Marion Day
Marion Day lives in the beautiful Marlborough Sounds. She has many published books, one of her greatest being Injun Joe, The Legend of Smoking Joe Collins (The Halcyon Press, 2013). Blood Brothers, a second biography, was also successfully published by The Halcyon Press.
A series of nature picture books began with Spiny Sebastian Starfish, followed by Black Shag, The Little Feijoa Tree, Kōwhai Kids, Pepe & Tute, Dobby and Pakupaku Pīwakawaka. Along with her more humorous picture book Skiddies, all featured on Country Calendar.
Marion has won adult and children’s story competitions, including being shortlisted in the Joy Cowley Text Awards. One of her pre-teen stories was included in the ESA’s New Zealand textbook for secondary school students. Some of her picture books have been included in the Better Start Literacy Approach for Classrooms Year 0 to Year 3/4. She has had children’s stories published in anthologies.
Another success was as winner of the New Zealand Rural Women’s/MPI short story and photographic competition, which saw her in Parliament to accept an award. Marion won the Rural Women's New Zealand National Short Story Competition - Present category. Her story will appear in the RWZZ Centennial Book, available in bookshops in 2025.
In November 2021, the limited edition of Injun Joe was released. Reprinted by demand, this revised edition was limited to 350 copies, each signed and numbered; all copies were presold. The book is presented in an elegant suede-feel slipcase and retailed at $145.
Marion also had the honour of having her poem ‘Heightened Tones’ included in Bird Words: New Zealand Writers on Birds (Random House). He stunning coffee table book, Passion - Living, Feasting, and Writing Deep in the Marlborough Sounds, has been published with just under 2,000 copies sold.
Grab ya Boots! We're Going A-Hunting had a reprint, which sold out again. This book of adventure short stories and poetry for children aged 9 to 12 was co-written by her son and children from across New Zealand. Get Out! Go Wild! Outdoorsy Stories for Kids will be pulished in 2025.
Wellington City Libraries has chosen Pakupaku Pīwakawaka to have its pages transformed into billboards for a nature trail in one of Wellington's central parks. WCL works with the city's Parks, Sports, and Recreation staff on a project called Te Ara Pukapuka (Book Pathways). The billboards will be placed throughout nature trails and reserve pathways in Wellington for tamariki and their whānau to discover while exploring the region.
Dobby, the remarkable story of a dog who became lost for seven days in the snow-clad mountains of the Southern Alps/Kā Tiritiri o te Moana, and beautifully illustrated by realist artist Emma Gustafson has had a further reprint. Elton the Skycrane, was published in 2024 - a series of four picture books and has fabulour reviews. Elton is a USA Readers Favourite five-star medal winner.
Marion is thrilled her story Belladonna has been accepted for Flash Frontier (an adventure in short fiction) Moana/Ocean. Whakaari, her debut young adult novel has been released.
Genre:
- Adult Fiction
- Biography
- Children's Fiction
- Children's Non-Fiction
- Non-Fiction
- Young Adult
Skills:
Branch:
Top of the South
Location:
Picton
Publications:
Passion - Living, Feasting and Writing deep in the Marlborough Sounds
Passion – Living, Feasting and Writing deep in the Marlborough Sounds takes the reader on a cultural journey, paralleled with the past, sweeping across land and interior sea, soaring above mountains into dynamic skies, fossicking around the garden and into the depths of author Marion Day’s heart and community. It gradually reveals Marion’s lifestyle as it wends its way through a pathway of living, feasting and writing in a small, semi-isolated area of outstanding beauty in New Zealand.
The moment Passion is opened, there is a liveliness throughout its pages while it showcases the central aspects of life within Clova Bay – one of the three main bays making up the Pelorus/Te Hoire Sound, the biggest of the Marlborough Sounds.
This canvas of ink dances its own tune. Each section awakens to a veritable feast of past and present, photography, recipes, poetry, short story and diary entries.
Living on the doorstep of a unique inland sea formed at the end of the last ice age and surrounded by mountains which grow from its depths, this back-to-nature pictorial journal highlights Marion’s and her partner Steve’s everyday living – one Marion considers quite normal, but perhaps is not!
Thorough research has linked past to present, allowing Passion to hold its own as a social history book where the reader is drawn into Marion’s own passions, how she breathes and what she does in order to reside happily and with freedom in a remote place of considerable natural significance.
A comprehensive index allows easy, fast cross-referencing of this bounteous book that will take pride of place on any coffee table, and can be picked up at any time over a flat white or glass of celebratory Moet.
In Passion, Marion’s penmanship also shows how she feels about life and the landscape surrounding her; sometimes thoughtful, other times whimsical, benevolent and sometimes a little sentimental. All contribute to a unique book, one that will appeal to a wide variety of audiences.
Marion is an accomplished author, writing over a variety of genres.