Whanganui author Airine Beautrais reads from and discusses her short story collection Bug Week which won the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.  Airini wil be in discussion with journalist and book reviewer Kiran Dass.  Copies of Bug Week will be available at the event courtesy of Paige’s for sale and signing.

Sunday 27 June 2021, 4.30pm @ Sarjeant Gallery on the Quay

The two 2021 University of Canterbury (UC) Ursula Bethell writers-in-residence come at these questions from very different perspectives that are in some ways comparable. Both writers will share their experience at a free Tauhere UC Connect public talk on the radical use of language, on the evening of Wednesday 30 June at the University of Canterbury’s Ilam campus and livestreamed.

Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish Iranian who, during his lifetime, has witnessed his native dialect taken over by Farsi in ways that embody the cultural marginalisation of his people. During his time as an Ursula Bethell Writer-in-Residence at UC, Behrouz seeks to resist this imaginative and literary colonisation by writing fiction in his people’s language. Greek-New Zealand poet and translator Vana Manasiadis is dedicating her Ursula Bethell Writer’s Residency to the project of ‘translanguage’; the creation of literary works that explore and celebrate the experience of movement between languages and so between minority and dominant cultural spaces.

In 2021 Aotearoa New Zealand, as we seek to embrace a future beyond the limits of monolingualism, these two exceptional writers have much to teach us. Please join them, and moderator Professor Philip Armstrong from UC’s English Department, for a stimulating, transgressive and boundary-pushing conversation about the relationship between language, power, literature, imagination, home and exile.

Vana Manasiadis is a Greek-New Zealand poet and translator who has been moving between Aotearoa and Kirihi Greece the last 20 years. Her most recent book The Grief Almanac: A Sequel, followed her earlier Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima in experimenting with hybridity, pluralism and code-switching, and is being translated into Greek for forthcoming publication in Greece.

Behrouz Boochani is an internationally acclaimed author and journalist who for six years was incarcerated as a political prisoner by the Australian government on Manus Island and then held in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. In November 2019 he was invited to Christchurch, New Zealand where, after being recognised as a refugee under the UN Convention on Refugee Status, he was been granted asylum. He became a Senior Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre. His book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison (Picador 2018) has won numerous awards including the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature.

The Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing, jointly funded by UC’s College of Arts and Creative New Zealand, was established in 1979 to provide support for New Zealand writers and foster New Zealand writing. The UC residency allows authors of proven merit in all areas of literary and creative activity an opportunity to work on an approved project within an academic environment. Since the inception of the Writers Residency, UC has been home to dozens of fiction-writers, poets and dramatists, many of whom have made valuable contributions to the development of young writers studying at the university. Since 1979, UC has hosted many renowned writers, including Keri Hulme, Kevin Ireland, David Eggleton, Eleanor Catton, Owen Marshall, Fiona Farrell, Tusiata Avia, and Victor Rodger.

UC Connect public lecture – Radical languages: Writers Behrouz Boochani & Vana Manasiadis challenge monolingualism, Presented by UC Arts writers-in-residence Behrouz Boochani and Vana Manasiadis, moderated by Professor Philip Armstrong, University of Canterbury, from 7pm-8pm, Wednesday 30 June 2021 – C1 lecture theatre in C-Block, Ilam campus, University of Canterbury. Register free to attend: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/public-lectures/

This is brilliant! Check out Faith Wilson’s review here.

‘As I drank every word of Rangikura, then back to Poūkangatus then back to Rangikura again, I felt myself defrost. Yes, poetry can be fucking good, can be genius even. That this enigmatic kid from Porirua, this Māori Mona Lisa, was out here, walking over the words of the dead white poets in stiletto heels and dripping gold, was doing her own kanikani, the one only she knows, evolved from ancestral blessedness, showing the world, showing me, showing you, how it’s done.’

 

Annual award of $10,000 – open now with deadline of 20 August 2021

Open to writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama who are currently working on a new project.

