Writing and Publishing

Come and hear

Julia Millen and Lynn Peck

From Writes Hill Press

Julia Millen is best known for the biographies of

New Zealand novelists Guthrie Wilson and Ronald Hugh

Morrieson. Her numerous works of social

history include Salute to Service, the Royal New Zealand

Corps of Transport and its predecessors, and histories of

legal firm Bell Gully, LIANZA, Kirkcaldie & Stains, IHC

New Zealand and the New Zealand National Forest

Survey.  Her most recent book, Fair Weather Trampers:

In the New Zealand bush with the Cock & Bull Tramping Club, was

published by Writes Hill Press in 2011. Julia edits the NZ National

Library Society Newsletter.

 Lynn Peck has designed and edited books for

over twenty years. She works with individuals and

corporations facilitating the publishing process, and

has extensive experience in managing book printing.

In 2010 she received a Highly Commended Pride in

Print award for Gareth Watkins' Street Adonis 2.

Writes Hill Press combines Julia’s and Lynn’s expertise to offer a

professional, stylish editorial and publishing service for family and

corporate histories, and small-run quintessential New Zealand tales

When:  Monday February 25th

Where:  The Thistle Inn, Thorndon, Wellington (near the Railway Station).

Time:  7.30 but come at 7pm to meet in the bar for drinks

Cost:  NZSA members $3 non-members $5

Not to be Missed

New Zealand Society of Authors Wellington

The Mixed Results of Male Authors Writing Female Characters

By Michele Willens  Mar 2 2013 The Atlantic

Authors of both genders have long experimented with narrators and protagonists of the opposite sex—but there's still debate as to whether either sex can do it right.

David Mamet; Focus Features; Jeffrey Eugenides

If we want to investigate the way women have been "written" through the years by the opposite sex, we should return to the beginning. Eve took a bite of that forbidden fruit and pretty much got blamed for every sinful deed since. "Let's not forget the Bible was written from a man's point of view," pointed out a scholar I watched on TV recently.

This is not an awards show, of course. No winners or losers on which sex writes the other better. But there are strong opinions. When Nation magazine writer and poet Katha Pollitt learned that I was pondering whether men write women better than women themselves, her response practically crashed my computer. "You could not possibly be suggesting that! I think few men write female characters who are complex and have stories of their own. Where are the vivid, realistic and rounded portrayals of women in Roth, Bellow, Updike?"

To which others may respond, as did one friend, "I have two words for you. Anna Karenina."
Tolstoy's classic was written a long time ago, of course, and, on the flip side, evergreen female authors like Jane Austen and the Brontes managed to give us fine portraits of men alongside their memorable heroines. However, we have had a few revolutions since, resulting in a lot of space on the shelves, the stage, and the screen devoted to feminine mystiques and mistakes. For women writers, it is about finally getting, if not even, at least equal time.

"By default, women have it easier than men when they attempt to craft characters of the opposite sex," says novelist Sally Koslow (The Late Lamented Molly Marx), "because our whole lives we've been reading vast amounts of literature written by men." For male writers, trying to navigate the evolving battles of the sexes is more challenging. To their credit, they are not necessarily shying away from tackling women in their work, but are they 'getting' them?

Two hugely popular authors, Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides, for example, are known for full-bodied, decade-spanning novels. But their female characters? "Franzen's women are confused and masochistic," claims Pollitt. "The female lead in Eugenides' The Marriage Plot is the least interesting of the three major characters." Literary critic and writer Sarah Seltzer is a bit kinder, but agrees that a double standard endures. "I doubt whether a female novelist who so obviously bungled/sidelined a major male character as Eugenides did, would get the same slack from readers and critics."

More

Winners of inaugural Sir James Wallace Creative Writing Awards announced.

Sir James Wallace has presented the first Sir James Wallace Masters in Creative Writing Award and scholarships at a ceremony held at The University of Auckland.

Top from left:  Sir James Wallace, Vice Chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon, The University of Auckland

Front from left:  Tessa Priest (2013 scholarship winner), Liz Langbrown (2013 scholarship winner), Margie Thomson (2012 Sir James Wallace Masters in Creative Writing Award winner)

Margie Thomson, 2012 Masters in Creative Writing graduate, was announced the inaugural award winner, with 2013 Masters students Tessa Priest and Liz Langbrown announced the scholarship winners.

“I was delighted to present these awards to three very deserving women, and look forward to hearing both of their successes, and that of future graduates from The University of Auckland’s Masters of Creative Writing. The University holds a strong history of powerful literary voices impacting both nationally and internationally,” says Sir James Wallace.    

Award winner Margie Thomson was deeply grateful and appreciative of the prize.

