BIO   ANITA ARLOV   Anita writes flash fiction and poems. She has  judged flash fiction competitions, been a panelist at literary events and run workshops for flash fiction.   Anita was born in Christchurch and now lives in Auckland. The child of WW2 displaced persons from Croatia, who spoke several languages, Anita grew up  enjoying the cadence and  power of words, however she only began writing  after ( and in direct response to) the Canterbury earthquakes 2011. 

From 2012 to 2022 she  staged and emceed Inside Out Open Mic for Writers, a monthly spoken word gig for fresh writing with musician guests, originally at Cafe 121 in Ponsonby courtesy Chris Priestley and later at the Nix, Grafton courtesy Ockham Collective.  

Anita gained second place in the Kevin Ireland Poetry Competition 2013.   For three years she collated and distributed Anita’s Flier of Events, a free fortnightly email to 500 people listing arts events in the Auckland area. For two years she worked with a small team to host Writers Lounge, a series of public conversations with leading writers, playwrights and journalists, in the Auckland Art Gallery.   

                                                                        She won the Divine Muses New Voices Poetry Competition 2017 with 'Ballpoint', was commended in the NZ Poetry Society competition and was highly commended in the NFFD competition. Anita convened a team that ran the NZ Poetry Conference & Festival 2017, a successful three day celebration of all things poetry including vispo (visual poetry), spoken word and cine-poetics, with topical discussions, numerous workshops and readings from scores of writers including poets Laureate, Poetry Live! regulars and the South Auckland Poets’ Collective. 

In 2018 she won the NZ Flash Fiction Day Competition with 'He, She, It, They', which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She placed second in the takahe Monica Taylor Poetry Competition with 'In the Anteroom'. In 2019  She was Auckland Chair for NZ National Flash Fiction Day 2019.  Anita was placed second in the Bath Flash Fiction Competition June 2019 with 'a god and his famous digging stick dug this'.                

In 2020, Anita won the Sculpture in the Gardens writing competition with 'the Mihi of the Tarapuka'  . Her work appears in Best of Auckland 2020, Eight Poems 2020 ( Pear Tree Press) and in the online collection In The Time of Coronavirus compiled by Deborah Shepard.               

Anita’s writing is published widely in NZ and overseas including Flash Frontier: an Adventure in Short Fiction, Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Broadsheet,  New Flash Fiction Review,Takahe, Poduri Lirice: Poetical Bridges 2,  Best Small Fictions 2019 and Best Microfiction 2019, Literary Taxidermy 2021 and Breach of all Size 2022.

She was a finalist in the NPD Given Words competition in both 2022 and 2023.

Anita was an Ockham Collective Arts Resident in 2022.

She enjoys music, theatre and hanging out with family; is fascinated by the natural world and craves beachcombing.

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