Opens for applications between June and August in any given year 

Applicants must be members of the NZ Society of Authors. More information below, or email the national office.

Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship information

Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship 2021 Application form

Gaps in the Light, Iona Winter, Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021

Iona Winter reads ‘Gregorian’

Iona Winter (Waitaha/Kāi Tahu) lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her hybrid work is widely published and anthologised in literary journals internationally. Iona creates work to be performed, relishing cross-modality collaboration, and holds a Master of Creative Writing. She has authored three collections, Gaps in the Light (2021), Te Hau Kāika (2019), and then the wind came (2018). Skilled at giving voice to difficult topics, she often draws on her deep connection to land, place and whenua.

Ad Hoc Fiction page

2021 Kathleen Grattan Prize announcement

International Writers’ Workshop NZ Inc (IWW) is delighted to announce that renowned New Zealand poet Vana Manasiadis, will judge The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems later this year. The official announcement was made at IWW’s annual Mid-Winter lunch in Northcote yesterday.

Vana Manasiadis is a New Zealand-Greek writer, translator and creative writing teacher whose collection of poetry The Grief Almanac: A Sequel was launched in May 2019. Along with Behrouz Boochani Vana is a 2021 Ursula Bethell Writer-in-Residence at Te Whare Wānaga o Waitaha Canterbury University.

The prize of $1,000 – which is made possible due to an ongoing bequest from the Jocelyn Grattan Charitable Trust – is for a cycle or sequence of unpublished poems that has a common link or theme. This is the thirteenth year IWW has had the honour of organising the Prize.

In 2020, the prize was won by Wanaka poet Liz Breslin for her sequence titled: In Bed with the Feminists.  

The competition is free for IWW members to enter.  It is very easy for aspiring poets and writers to join IWW to be eligible to enter their poetry in the competition.

Previous winners over the past few years include: Liz Breslin (2020) Siobhan Harvey (2019) Heather Bauchop (2018), Janet Newman (2017), Michael Giacon (2016) Maris O’Rourke (2015) and Julie Ryan (2014.)

Manasiadis said: “The prize is so important to the country’s literary landscape, and I am very honoured to be judging this year’s competition. I can’t wait to spend time with the talents of the 2021 entries – and I hope there will be many of them!”

President of IWW, Duncan Perkinson said: “As a writing group, we are proud to organise The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems and we are thrilled to have Vana judge this year’s competition. Both of the two previous winners (Liz Breslin in 2020 and Siobhan Harvey in 2019) have used the prize as a springboard to launch their books – In Bed with the Feminists and Ghosts – with both having been released in the past couple of months.”

About the Judge

Born in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Vana Manasiadis has been moving between Aotearoa New Zealand and Europe the last 25 years. Her poetry experiments with hybridity and code-switching and has been translated into Greek and Italian, and she has edited and translated from the Greek for Shipwrecks/Shelters, a selection of contemporary Greek poetry. In 2018 she co-edited Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation with Maraea Rakuraku.

Preparatory Workshop

As well as judging the competition, Manasiadis will conduct a workshop on Writing Poetry at IWW’s meeting venue, the Lindisfarne Room at St Aidan’s Church, 97 Onewa Road, Northcote, Auckland on Tuesday August 17th. Doors open at 10 am and the workshop runs from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm. While visitors are welcome to attend the workshop for a $10 visitor fee, potential entrants must have joined IWW before July 20th in order to enter the competition.

About the Competition and about IWW

The rules for the competition, details of how to join IWW, meeting times and other activities of the workshop, which meets on the first and third Tuesdays of the month from February to November and runs several competitions a year, are available from the IWW website: iww.co.nz.

Key Dates for The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems in 2021

20 July: Last day for new members to join IWW to be eligible to enter this year’s Prize.

17 August: Workshop with Vana Manasiadis on writing poetry.

5 October: Closing date for entries.

16 November: Announcement of the 2021 winner of The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems.

Contact

For further information about the Prize or about IWW, contact Duncan Perkinson, email iww-writers@outlook.com or check out the website