BY THE BOOK
ONE JUST WRITES Forty or so years ago, Fiona Kidman’s novels, short stories and poetry were dismissed by male critics as ‘the thinking woman’s Mills and Boon’ and ‘the menstrual school of poetry’. Her response? ‘One just keeps writing,’ Fiona says. Last month she won the $53,000 fiction prize in the Ockham NZ Book Awards for her novel A Mortal Boy. The Wellingtonian, 79, also won the national fiction prize 31 years ago. ‘It’s been a long time between drinks. It still means as much. And I won’t stop writing. What else would one do?’
NO PAY RISES
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
A LONG HISTORY
A 2019 report on writers’ earnings in New Zealand found authors earn an average of $15,200 per year from writing, many supplementing it with nonwriting work. The endurance required to write despite its penury became a theme in Season Two of the New Zealand Society of Authors’ podcast series. In seven podcasts, broadcaster Karyn Hay introduces and plays recorded interviews with authors conducted over the past 30 years for the NZSA Oral History Project.
Levin author (and Horowhenua College library manager) Carole Brungar has won the Australia/New Zealand Best Regional Fiction prize in the global Independent Publisher Book Awards, for her novel The Nam Shadow ($35). A sequel to her bestseller The Nam Legacy, it is also about Kiwis who served in the Vietnam War. Carole travelled to Vietnam and watched many documentaries. ‘Veterans have contacted me, and some said reading the books was cathartic.’
They’ve often been overlooked by historians, but the 28th (Māori) Battalion played a key role in World War II. Wellington historian Sir Wira Gardiner tells the stories of the WWII front-line infantry battalion’s B company of 900 men (one is still alive) in a handsome, heavy hardback with a very long title: Ake Ake Kia Kaha E! B Company 28 (Māori) Battalion 1939–1945 (Bateman). Illustrations include maps, letters and photos.
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