NZSA Webworkshops – a series of webinars to enable ongoing professional development

Featuring writers and industry professionals offering virtual workshops on topics such as self-publishing, romance writing, poetry, structure, short stories, pitching, contract advice, dystopian writing and the business of writing.

All Webworkshops are hosted on Zoom. Zoom is free to download

Learn more about what to expect in a Webworkshop in this article from the NZ Author magazine – Spring 2020

Webworkshops – 2024 season

From Stray Poems to Collection – with Mikaela Nyman

10am-12pm, Wednesday 31 July

Do you have a notebook, laptop or a drawer of poems waiting to be organised and assembled into a chapbook, book, or a series, but you’re not sure how to go about it? In this workshop award-winning poet Mikaela Nyman will share tips to help you shape your pieces into a coherent whole. We will be discussing intention, organising logic, form and format, and look at some practical examples. Participants are encouraged to bring any questions relating to their own work along.

Mikaela Nyman writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction in English and Swedish. She has published two critically acclaimed poetry collections in Swedish, as well as a literary essay with a selection of Helen Heath’s poems in translation. Her second poetry collection was awarded a major Finnish literature prize this year and is nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2024. She is the author of the climate fiction novel Sado (2020) and co-editor of Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (2021), both published by Te Herenga Waka University Press. Mikaela is also a mentor and manuscript assessor for the NZSA. In 2024, she holds the Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University.

Fee: NZSA Members – $35. (Non-members – $65)

Bookings close at 2pm on the day prior to the workshop or when workshop reaches capacity.
If you are unable to make the live event, all attendees can access a recording of the Webworkshop to view for one month after it is aired live.

Why Writing an Essay is Like Following a River – with Lynn Davidson

6pm-8pm, Tuesday 20 August

In this workshop we will look at the way creative essays follow a thought or idea in a discursive way, allowing for divergence, connections, and surprise.

Lynn Davidson writes poetry, memoir, essays and fiction. She had a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2013 and a Bothy Project Residency in the Cairngorms in 2016. She won the Poetry New Zealand Poetry Award, 2020, and was 2021 Randell Cottage Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence. In 2023 she was Mike Riddell Writer in Residence in the Ida Valley, Central Otago. Lynn lives in Edinburgh and calls Aotearoa New Zealand and Scotland home.