News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Eleanor Catton Blasts Critics’ Jingoistic National Tantrum

Eleanor Catton Blasts Critics’ Jingoistic National Tantrum

Award-winning author Eleanor Catton has hit back at figures in New Zealand who reacted with anger to her criticisms of the country’s “neoliberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians”, describing the vicious attacks she…

Graeme Simsion and Wife Anne Buist Literary Double Act

Graeme Simsion and Wife Anne Buist Literary Double Act

Auckland-born author Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist are Australia’s hottest literary couple, according to the Age, spurring on each other to keep the words – and surprises – coming. Buist is showing signs of nerves…

Poet Lang Leav Offering up More Romance

Poet Lang Leav Offering up More Romance

Best-selling poet and artist Lang Leav has just released her second collection of poems, Lullabies. The New Zealander cemented her name in publishing history with a Best Poetry win at the Goodreads…

Peter Walker’s Coming of Age Novel Absorbing and Ethereal

Peter Walker’s Coming of Age Novel Absorbing and Ethereal

New Zealand author Peter Walker’s latest novel Some Here Among Us is “an absorbing, ethereal meditation into how the passage of time opens us up”, Peter Carty writes in a review of the book…

Feel Write at Home in Mansfield’s Menton Cottage

Feel Write at Home in Mansfield’s Menton Cottage

Katherine Mansfield’s home in Menton, France is included in a Vanity Fair article about staying in places where “literary idols dashed off their masterpieces”. Included alongside Virginia Woolf’s Sussex country house; John Keats’ Old Mill…

Stephen Daisley’s New Novel the Pick of 2015

Stephen Daisley’s New Novel the Pick of 2015

New Zealand-born Stephen Daisley’s 2010 debut novel, Traitor, is one of the “best works of fiction” the Australian’s Stephen Romei “has read in recent times” and this year the author’s second novel “will press…

Paul Ewen’ Latest Novel Brilliant Satire of Booker Set

Paul Ewen’ Latest Novel Brilliant Satire of Booker Set

In his second novel New Zealander Paul Ewen “cranks up his deadpan satirical style through one Francis Plug, and catches a vast array of contemporary Booker prizewinners in his firing line,” Ben Myers writes…

Writing Isn’t Just about Expression Says Author Eleanor Catton

Writing Isn’t Just about Expression Says Author Eleanor Catton

Author Eleanor Catton, who is a participant in The Hindu Lit Fest in January 2015, talks to the Hindu about why writing isn’t just about expression but about impression too. Catton, who has set up…

John Gallas’ Cat Is the Guardian Poem of the Week

John Gallas’ Cat Is the Guardian Poem of the Week

“In this modern take on Baudelaire, a moment of sensual connection with a pet resonates with a lover’s unknowability” in New Zealander John Gallas’ poem, Cat, the Guardian’s “Poem of the week”. “Gallas recently published…

Rosie Project Author Graeme Simsion Plans Third Novel

Rosie Project Author Graeme Simsion Plans Third Novel

Author of hit novel The Rosie Project, New Zealand-born Graeme Simsion, 58, says he envisages a third novel with an uncontracted fourth novel on the drawing board. The book, about an eccentric man in want…

Mansfield, Hulme, Frame – Literary Wizards

Mansfield, Hulme, Frame – Literary Wizards

With the Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan announced as this year’s Booker winner – last year, was our own, Eleanor Catton – the Irish Times brings you “10 great novels from Down Under”. Three authors from…

NZ’s Role in Zhivago Affair

NZ’s Role in Zhivago Affair

An unnamed New Zealand diplomat has played a role in the Cold War literary intrigue that became known as the Zhivago affair. It was a New Zealand diplomat stationed in Moscow who smuggled out…

Chatting up Katharine Mansfield

Chatting up Katharine Mansfield

“I like the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who according to Virginia Woolf smelt like a civet cat and had a hard, cheap face, and who was the only contemporary writer of whom she…

Paul Ewen Creates “Inspired Alter Ego” Francis Plug

Paul Ewen Creates “Inspired Alter Ego” Francis Plug

Paul Ewen, New Zealand born and raised writer, is getting rave reviews for his first novel about his fictional alter ego. Ewen, now based in London, has published his first novel, “Francis Plug: How to…

