account of Williams’ catastrophic experience of depression and anxiety…
Harvard’s Richard Thomas Charts Bob Dylan’s Odyssey
He mentions Dylan in the same breath as Ovid, Virgil and Dante. The Guardian’s Zoe Williams meets New Zealander Richard Thomas, the classics professor who has spent half a century decoding Bob Dylan’s imagery,…
Why Bob Dylan Matters to Author Richard Thomas
“It took six months for New Zealander Richard Thomas to draft the manuscript for his newest book, Why Bob Dylan Matters, a study, among other things, of the songwriter’s deep and abiding connection to…
How to Win the Man Booker Prize
The upstairs room of an indie bookstore. A book launch for a local author. Crisps and wine are being handed out, a buzz is in the air, congratulations are showered upon the young writer….
Author Lynley Dodd on the Secret Lives of Pets
On the release of her new picture book, Scarface Claw, Hold Tight! acclaimed New Zealand writer and illustrator Lynley Dodd talks animal antics and her favourite children’s books. Many cat owners would be familiar with…
Ruth Park’s Words Endeared Her to Australia
In the 1940s, many people resented the fact that a New Zealander was telling Australians about slums that many denied even existed. But author Ruth Park had been living in a run-down part of…
Paul Cleave Discusses New Killer Novel
Christchurch-born Paul Cleave, 42, is a relative newcomer to United States audiences. Although his first book, The Cleaner, was published in 2006 and sold half a million copies, his books weren’t marketed in the…
Patricia Grace on Telling the Stories of Maori
Born in Wellington, 80 years ago, Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand’s most important writers, CBC Radio Canada writes. Her stories are inspired by her experiences growing up as the daughter of a…
New Zealand Poets Taking on the World
If poetry makes you think of stuffy classrooms and impenetrable verse, think again. The BBC’s Holly Williams takes a look at the female poets revolutionising the art form, including New Zealand-based Lang Leav and…
Alan Brough Making the Kids Laugh in Benalla
New Zealand-born comedian and children’s book author Alan Brough, who is best known to Australians as one of the team leaders on television’s Spicks and Specks musical quiz programme, was in Benalla, Victoria recently…
Writers Contingent Takes NZ to Edinburgh
Poets Courtney Sina Meredith and Hera Lindsay Bird, as well as writer Sarah Laing, make up a contingent of local talent taking New Zealand to the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
Author Julie Parsons Makes Punchy Return
New Zealand-born but long-time resident in Ireland, Julie Parsons boasts a CV more varied than the average author. As well as producing five previous crime novels, she’s worked as a radio and TV producer…
Life Coach Despina Nicola Dared to Begin
New Zealand-born life coach and author Despina Nicola says we are the product of our choices – which is pretty hard-hitting stuff for anyone who’s overwhelmed and looking for someone to blame. But then…
