Tuesday 2 July
12 noon
Whare W?nanga at Central City Library 44-46 Lorne St
FREE EVENT
NZSA Auckland Branch is proud to bring you the Literary Lounge Series this June and July. ‘The New Writing and Publishing Landscape’ will feature NZSA CEO and One Tree House publisher, Jenny Nagle, with Director and founder of the Creative Hub Writing Centre, John Cranna.
Jenny Nagle joined the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) as Chief Executive Officer in June 2017. She has worked in general management, sales and marketing across the trade and educational publishing landscape in both New Zealand and Australia for over 30 years. She began working in publishing with Hodder & Stoughton’s educational division in NZ, before moving to trade publishing, sales and marketing across the Tasman, as Marketing Director. Over the last 30 years Jenny has worked for Thomas Nelson, HodderHeadline, School Supplies, BestStart Educare, and APN (Kid’s Club) and the APA Small Publishers Association. She founded the independent distributor Addenda (sold 2004) and created The Bookie for specialist institutional supply. Through these years she has attended many international book fairs and worked with a host of writers for promotional tours and literary festivals.
Addenda won The Best of the Bestsellers Award, from Booksellers NZ, twice. While in Australia she served 4 elected years on the Australian Publishers’ Association Trade Book Marketing Committee (Life. Be In it/Reading campaigns; copyright law review) and the NSW Children’s Book Council, including the inaugural CBC national conference committee and was on the Storylines Foundation Management Committee 2017-8. She managed the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Final Programme in NZ in 2009 and is a Director of the fledgling children’s press OneTree House.
John Cranna was the Auckland Branch Chair of the Society of Authors for four years. He is the Director and founder of the Creative Hub Writing Centre in downtown Auckland, which employs a number of leading NZ authors as mentors and tutors. Many of its graduates have published novels or won prizes in national writing awards, including 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize-winners in the recent Sunday Star Times National Short Story Award. John has published two books of fiction, one of non-fiction, and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, and the NZ Book Award for Fiction. He grew up in NZ but lived for ten years in London where he worked on urban renewal campaigns in UK’s premier red-light and crime district, Kings Cross. His books have been published in Australia, UK and France.
He wrote the screenplay for the short film Accidents which was shown at the Venice Film Festival and other festivals around the world. From 2000 to 2005 he was managing editor of AA Directions which rose from fifth to most-read magazine in NZ with nearly a million readers. The National Business Review called this relaunch ‘one of the most remarkable transformations in New Zealand media history’. John ascribes this success to the fact that the magazine paid the best / word rate in New Zealand to its writers. ‘Writers excel when they’re well paid,’ he says.
John founded the AUT University Centre for Modern Writing, where he designed the Masters of Creative Writing, and was voted Best Post-Graduate Teacher by students at the University. He is also the Director of a communications consultancy www.JohnCranna.com
NZSA Auckland is grateful to the M?t?tuhi Foundation for their generous support. The M?t?tuhi Foundation has been established by the Auckland Writers Festival to support the development of the literary landscape of New Zealand. To learn more about their grant programme visit their website.