Trove of Explorer George Lowe’s Photos Published for First Time

Trove of Explorer George Lowe’s Photos Published for First Time

In the summer of 1957-58 New Zealander George Lowe was the 12-man Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) team’s official photographer. He documented the treacherous journey in its entirety, juggling a number of cameras and shooting…

Surgeon Is Fundamentally a Storyteller

Surgeon Is Fundamentally a Storyteller

Auckland-based author and surgeon Dr Sharad Paul talks to the Bangalore Mirror about his latest novel The Kite Flyers, and about how a doctor came to be writing literary fiction. “I think I am fundamentally…

Kate De Goldi Wastes Not a Marvellous Word

Kate De Goldi Wastes Not a Marvellous Word

Acclaimed Christchurch-born author Kate De Goldi’s children’s book, The ACB with Honora Lee is a “marvellous, whimsical tale”. “ surprisingly, takes place mostly in a nursing home. Perry is the daughter…

New Zealand-Based Booktrack Launches Writing Contest with Hugh Howey

New Zealand-Based Booktrack Launches Writing Contest with Hugh Howey

Booktrack, the New Zealand-based eBook soundtrack company, has partnered with best-selling author Hugh Howey and digital writing community Wattpad to launch a competition that will reward creativity in words and music with up to…

Couple’s Literary Steampunk Adventure Continues

Couple’s Literary Steampunk Adventure Continues

New Zealand’s first podcast novelist Pip Ballantine, co-author of the steampunk Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, talks to the USA Today about her and husband Tee Morris’ most recent addition to the anthology, Dawn’s…

Berlin Keeps Acclaimed Author Under Its Spell

Berlin Keeps Acclaimed Author Under Its Spell

New Zealander Sarah Quigley initially came to Germany on a one-year writing scholarship in 2000. Quigley, the author of acclaimed novel The Conductor, arrived with no German and little knowledge of Germany, but was…

Literature and the Shopping Cart

Literature and the Shopping Cart

“In a brilliant essay in New Zealand’s Metro, the writer Eleanor Catton, winner of last year’s Man Booker prize for The Luminaries – a remarkable and groundbreaking novel – defines the incompatibility of art…

Miranda July Reads Janet Frame on Podcast

Miranda July Reads Janet Frame on Podcast

On this month’s New Yorker fiction podcast, American actress and filmmaker Miranda July reads Janet Frame’s short story “Prizes,” which was published in the magazine in 1962. July, whose fiction and essays have been appearing…

Cutting Edge Authors This Way Up at London Festival

Cutting Edge Authors This Way Up at London Festival

New Zealand and Australian artists will be showcased in This Way Up, “a festival of seriously good literature, film, music and performance from two countries at the (cutting) edge of the world”, in London…

On a Whirlwind of Promotion in the UK

On a Whirlwind of Promotion in the UK

Author Eleanor Catton, who is currently on a book tour in the UK, tells the Scotsman that when she won the Man Booker prize last October with The Luminaries, fellow winner, Life of Pi…

Novel Inspired by a Real Woman’s Escape

Novel Inspired by a Real Woman’s Escape

New Zealand author Dixie Carlton’s first novel Margaret – A Song out of Time was inspired by a real woman Carlton first met as Elsie Margaret May McKenzie. She was then in her mid-70s…

Surprise Advance and BBC Film Deal for NZ Author

Surprise Advance and BBC Film Deal for NZ Author

Author Deborah McKinlay, formerly of Auckland, has received a seven-figure advance and a lucrative film deal for her new book, That Part Was True. McKinlay, who had been making a living as a jobbing non-fiction…

Perceptive Debut Novel Immediately Engrossing

Perceptive Debut Novel Immediately Engrossing

Twenty-one-year-old Sebastian Hampson, an art history and literature student at Victoria University, writes with an assurance that belies his years, according to the Australian, and his debut novel The Train to Paris, inspired by…

