In the next episode of our NZSA Oral History Podcast Kevin Ireland recounts murder threats, bitter rivalries and underground bunkers. It sounds like the pages of a thriller but that’s just what happened at NZSA meetings!
New Zealand poet and fiction writer Kevin Ireland has been honoured for his services to literature in New Zealand, receiving an OBE and a Prime Minister’s Award. Along with his writing, one of the ways Kevin advanced New Zealand literature was by spending two years as the president of PEN New Zealand. In June 2000, Kevin talked to preeminent New Zealand historian Michael King about his time as NZSA president and his life as a writer – it’s a not to be missed episode!
You can listen to the NZSA Oral History Podcast, hosted by Karyn Hay, on our website, Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
What to know more about the NZSA Oral History Podcast series? Read the NZ Herald article about the series on our website.
For more about the project’s history and a glimpse of some of the writers coming up next year listen to Tessa Duder and Deborah Shepard’s interview on Standing Room Only. (Deborah’s book The Writing Life came out of interviews she originally did for the NZSA Oral History project).
