Blog Archives
Footmen and gout, Ann Beaglehole
Hungarian refugee Ann Beaglehole recalls Anne Frank, Lenin, Rupert Bear and Little Lord Fauntleroy. I read The Diary of Anne Frank at the age of 10. In the first entry dated 12 June 1942, Anne wrote: “I hope I shall…
It’s theatre, really, David Larsen
I’ve lost track of how often my ass has fallen asleep from boredom at literary festivals. I’ve lost track of how often I was supremely disappointed by a writer’s public persona. I used to be as earnest and serious and…
Word-drunk in Auckland, Gordon McLauchlan
Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2006 The announcement that The Sea had won last year’s Man Booker prize came through while I was reading it, and I have to confess I was perplexed and then annoyed – both by the…
Christmas list
New Zealand Books reviewers choose which book they’d most like to see in their Christmas stocking and why. Owen Marshall: The Journals of John Cheever, unfortunately out of print; a wonderfully candid and elegant insight into the life of…
Who are we writing for? Chris Else
Chris Else examines the literary contradictions between local content and global success I work in the creative writing industry. I teach courses, write assessments and act as a literary mentor. I believe in what I do. My advice has…
On the whale’s back, Miro Bilbrough
Miro Bilbrough on Whale Rider the movie I was unusually wary, seeing Whale Rider for the first time. was in the editing stages of a short feature film, a peculiarly sensitive time to see someone else’s film. Sequestered away…
Wine, wisdom and so on: Four founders look back at the beginnings of New Zealand Books
Retrospective Shelagh Duckham Cox We met first in Lauris Edmond’s house at 22 Grass St in the middle of 1990 and the six of us – Lauris, John Mansfield Thomson, Pat Hawthorne, Vincent O’Sullivan, Martin Bond and Shelagh Duckham…
Tagged with: Issue 50, Martin Bond, October 2001, Pat Hawthorne, Shelagh Duckham Cox, Vincent O’Sullivan
Posted in Opinion
Posted in Opinion
How to lose friends … Linda Burgess
Reviewing It’s been a good day. I read the last 20 pages, the treat I’d saved myself for the morning, then I got out of bed and wrote the review. Four hundred words in less than half an hour. The…
“Considerate autocrats”, Bill Sewell and Harry Ricketts
Editing Writers can get paranoid about editors. We know; we’re writers ourselves. Like many others, we’ve imagined editors to whom we’ve submitted work flicking through it in a spirit somewhere between malice and mischief. A number of masochistic scenarios spring…
Keyboard practice, C K Stead
C K Stead takes a new look at Janet Frame’s The Pocket Mirror. Janet Frame’s The Pocket Mirror (published by Braziller in New York in 1967 and here by Pegasus in 1968) has the appearance, not of a nervous first…