• New name for Sargeson Fellowship

    6 February 2025 The Sargeson Trust is delighted to announce that the 38-year-old Sargeson Fellowship will from 2026 be known as the Ireland Wilson Sargeson Fellowships. For almost four decades, the Sargeson Fellowship has supported scores of Aotearoa New Zealand writers in the memory of distinguished author and generous mentor Frank Sargeson. Under the new […]

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  • Farewell to Brian Turner

    NZSA member Brian Turner has died. …” A major New Zealand author, primarily as a poet of the Otago landscape but also as a sometimes intensely argumentative essayist with a very real loathing of forces and people wishing to destroy the Otago landscape, Turner died yesterday morning, at sunrise, after a heart attack.” Poet, environmentalist, […]

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  • Samesame But Different 2025 Festival Programme

    The very first Samesame But Different festival in 2016 saw Peter Wells provide a space for LGBTQIA+ writers and readers to come together in a unique way. In 2025 we are celebrating the 10th SSBD festival! As we reflect on ten years of Samesame But Different, this festival is an opportunity to celebrate milestones, remember […]

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  • Entries for the 2025 Pikihuia Awards are now open

    This year the Pikihuia Awards will celebrate 30 years of supporting and nurturing Māori writers. Held biennially, the Pikihuia Awards have welcomed short story submissions in both te reo Māori and English. Following the exciting new categories introduced in 2023, The Māori Literature Trust is proud to announce that we are again adjusting the genre […]

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  • HarperCollinsPublishers ANZ: Karen Ferns retires and Sandy Weir new NZ General Manager

    Changes at HarperCollins   From Jim Demetriou CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER HarperCollinsPublishers Australia & New Zealand It is with mixed emotions that I announce the retirement of our New Zealand General Manager, Karen Ferns. Karen’s extraordinary career in publishing began in the 1980s at Penguin, where she rose to the position of Marketing Director. She then […]

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  • 2025 IPEd Student Prize shortlist announced

    Four students from two Australian universities have made the shortlist for the 2025 Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) Student Prize. The shortlisted students are: Portia Abbott, a Master of Writing and Publishing student at RMIT University, for her essay “One book (doesn’t) fit all: Suggestions for more dyslexia-friendly print books”. Portia’s essay was an industry […]

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  • Fulbright-CNZ Pacific Writer’s Residency

    Applications are now open for the 2025 Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer’s Residency. This award is for an established New Zealand writer of Pacific heritage to carry out work on a creative writing project exploring Pacific identity, culture or history at the University of Hawai‘i for three months. “During my stay in Hawai’i I gained […]

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  • Kōanga Festival 2025: Playwrights Programme SUBMISSIONS OPEN

    “Ka tangi te pīpīwharauroa, ko te karere a Mahuru” Kōanga is heralded by the blossoming of the kōwhai and the call of the pīpīwharauroa as it returns to our shores. This is traditionally a time of joining together and combining efforts to prepare the ground and plant for the next harvest. We see this festival […]

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  • Burning, bestselling and beautiful books nominated for 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

     THURSDAY 30 JANUARY 2025 Popular books that pack a punch and have hit the mark with readers across the motu in the past year have also found favour with the judges of the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, who reveal their longlists today. Unforgettable and amusing memoirs, novels that move and unnerve, illustrated books […]

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  • Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2025

    • The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $500. • A selection of the best entries will be published in the Forty South Short Story Anthology 2025. TERMS AND CONDITIONS • The prize is for short stories up to 3,000 words, having an island, or island-resonant, theme. • Writers will be citizens of […]

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  • Witi Ihimaera named Royal Society of Literature International Writer 2024

    Royal Society of Literature International Writers 2024 10 December 2024 ~ This Reading Life The RSL International Writers honour is a relatively new award ‘recognising the contribution of writers across the globe to literature in English, and the power of literature to transcend borders to bring people together.’ I confess that I had not heard of this before and would […]

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  • Warning AI Alert from Hugh Stephens

    Read on blog or Reader Hugh Stephens Blog Read on blog or Reader Writers! Do You Know your Drafts on MS Word are being Scooped by Microsoft to Build its AI Algorithm? But You Can Stop This From Happening (Read On). By hughstephensblog on January 18, 2025   (NB Microsoft has denied these claims and you can read their […]

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