“It is a great honour to be the first recipient of such a prestigious award.  The Masters in Creative Writing has left me with a massive manuscript which needs to be re-thought and rewritten. My goal is to complete a second draft by the end of the year so the $5000 from the Sir James Wallace award is greatly appreciated – I will feel a lot less guilty giving time to my manuscript,” says Margie

Margie hails from a journalism background having worked for the NZ Herald for many years as both features writer and then books editor for Canvas magazine, as books editor for the Herald on Sunday and Next magazine, and most recently for the Dominion Post's Your Weekend magazine.  Now a contract writer to various international publishers, Margie has written books for a variety of New Zealand celebrities.

“Writing fiction is a very different proposition from journalism and contract writing.

“The Masters in Creative Writing provided me with a strong context to just keep on going and get the words down. Without such a structure there is no deadline, and no rein on perfectionism and self doubt.  The MCW was tremendously helpful in this way. It is a ‘gift economy’ - you learn from talking about and critiquing each others' work,” says Margie.

The awards aim to encourage developing writers with high potential into the Masters in Creative Writing, and to provide the opportunity for the top-performing student to spend the months needed to turn a course project into a publishable book. The two fees scholarships were awarded to students with the best portfolios in the 2013 intake, and the $5,000 award to the student who submitted the best end-of-year work for the 2012 programme.

Distinguished Professor Brian Boyd says he speaks for his Department of English and for the University in welcoming these awards as a way of boosting the talent already in Auckland and of drawing still more to the city.

“Margie Thomson has been well known as a journalist in Auckland and has also been a ghostwriter for Auckland publishers. How wonderful that her award will help her turn what she learned here as a creative writer into a work of fiction in her own name.

“And how splendid that Liz Langbrown, just arrived in Auckland from Wellington, and Tessa Priest, just arrived here from Whanganui, fulfill the aim of the scholarship, to draw talent from across the country, in its very first year. As both mothers of children just getting old enough to allow them more writing time to themselves, they’ll appreciate this support enormously,” says Professor Boyd.

The Masters of Creative Writing adds further strength to The University of Auckland English Department, which has fostered talent from Allen Curnow, C. K. Stead and Maurice Gee through to Toa Fraser, Glenn Colquhoun and Selina Tusitala Marsh.

Writing for love. And money

The really valuable returns for an author are emotional, spiritual even. Though it's great when the bills get paid too

A.L.Kennedy - Tuesday 5 March 2013  guardian.co.uk

Revealing accounts ... balance sheet. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

I began my literary career with short stories. Or rather, I began with monologues. I wrote them for myself and my friends so that we could trot off and perform in auditions without exhausting the, if I recall correctly, 12 available bits for women that were in any way kind and supportive to the would-be thespian. Once I had become a permanently resting ex-drama-and-theatre-studies student (easily done) I also became someone who sat up in bed to keep warm and made small, voice-based things which eventually became short stories. There was a lot of becoming – that often happens with the arts. And eventually, way back when there were barely Amstrads, I banged together my first anthology of short stories and a publisher actually inflicted it on a waiting world, rather than asking me to save it until after I'd managed to produce something more financially prudent like a novel, or some porn.

This was all good news. Someone trapped in a recession with an odd skill set had discovered a way to be useful and, indeed, fulfilled. Given that short stories are so horrifyingly demanding technically, the anthology was an opportunity to give my prose its initial experience of proper training. I had earned myself a chance to take my voice to its next level. I won some prizes. My work came to the attention of the wider literary scene and was able to shamble further forwards and discover some more opportunities. The first novel was treated gently and coddled probably more than it deserved to be. This wouldn't happen now. The short story anthology as a first book is rarer than unicorn pie. (May contain traces of horse.) The hope of making even 50% of your income as a published author any more in the UK has probably also gone – unless you are lucky enough to produce a bestseller, preferably involving porn. This may change when UK publishers discover that the production of ebooks reduces overheads as well as cover prices. Who knows – it does tend to take a while for UK publishers to notice most things. I worry in case, for example, their offices catch fire and they all burn to death over a period of weeks, coming and going, sadly unable to realise that their coffees are boiling away to nothing in their melting cups. And this is, of course, a hard time for all industries, from the sprightly to the moribund.


So why do it? To be rather more specific, why do we write? Why do we choose to work in forms like the short story, the literary novel, the essay, the sonnet – forms which have very little commercial value? It's easier to say why we don't write. It can be really very easy to say we don't write for money and, of course, I hope we don't. We produce writing, we produce art, because we love to, because it feels good, because we can't help it, because it rewards us in a self-perpetuating cycle with varieties of emotional and even spiritual contentment. The money we earn is what we use to have more time to do what we love to the best of our ability. And we have bills and possibly loved ones who depend upon us for food, clothes, floorboards, bus fares – money is handy for that stuff, too.

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