• Space to breathe

    22 Jul 2019 The latest offering of grants and awards in one of our key creative industries is rightly seen as something to boast about. [In partnership with NZSA and CLNZ] There’s less than a week for would-be or established writers in New Zealand to apply for $20,000 worth of research grants on offer. From August 2 there’s […]

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  • Auckland Writers Festival Continues Its Record-Breaking Run

    People of all ages flocked to the 2019 Auckland Writers Festival this week, which broke its previous attendance record with more than 82,000 seats filled across seven days of tremendous conversations, inspiring performances and theatres filled with laughter at venues throughout the city’s centre. The Festival, which has seen year-on-year growth in the last eight […]

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  • OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS 2019 WINNERS’ ANNOUNCEMENT

    OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS 2019 WINNERS’ ANNOUNCEMENT ‘Urgently Relevant’ Novel Wins Country’s Richest Literary Award Dame Fiona Kidman has won this year’s $53,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her novel, This Mortal Boy, a work described by the judges as ‘moving, memorable, authentic and urgently relevant to […]

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  • National Poetry Day 2019

    https://youtu.be/yICpsit29lw Unleashing the unifying power of poetry in New Zealand communities On Friday 23 August 2019, Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day will once again give New Zealanders the opportunity to come together and unleash the power of poetry in their own communities.  Last year, a massive 150 events took place nationwide – double that of […]

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  • A wave of women’s voices carry Best New Zealand Poems

      The latest edition of the online anthology Best New Zealand Poems is now live, featuring 25 poems chosen by Dunedin-based novelist, poet, playwright, and non-fiction author Fiona Farrell. The International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) at Victoria University of Wellington has published the anthology annually since 2001, with support from Creative New Zealand. While […]

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  • Auckland Writers Festival 2019 programme

    The Prime Minister, Jeff Tweedy, Sir Antony Beevor among Stellar 2019 Auckland Writers Festival Line-up The 20th Auckland Writers Festival programme launches today, revealing a line-up of more than 200 events featuring over 230 globally acclaimed public intellectuals and much-loved literary stars offering conversation, laughter, ideas and inspiration for audiences of all ages from 13 […]

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  • Winners of the 2018 NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition Announced

    Winners of the 2018 NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition Announced Gillian Roach is this year’s winner of the NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition. Post-graduate student of the Masters in Creative Writing, AUT. Roach is an Auckland poet and fiction writer who recently completed the Masters In Creative Writing course at AUT. She studied […]

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  • New survey shows continued drop in Kiwis reading – Annual NZ Book Council report

      442,600 adult New Zealanders didn’t read a book in the past year, according to new research out today. Books are competing with television and computer screens for our leisure time, and 45-54 year olds had the lowest percentage reading of any age group. The study also found that fewer Kiwi men are reading books. […]

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  • National Schools Poetry Award celebrates New Zealand’s poets of the future

    A year 13 student at Wellington’s Queen Margaret College has won first place in the 2018 International Institute of Modern Letters’ (IIML) National Schools Poetry Award, with her poem ‘Vignettes’.   Ilena Shadbolt receives a prize of $500 and the opportunity to attend a poetry masterclass with poets James Brown and Hera Lindsay Bird at the […]

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  • Biggest ever National Poetry Day supported by award-winning Kiwi poets

      Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day #NZPoetryDay announces its largest ever celebration of poetry today, with more than 135 events programmed to take place around New Zealand. Held annually on the fourth Friday in August, National Poetry Day sees award-winning poets join poetry enthusiasts from all over the country in a marathon programme of poetry […]

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  • Dr Anita Heiss – one of the NZSA National Writers Forum 2018 Keynote speakers

    Dr Anita Heiss, one of Australia’s best-known authors of indigenous literature is visiting Auckland from 21-23 September as a keynote speaker at the 2018 National Writers Forum. Organised by the New Zealand Society of Authors, this conference is the only national conference for writers from across the profession. Dr Heiss, who is an author, poet, […]

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  • Sarah Broom Poetry Prize – Finalists 2018

    We are delighted to announce four finalists for the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize in 2018. Stuart Airey is a poet with a day job as an optometrist, which involves using the logical, scientific part of his mind. He describes poetry as “letting me explore all the other bits”. Stuart began writing poetry a few years ago; […]

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