• MANDY HAGER WINS THE PRESTIGIOUS STORYLINES MARGARET MAHY MEDAL

    Multi-award-winning Wellington-based author Mandy Hager is the winner of the 2019 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for life-time achievement and a distinguished contribution to New Zealand’s literature for young people. Best-known as a writer of young adult fiction, Mandy Hager has also written fiction and non-fiction for younger children, and for educational programmes. In 2017 she […]

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  • Manus Island detainee wins major Australian Book Award

    Detained Manus refugee wins Australia’s richest literary prize Behrouz Boochani … wrote his award-winning book bit-by-bit via text messaging and Whats App from Papua New Guinea… An Iranian asylum-seeker detained in Papua New Guinea under Australian asylum laws has won Australia’s most valuable literary prize for a book he reportedly wrote using the online messaging […]

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  • Emerging writer wins trans-Tasman mentorship with publisher

    The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc), Hachette Australia and Hachette New Zealand are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019 NZSA / Hachette Mentor Program. Congratulations to J S Michaels who has been chosen to work on a new draft of her manuscript under Hachette Australia’s guidance, receiving constructive critique on the manuscript from […]

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  • NZSA / Auckland Museum Research Grant + Residency – Recipient Announced

    The New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) and Auckland War Memorial Museum are delighted to announce the recipient of the NZSA Auckland Museum Research + Residency Grant.

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  • New Year’s Honours – congratulations to our literature sector recipients

    Our poet laureate, Associate professor Selina Tusitala Marsh, past NZSA president Rosemary Wildblood, author and academic Dr Paula Morris, author and historian Edmund Bohan, poet and academic Dr Karlo Mila, publisher and author the Reverend George Bryant and staunch book industry supporter Carole Beu from the famous Women’s Bookshop have all received New Year’s Honours […]

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  • 2019 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow will explore stigma and stereotypes

    The 2019 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship will help a playwright challenge Asian stereotypes and a poet press against the silence and stigma connected to New Zealand’s history of forced adoptions. Chloe Honum, a poet from Auckland currently living and working in Texas, will use her fellowship to write a collection of poems, based around the practice […]

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  • ‘Scalp-prickling dazzler of a novel’ wins Adam Foundation Prize

      A sharp, funny, ‘white-hot burn’ of a novel has been awarded the 2018 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing by Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). Laura Southgate wrote the winning book, The Boyfriend, as part of her 2018 Master of Arts (MA) at the IIML.   The Boyfriend tells the story […]

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  • Paula Morris is the 2018 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship

      The French Riviera and New York –Two Game Changing Destinations for Three Prolific NZ Artists Time, space, and inspiration are what dreams are made of. But this week, dreams turn into reality for three New Zealand artists who will be awarded two of New Zealand’s most coveted international residencies: the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship […]

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  • Michael King Writers Centre launches 2018 SIGNALS

      Signals 2018 – Supporting emerging young NZ writers   The Michael King Writers Centre launched the seventh issue of Signals, its literary journal for young writers, on Saturday 8 December at the National Library in Parnell. The journal features the work of senior secondary students who took part in this year’s Young Writers Programme, as […]

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  • Randall Cottage Writing Fellow 2019 is Paddy Richardson

    Randell Cottage Writers Trust  The selection panel has selected and the Trustees have agreed: the 2019 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing Fellow is Dunedin writer Paddy Richardson. Paddy will be working on an historical novel: ‘The Green of Spring’. The sequel to 2017’s ‘Through the Lonesome Dark, it’s set in WWI New Zealand, and […]

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  • The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems 2018 Winner Announced

    International Writers’ Workshop (IWW) is delighted to announce that the 2018 winner of The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems is Heather Bauchop of Dunedin.   The winning sequence, entitled The Life in Small Deaths, is described by Heather as a strangely-lengthed narrative poetry sequence that grew out of a 60,000 word manuscript […]

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  • Judges for 2019 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults share a passion for the transformative power of books

      A panel of judges combining deep knowledge of the children’s literature community with youthful wisdom and a shared passion for the transformative power of books has been selected to deliberate over entries to the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Highly respected reviewer and librarian Crissi Blair will convene the […]

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