Creation Is a Completely Divine Concept, Says Catton

Creation Is a Completely Divine Concept, Says Catton

Ahead of appearances at Perth Writers Festival on 22 February and Adelaide Writers’ Week on 1 March, the Guardian’s Vicky Frost met with Booker prize-winning author 28-year-old Eleanor Catton to talk about her next…

New Book Describes Athens Before the Bubble Burst

New Book Describes Athens Before the Bubble Burst

In his book Athens – The Truth: Searching for Manos, Just Before the Bubble Burst, New Zealand author David Cade describes his time in the city during the summer of 2009 as startling reports…

International Stage for NZ Writing

International Stage for NZ Writing

Acclaimed literature almanac, the Griffith Review, has devoted an entire issue to New Zealand poetry, fiction, non-fiction, art and photography. Award-winning author of Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones, has been brought in as guest editor…

Booker Judge Explains Catton’s Genius

Booker Judge Explains Catton’s Genius

Eleanor Catton’s Booker-winning The Luminaries is a novel in which almost everyone is obsessed with the acquisition of wealth, writes Robert Macfarlane in Intelligent Life, the sister publication to The Economist. But of all…

Devastating Fairytales Evoke Story of Painful Youth

Devastating Fairytales Evoke Story of Painful Youth

Janet Frame’s The Mijo Tree, a previously unpublished novella first drafted in 1957, follows the pattern of her other stories, with their “anthropomorphism and their small, clear fairytale phrasing,” which gradually “reveal their powerful…

Fighting for Freedom in Post-Communist Poland

Fighting for Freedom in Post-Communist Poland

Acclaimed New Zealand war correspondent John Borrell thought he’d left the big battles behind when, aged in his 40s, he established with his Polish wife an idyllic lakeside resort outside of Gdansk. But post-Communist…

Hang Wire a Love Letter to Weird America

Hang Wire a Love Letter to Weird America

Auckland-born author Adam Christopher, 36, has “built a name for himself over the past couple years spinning fanciful yarns full of superheroes, shifts in time, and a refined pulp pop, starting with his New…

New Zealanders’ Discovery Defended in London Review of Books

New Zealanders’ Discovery Defended in London Review of Books

New Zealander Constant Mews’ academia-shaking discovery of the lost love letters of legendary lovers Heloise and Aberlard is being defended in the London Review of Books after a new book cast doubt on their…

Mansfield Had Something to Say and Said It Uncommonly Well

Mansfield Had Something to Say and Said It Uncommonly Well

A 1922 review of Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories is pulled “from the stacks” of a New Republic back issue. “It is necessary to read no more than two or three…

Evil Ernie the Undead Unleashed in All-Ages Book

Evil Ernie the Undead Unleashed in All-Ages Book

New Zealand-born writer-artist Roger Langridge, 46, who began his comic career with the popular Judge Dredd Magazine series The Straitjacket Fits, talks to Brandon Jerwa of BleedingCool.com website about the challenge of turning the…

Walking with McCahon a 2013 Favourite

Walking with McCahon a 2013 Favourite

New Zealand author Martin Edmonds’s novel In Dark Night: Walking With McCahon is included in the Australian’s annual book of the year wrap-up, in which Australian and international authors and critics reveal their favourite…

Catton A Young World Changer

Catton A Young World Changer

New Zealand author, Eleanor Catton, has been named as one of TIME magazines 30 under 30 who are changing the world. Catton won the illustrious Man Booker Prize this year for The Luminaries, a 832-page…

Kiwi Women Lead Cultural Renaissance

Kiwi Women Lead Cultural Renaissance

Once upon a time New Zealand cultural values were based on the unholy trinity of rugby, racing and beer. Then the marketing concepts – clean and green; 100% Pure – were added to the…

Catton Reflects on Books That Have Shaped Hers

Catton Reflects on Books That Have Shaped Hers

Award-winning author New Zealander Eleanor Catton, 28, whose novel The Luminaries won this year’s Man Booker Prize and this month, Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award, reflects on the influences that have shaped her as…

Katherine Mansfield Interacts with Google

Katherine Mansfield Interacts with Google

Google commemorated the birthday of writer Katherine Mansfield on 14 October with an interactive doodle on its homepage, marking the 125th anniversary of the New Zealander’s death in Fontainebleau, France, aged 34. The first

