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…
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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…
Man in the Running
Wellington author Craig Cliff’s debut short story collection, A Man Melting is in contention for this year’s Commonwealth £5, best first book award. Cliff is up against South African writer Cynthia Jele’s Happiness is…
Hyde’s Bitter Strength
Robin Hyde’s “remarkable tribute, in tough and rugged language, to a Chinese peasant”, the poem “Ku Li” is the Guardian’s “Poem of the Week”. “Ku Li” was begun in China during the second Sino-Japanese…
Migratory musings
Fleur Adcock’s Dragon Talk, her first poetry volume since 1997’s Looking Back — which explored “part of the poet’s wider enquiry into geographical and cultural displacement” — is reviewed by British poet Julian Stannard…
Dutton’s Digital Legacy
Arbiter of culture Denis Dutton was one of the most prominent patrons of the arts of the 21st century, writes Sam Sacks for the Wall Street Journal, reflecting on Dutton’s legacy. While being a…
London’s NZ treasure
Friends Peter Gordon, New Zealand chef, 47, and Briton Tim Lott, acclaimed writer, 54, are interviewed in The Independent on Sunday about how they met, their differences and Gordon’s tartan. “It was around the…
A Renaissance Man
“Denis Dutton, a distinguished philosopher, writer and digital-media guru who founded Arts & Letters Daily, one of the first Web sites to exploit the Internet as a vehicle for meaningful intellectual exchange, has died…
Generations Loved Her
New Zealand-born author Ruth Park, who moved to Sydney in 1942 and who was the author of classic Australian books such as The Harp in the South and The Muddleheaded Wombat, has died in…
Drawn to the horizon
It is the lot of New Zealanders to be peripatetic, says author Lloyd Jones, 55, in an interview with the Independent on Sunday’s James Kidd in Streatham, south London. But at least they have…
Acclaim for debut
Hastings-born author Alison Wong’s debut novel As the Earth Turns Silver, which won the 29 Janet Frame Award for Fiction and the Fiction Award winner at the 21 New Zealand Post Book Awards, has…
Simple literary lines
The New Zealand Book Council is running an advertisement in cinemas throughout the country with a simple message: “Go home, and read a book.” The ad, which rolls after the film credits, was created…
Psychological Primer
Wellington author and English teacher Denis Wright’s debut young adult novel Violence 11 is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times by Susan Carpenter who says the book “is a solid psychological primer that should…
Tears over Billy
“I read a picture book called Billy by Kate De Goldi to my daughter a few nights ago, and one of my tear glands experienced a distinct tweak,” British award-winning novelist David Mitchell admits…
Eerie Compulsion
Lloyd Jones’ latest novel Hand Me Down World is reviewed in the Financial Times. Hand Me Down World, about an illegal immigrant who makes her way from Tunis to Berlin to find her son…
Finding Jean Batten
New Zealand writer Ian Mackersey’s 1991 biography of aviatrix Jean Batten is reviewed by Joseph May on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Readers Blog page. “In unlocked the mystery…
