THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

  Bestselling and critically acclaimed works of fiction, illuminating poetry collections, absorbing memoirs, and books that explore our whenua, flora and fauna feature alongside those that celebrate our culinary and artistic heroes and heroines in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlists announced today. Twelve of the 44 longlisted books are by first-time authors, and they are published by a record number of 20 individual publishing houses across the motu. New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa chair Nicola Legat says this year’s longlist, selected from 171 entries, is a testament to the creativity and research skills of their authors, and to the willingness of publishers to take risks and back their writers. “It’s a thrill to read this longlist and see both the high number of first-time writers, represented in every category, and the spread across a very wide group of publishers. A powerful and impressive list studded with books that entertain read...

 

 We will be spoiled for choice!  WOMAD 2024 will host an overwhelming selection of international musical acts and renowned speakers this year! They include French house act Braxe + Falcon, Irish folk sensations Lisa O'Neill & Cormac Begley, Estonian folk artist Mari Kalkun and Aotearoa alt-pop artist Theia and the already-announced Morcheeba and Ziggy Marley for the biggest part of the year at New Plymouth's Brooklands Park from March 15 to 17. Outside the festival's music offerings, WOMAD also brings together a selection of speakers, comedians, scientists, and authors at its OMV STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Lab and the World of Words. World of Words is now in its sixth year and will feature the poetry slam, lefd by the adorable Penny Ashton again, giving a real providing platform for spoken word artists to showcase their talent. The World of Words speakers are Caroline Barron (award-winning author, story coach, and presenter), Dame Ga...

Please join us for the launch of Do You Still Have Time for Chaos?the new memoir by Lynn Davidson. Tuesday 13 February 6pm Unity Books Wellington 57 Willis Street, Wellington Do You Still Have Time for Chaos? will be launched by Lynn Jenner, author of Peat and Lost and Gone Away. All welcome! Thanks to Unity Books Wellington for their support. Do You Still Have Time for Chaos? tells the story of poet and teacher Lynn Davidson’s late-life decision to leave Aotearoa New Zealand, with scant resources, to build a life in Scotland. In 2020, in the frightening quiet of a Covid-emptied Edinburgh, she begins her memoir; temporarily at home at the Randell Cottage residency in Wellington, she completes it. Lynn Davidson is a poet and novelist. Davidson’s most recent publication is the poetry collection Islander. She won the Poetry New Zealand’s 2020 poetry Award and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Massey University. She was the 2021 Randell Cottage Writer in Residence.   D...

New writer and recent Creative Writing MA graduate  Joy Holley has put together a delicious and salacious collection of short stories about the lives and loves young women and persons undefined who wear their hearts on their sleeves.  These are intimate, funny, sweet and a little bit naughty at times.  Not in an erotic way, more in teasing, minor manipulaton.   "These funny, original stories are the new cool girsls of fiction.  You'll want to sit next to them." - Emily Perkins Like opener 'Mission Strawberry' in which the protagonist set up a date-not-date with a friend of a friend that they have a crush on at a strawberry farm picking session.  It's intricately planned, like a military operation, but intended to be casually executed toavoid suspicion and embarrassment if it goes badly.  And it does.  But not in the expected way - rejection.  A car crash intervens in the loveers meld and splits the inevitable coupling.  We'll have t...

Mophead has a problem. She has woken with a knot. It’s a big knot, and the more she ignores it, the bigger it gets. Soon it takes over everything and she feels small and overcome by this all consuming knot. We all can have this happen to us. A knot, or a problem appears, and the more we hope it will go away – the bigger it gets. Soon we can’t think about anything else…  Selina Tusitala Marsh ONZM FRSNZ is a New Zealand poet, academic and illustrator, and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2017–2019. With her 'Mophead' series she's already tackled diverity, standing out against the normal and even depression. Marsh was born in 1971 in Auckland, New Zealand.  Through her mother, Sailigi Tusitala, Marsh is of Samoan and Tuvaluan ancestry and through her father James Crosbie she is of English, Scottish and French descent.  Like Tom Scott, from Avantdale Bowling Club and Home Brew, she grew up in Avondale, Auckland. Working against the grai...