Booker Winner Sells Luminaries to Spooks-maker

Booker Winner Sells Luminaries to Spooks-maker

The makers of the critically acclaimed Spooks TV series have bought the rights to Eleanor Catton’s Booker prize-winning novel, The Luminaries. Catton, at 28-years the youngest ever Booker winner and her 832-page book the…

Men of a Certain Age Rile Booker Winner

Men of a Certain Age Rile Booker Winner

Sexism in the literary world is thriving, Man Booker prize winner Eleanor Catton says. The youngest-ever winner of one of the world’s most prestigious writing award says her book, The Luminaries, received a “bullying”…

Kiwi Eleanor Catton Wins Man Booker Prize

Kiwi Eleanor Catton Wins Man Booker Prize

New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize. Ms Catton’s novel The Luminaries was shortlisted among six other titles for the fiction writing award. The Duchess of Cornwall…

Channelling His Ancestors from Canada

Channelling His Ancestors from Canada

New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera is currently in Alberta teaching eight indigenous Canadian writers at the globally respected arts, cultural, and educational institution, Banff Centre. The last time he was there, he began writing what…

Misfits Making Mayhem in Chicago

Misfits Making Mayhem in Chicago

Bay of Plenty writers James Morcan and Lance Morcan’s international conspiracy thriller, The Orphan Trilogy is set in Chicago at the site of the Pedemont Orphanage, where 23 orphans acquire the skills to become…

New Zealand Author Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize

New Zealand Author Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize

New Zealand writer, Eleanor Catton’s book, The Luminaries, has been short-listed for the illustrious Man Booker Prize, becoming the youngest person to ever make the list. The 28-year-old’s book, about the New Zealand goldrush…

Pages Seethe with Misfired Bullets and Opium

Pages Seethe with Misfired Bullets and Opium

“Eleanor Catton didn’t set out to write an enormous book,” Guardian correspondent Kira Cochrane begins. “When she started her second novel, the Man Booker longlisted The Luminaries, she expected it to be about the…

Unearthing a Personal History

Unearthing a Personal History

Is an actual, physical, deadly and devastating earthquake too obvious a metaphor for personal upheaval? Sydney Morning Herald journalist Sally Pryor asks New Zealand author Lloyd Jones. Perhaps, he says, but in his case…

Misadventure Tourism Makes for Good Read

Misadventure Tourism Makes for Good Read

Wellington-born performer and writer Tom Doig (left) prefers travel with adversity over leisure, and as Doig says in his new travelogue Mörön to Mörön, a book about him and his best mate, Tama Pugsley…

Stamps Behind Stories of Terrible Wartime Loss

Stamps Behind Stories of Terrible Wartime Loss

Aucklander Bruce Chadderton, president of the Philatelic Society of New Zealand, has had his book Descent into the Abyss: The Shoah — a philatelic retelling published by the Society of Israel Philatelists after one…

With a Talent Like Catton’s One Can Never Be Sure

With a Talent Like Catton’s One Can Never Be Sure

New Zealand-raised author Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker nominated The Luminaries is reviewed by Lesley McDowell in The Scotsman this week. “ Catton’s doorstopper of a novel read like a recall the Victorian works so…

Catton’s Favourite First Line Unfolds Breathlessly

Catton’s Favourite First Line Unfolds Breathlessly

Man Booker nominee New Zealand author Eleanor Catton chooses her favourite first line for a Guardian catalogue, and it’s from another of our own, Janet Frame’s 1961 novel Faces in the Water. Faces in the…

Lighting Up the Longlist with Her Second Novel

Lighting Up the Longlist with Her Second Novel

New Zealand author Eleanor Catton, 27, has made the Man Booker Prize longlist for her novel, The Luminaries, which will be released in New Zealand on 1 August and in the US in October….

Clonakilty Women Have Their Say in New Book

Clonakilty Women Have Their Say in New Book

New Zealand-born author Alison Wickham, a resident of Clonakilty in Cork, Ireland, launches a self-published book this week called Women Speak, which tells the stories of 14 very different women, now aged from their…