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Palmerston North City Library have selected books by 4 outstanding New Zealand writers. Each of these writers will be visiting the library to discuss their books with participants of the Community Reads programme.
Find out more about these talented writers here:
Shonagh Koea
Author of The Kindness of Strangers
Shonagh Koea, fiction writer, was born in Taranaki and grew up in Hawkes Bay. An assiduous writer as a child, at the age of 8 she won two guineas in a Woman’s Weekly competition. She became a journalist, and in her late teens married a fellow journalist, later editor of the Taranaki Herald. He died suddenly in 1987 and three years later Koea left New Plymouth and moved to Kingsland, Auckland, pursuing her interest in antiques and paintings, which had already resulted in a number of articles.
Koea’s fiction was first published when she was in her early 30s. In 1981 she won the Air New Zealand Short Story Competition and since then, stories have appeared regularly, several being anthologised. Now a full-time writer still living in Auckland, she has published two collections of short stories and three novels, and has won three major literary grants.
Also by Shonagh Koea
Websites
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Mary McCallum
Author of The Blue
Mary McCallum was born in Zambia, and has lived in New Zealand since she was four. She has worked as a broadcasting journalist in New Zealand and Europe, and continues to work as a freelance writer and reviewer.
The Blue is Mary’s first novel. It won her the NZ Society of Author’s Lilian Ida Smith Award 2003/4 and an MA with distinction at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters.
Married to Ian, Mary spends much of her time raising three children in their house by the sea and writing her second novel.
Also by Mary McCallum
Websites
Mary McCallum's blog about The Blue
Massey News article
Penguin Group interviews Mary McCallum
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Duncan Sarkies
Author of Two Little Boys
Duncan Sarkies is best known as the co-writer, with his brother Robert Sarkies, of the hugely successful 1999 film Scarfies. Scarfies was shown at numerous international film festivals including Cannes and Sundance, and on its release in New Zealand quickly became one of the country's highest grossing local films.
Duncan’s plays are The Ceramic Camel (1993), Lovepuke (1993), Saving Grace (1994), Snooze (1997), Twelve (1997), Blue Vein (1997), Special (1997), and Bystander (1998). Lovepuke was published in Eleven Young Playwrights (1994). In 1994 he was awarded the Sunday Star Times Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, and in 1995 Saving Grace won the Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for Best New Zealand Play. Duncan adapted Saving Grace into a film, released in 1997.
Duncan was awarded the 1998 Louis Johnson New Writers' Bursary. His first book is Stray Thoughts and Nose Bleeds (1999), a collection of prose pieces, only some of which fit the description of ‘short stories’. Others more closely resemble scripts for a stand-up comedy routine. All are characterised by an eccentric black humour, bizarre and poignant by turns, which can leave the reader (or audience) wondering whether the author is laughing with them or at them.
Also by Duncan Sarkies
Websites
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Jill Trevelyan
Author of Rita Angus
Also by Jill Trevelyan
Websites
New Zealand Herald article
Rita Angus exhibition at Te Papa
The Press article |
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