Tag: NZ award winning authors

New Podcast! The Meow Gurrrls ”Famdamily“ poetry launch

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Recently at Te Awe Brandon Street Library we were delighted to do a very special launch event celebrating the release of Famdamily, the latest poetry collection by iconic Wellington poetry collective The Meow Gurrrls.

The Meow Gurrrls are a group of Wellington and Kāpiti Coast poets, named in part after Meow Café and Bar in Wellington where the group meet, who for some time now have been sharing poetry, wine, food and fine company.

This fabulous event featured readings from many of the collective and was hosted by the wonderful Mary McCallum from Makaro Press and The Cuba Press.

It proved to be an evening of unmissable new poetry from these acclaimed wordsmiths. The evening featured readings from six of the group, and was full of feats of verbal gymnastics and poetic daring.

If however you did miss it, do not fear!  The Meow Gurrrls gave us permission to record the proceedings and we are now proud to present a podcast of the evening for your enjoyment.

The poets who read at this very special event were Janis Freegard, Kirsten Le Harivel, Mary Jane Duffy, Mary Macpherson, Abra Sandi King and Sudha Rao. We wish to extent our heartfelt thanks to The Meow Gurrrls and Mary McCallum.

You may now listen to that podcast below, or by following this link!

Continue reading “New Podcast! The Meow Gurrrls ”Famdamily“ poetry launch” →

Interview: Emergency Weather Author Tim Jones

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Emergency Weather is Tim Jones’ debut novel, his previous literary outings have included releasing several acclaimed poetry collections and editing award -winning science fiction short story collections.

Emergency Weather is a powerful, prescient and compelling climate change thriller set in Aotearoa, and more precisely the Wellington region. The novel focusses on three very different people who have to face the climate crisis head-on, when a giant storm builds and then hits our capital city.

Tim Jones. Photo Copyright: Ebony Lamb.

Wellingtonian Tim Jones was awarded the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. He co-edited Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, which won the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work. His recent books include poetry collection New Sea Land (Mākaro Press, 2016) and climate fiction novella Where We Land (The Cuba Press, 2019). He is also a climate change activist.

Continue reading “Interview: Emergency Weather Author Tim Jones” →

Our Interview with Little Doomsdays Creators, Nic Low and Phil Dadson

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Little Doomsdays
Little Doomsdays by Nic Low and Phil Dadson on the library catalogue
Little Doomsdays by Nic Low and Phil Dadson

Little Doomsdays is a lavishly illustrated collaborative art book between musician/painter Phil Dadson and writer Nic Low. It’s the fifth in the ‘kōrero series’ of books, conceived and edited by Lloyd Jones.

In Little Doomsdays, legendary musician and painter Phil Dadson responds to a wildly innovative text by Ngāi Tahu writer Nic Low that’s steeped in te ao Māori. Together they play with the notion of ark and arc in a manner that is at once beguiling and challenging.

Nic Low, head and shoulders shot, against a brick wall backdrop
Nic Low

Nic Low (Ngāi Tahu) is the partnerships editor at NZ Geographic magazine and the former programme director of WORD Christchurch. A prize-winning author of short fiction, essays and criticism, his writing on wilderness, technology and race has been widely published and anthologised on both sides of the Tasman.

 

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Audition: New science fiction and fantasy titles

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What I know about structures of fiction comes from hairdressing. 

– Quote from Pip Adam’s The Spinoff interview.  

Our special featured title in this month’s selection of newly acquired science fiction and fantasy titles is Audition by Wellington’s very own Pip Adam. Pip Adam is the author of four novels: Audition, Nothing to See, which was shortlisted for the Acorn Prize for Fiction, The New Animals, which won the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction, and I’m Working on a Building. Her short story collection Everything We Hoped For won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction.

Audition is the title of her latest novel, and it is also the name of the spaceship in the book.
Audition is hurtling through space towards the event horizon, and squashed immobile into its rooms are three giants. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing. As they talk, they might be recovering their shared memory of what has been done to their incarcerated former selves, or are they constructing those selves from memory-scripts that have been implanted in them?

