Writers on Mondays – Hopeful Animals, Wellington

Writers on Mondays programme front page 2017

I’m really excited about being part of the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) Writers on Mondays programme this year, which includes – as well as a whole mob of great New Zealand writers – Australian writer Charlotte Wood (24 July – see programme). Writers on Mondays has been running for nearly a decade now, … Read more…

FAWWA CAL Established Writer in Residence 2017

Mattie Furphy House

I’m honoured to have been awarded one of four writing residencies for 2017 by the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Western Australia), co-funded by FAWWA and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. FAWWA recently announced the outcome of the 2017 CAL Writer in Residence program (see the FAWWA homepage). I was awarded Established Writer in Residence, and … Read more…

‘Family Dynamics’ at Auckland Writers Festival

The programme has been launched for Auckland Writers Festival 2017, which runs from 16 to 21 May. I’ll be there — this’ll be my fifth time attending AWF, my second time as a guest of the festival. I’m in one of the Four for Fifty Readings sessions — fifty-minute events in which four writers read from their recent work. Each session is themed; … Read more…

This festive season

Dancing on the beach, 1920, William James (public domain)

May is my birthday month (thus always a time of celebrations and joy to the  world, right?). But this May feels extra-festive, cause for much shimmying, shaking, and leg-kicking, on the beach and elsewhere. The Hope Fault acquired by Aardvark Bureau I’ve been quietly dancing on the ceiling (and everywhere else) about this for a while, so I’m delighted to … Read more…

Aardvark Bureau to publish The Hope Fault

The Hope Fault (Fremantle Press, 2017)

I’m thrilled to share the news that UK publisher Aardvark Bureau (Gallic Books) has signed The Hope Fault, my novel ‘about family and fault lines’. Aardvark Bureau also published my first novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, in the UK and US in 2016. The acquisition announcement for The Hope Fault was reported in The Bookseller (11 May … Read more…