Audition confirms Pip Adam’s position as one of our finest contemporary world class writers. All of Pip’s work is bold, daring, unexpected, exceptional and sometimes challenging. Audition defies categorisation, it is part science fiction and part social realism, but there is a whole lot more going on in it. Continue reading “Audition: New science fiction and fantasy titles” →

Birnam Wood: Our September eBook Club pick!

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eBook Club pick: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Read the book that everyone wants to read.

For free and without any waiting.

Welcome to the WCL eBook Club, where each month we highlight a popular eBook in our digital collection and give access to an unlimited number of downloads on Libby. That means no waiting in long reserves queues- you’ll get instant access to our monthly popular pick!

From September 1st till September 14th, our eBook Club title is the international bestselling sensation everyone is talking about Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton.

Birnam Wood was one of the most hotly anticipated novels of 2023, both here and overseas. It was released to rave reviews; the Guardian described it as “a dark and brilliant novel about the violence and tawdriness of late capitalism”. Inspired in part by Birnam Wood in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, one of the key subjects in the book is the battle to save a guerrilla community garden project in Christchurch called Birnam Wood.

This stunning novel was only released a few months ago and has dominated the fiction best-seller lists ever since. Birnam Wood has already featured heavily on many of the hot, must-read lists for the year.

We decided that the demand for Birnam Wood was such that we had to make it our September eBook club title pick.

Continue reading “Birnam Wood: Our September eBook Club pick!” →

Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories Author Talk 31 August

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Join us for a very special event at

Karori Library 

on Thursday August 31st, 6 – 7 pm

Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories is a vibrant collection of contemporary Māori short stories, featuring twenty-seven writers working in English and te reo Māori. The writers range from famous names and award winners – Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Whiti Hereaka, Becky Manawatu, Zeb Nicklin – to emerging voices like Shelley Burne-Field, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Anthony Lapwood and Colleen Maria Lenihan. Edited by Paula Morris and consulting editor Darryn Joseph.

In this showcase of contemporary talent, Hiwa explores the range of styles and subjects in the flourishing world of Māori fiction.

Named for Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the ninth star of Matariki which signifies vigorous growth and dreams of the year ahead, this anthology reveals the flourishing world of Māori writing today in Aotearoa and beyond. The event promises to be unmissable.

Writers who will be speaking at this very special event are:

 Whiti Hereaka

 Jack Remiel Cottrell

Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) is an award-winning playwright, novelist and screenwriter. Whiti’s books include The Graphologist’s Apprentice, which was shortlisted for Best First Book in the Commonwealth Writers Prize South East Asia and Pacific 2011, Bugs which won the Honour Award, Young Adult Fiction, New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, 2014, Legacy, which won the award for Best Young Adult Fiction at the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and  Kurangaituku, winner of  the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. When not writing multi award-winning books, Whiti is a barrister and solicitor. She has held a number of writing residencies and appeared at many literary festivals in New Zealand and overseas.

Jack Remiel Cottrell (Ngati Rangi) grew up in Wellington and now lives in Auckland. His flash fiction collection was awarded the Wallace Prize for best manuscript in the University of Auckland Master of Creative Writing class of 2020.  Other than fiction, his main passion is sport. He has been a rugby referee for ten years and his latest project is a novel set during a cricket game.

This event will be hosted  by our very own Louise Dowdell.

We anticipate that this event will be very popular and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. We recommend arriving early to get a good seat! See our Facebook event listing here.

Hiwa : Contemporary Maori Short Stories
“An essential new anthology of our best Māori short fiction. Hiwa is a vibrant, essential collection of contemporary Māori short stories, featuring twenty-seven writers working in English or te reo Māori. The writers range from famous names and award winners – Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Whiti Hereaka, Becky Manawatu, Zeb Nicklin – to emerging voices like Shelley Burne-Field, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Anthony Lapwood and Colleen Maria Lenihan. A showcase of contemporary talent, Hiwa includes biographical introductions for each writer’s work, and explores the range of styles and subjects in the flourishing world of Māori fiction. Named for Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the ninth star of Matariki, signifying vigorous growth and dreams of the year ahead, this anthology reveals the flourishing world of Māori writing today, in Aotearoa and beyond.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.