CONTRIBUTORS
Abby Cunnane
Abby Cunnane is a writer and curator living in Wellington. She studied art history at Victoria University, and currently works as a curator at City Gallery Wellington, while continuing to write in a range of capacities.
Alan Felsenthal
Alan Felsenthal is currently a visiting lecturer at the IIML. He is the co-editor of a chapbook press called The Song Cave. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, intersection(s), The Iowa Review, and Sea Ranch.
Aleksandra Lane
Aleksandra Lane completed her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2010, and was awarded the Biggs Prize, which recognises the potential of a graduating poet. Her poems have been published in Swamp, Snorkel, Side Stream and two poetry collections in Serbia, and some will appear in the New Zealand feature issue of the International Literary Quarterly.
Alys Titchener
Alys Titchener is new to the scene of creative writing, having just completed her first paper at the IIML, 'Writing the Landscape'. Assignments could be either prose or poetry, and 'Walk through Mt Vic tunnel' was her first prose piece. Alys keeps a poetry blog called Squashed Mosquito Poetry as a way of journalling her emotional landscape.
Amy Head
Amy Head returned from London at the beginning of 2010 to complete her MA at the IIML. For her folio project she wrote a series of short stories set on the West Coast of the South Island, several of which take place during the gold rushes of the 1860s.
Anna Jackson
Anna Jackson lectures in English at Victoria University. She has published several books of poetry with Auckland University Press, most recently The Gas Leak (2006). A fifth collection, Thicket, will be published in July 2011.
Ashleigh Young
Ashleigh Young is a writer and editor recently arrived in London. It is her first northern hemisphere winter. Her work has appeared in Booknotes, Turbine, Sport, Landfall, and Best New Zealand Poems. Her personal essay collection Can You Tolerate This? won the 2009 Adam Foundation Prize, and an essay from the collection won the 2009 Landfall Essay Competition. Her first collection of poems will be out, optimistically, SOON.
Bernadette Hall
Bernadette Hall’s 9th collection of poems, The Lustre Jug (VUP) was a finalist in the 2010 the NZ Post Book Awards. She has recently edited selected poems by the Christchurch poet, Lorna Staveley Anker. This collection, The Judas Tree, will be published by the University of Canterbury Press in 2011. She collaborated with the Dunedin jeweller, Paul McDowell, in A New Line, publication and performance by 8 writers and 8 jewellers, in Dunedin, October 2010. In 2011 she will take up a Teaching Fellowship in poetry at the IIML, Wellington. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.
Bill Nelson
Bill Nelson won the Biggs Poetry Prize for best MA poetry portfolio at the IIML in 2009. His writing has appeared in Hue & Cry, Sport, The Lumière Reader, Blackmail Press, 4th Floor and Swamp. He has also guest edited at Turbine and Blackmail Press. 'The Evidence' is a reponse to the work of Eddie Clemens shown at the recent Ready to Roll exhibition at City Gallery. Another response to the same work can be found in The Sparks Fly Upwards.
Brigid Barrer
Brigid Barrer grew up in Christchurch of Irish, Tainui and English origins. She has now retired from a lifetime in clinical psychology in adult and child mental health and child protection. She welcomed the shift to creative nonfiction at the IIML, where she just completed the MA. She lives in Auckland and was previously published in Crest to Crest, an anthology on Canterbury.
Cate Palmer
Cate Palmer completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2010. She won the Macmillan Brown Prize in 2007 and 2010, and she was the regional winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. 'EarthWorld' is one of the stories she wrote for her MA portfolio.
Catherine Vidler
Catherine Vidler's first collection of poems Furious Triangle is forthcoming from Puncher and Wattman. She is the editor of online trans-Tasman literary magazine Snorkel.
David Coventry
David Coventry is a Wellington-based writer. This extract comes from the novel Shipton-Pearce, drafted during the 2010 IIML Masters programme.
Frances Mountier
Frances Mountier wrote 'We walk into the valley' while completing the Writing the Landscape paper at the IIML in 2010. She holds an MA in Creative Writing. Frances was in the Save Happy Valley Coalition from 2004-2008. She continues to work for a shift away from new coal mines through the Coal Action Network.
Frankie McMillan
Frankie McMillan is a short story writer and poet. Her first book, The Bag Lady’s Picnic and other Stories was published by Shoal Bay Press. Her poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals, was launched in 2009 as part of the Christchurch Central Libraries’ 150th anniversary. That year she was also the winner of the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition. Helen Heath lives in the seaside village of Paekākāriki, on the Kapiti Coast. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2009. Her poetry has been published in many journals in New Zealand and Australia. Most recently she’s had a chap-book of poems published by Seraph Press called Watching for Smoke (2009). Helen also blogs at helenheath.com. ‘Radiant' is about Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867–1934), who was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first person honoured with two Nobel Prizes and the first female professor at the University of Paris. Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered radium. She spent the remainder of her life performing radiation research and studying radiation therapy. Her constant exposure to radiation led to her contracting leukaemia.
Isobel Cairns
Isobel Rose Cairns lives in Wellington. 'Sometimes I live life dangerously, and fill my coffee cup right up to the top. My mid-term goals include going swimming and visiting an amusement park with a rollercoaster that goes upside down. 'I don't think you existed before you met me' is about what happens when life jumps on you and wants a piggyback, and love becomes more than an academic exercise.' Jenny Bornholdt was the Writer in Residence at Victoria University during 2010. During her time there she wrote a book of poems entitled The Hill of Wool, which will be published in 2011 by Victoria University Press. Jenny has written nine books of poetry, including a selected poems: Miss New Zealand. Her last book, The Rocky Shore, was a collection of six long(ish) poems, described as ‘…as much autobiographical essay as long poems’. This book won the Montana Book Award for Poetry in 2009. With her husband, poet and artist Gregory O’Brien, Jenny has co-edited My Heart Goes Swimming: New Zealand Love Poems (Godwit/Random House, 1996) and The Colour of Distance: New Zealand Writers in France/ French Writers in New Zealand (Victoria University Press 2005). With Mark Williams, Bornholdt and O’Brien edited An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English (Oxford University Press, 1997), which won the 1997 Montana Book Award for Poetry. Jenny has been an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate, and was the Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate 2005-7.
Joan Fleming
Joan Fleming lives in Golden Bay, where she tutors and gardens and writes. A clutch of her poems was published this year in the DUETS chapbook series, and she is working on a collection of prose poems, all of which are 'conversations', of sorts. 'Carpet Talking to the Mother's Feet' is one of these. 'All my friends seem to be having babies, and having a baby seems to mean walking all day back and forth inside your own house. This poem grew out of wondering what the house might be trying to say to the mothers, and to the babies, who are already growing up.'
Johanna Aitchison
Johanna Aitchison was the winner of the 2010 New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition. She lives in Palmerston North and Miss Dust is her alter ego.
Joh Bloomberg
Joh Bloomberg lives in Christchurch. When she grows up she would like to be Edward Gorey. She writes on formlesslittlefears - a blog that gets periodically massacred by her delete button. 'Joy' was written for someone beautiful, but who now lives in France, far too far away.
Kate McKinstry
Kate McKinstry lives in Mt Cook, and reassures friends it is a suburb of Wellington, and not as slope on the southern mountain. They believe her easily. She has completed an MA at the IIML in 2010 She prefers to live in a city and has lived in Auckland, Christchurch, Taipei, London, Antibes, New York, Perth and Melbourne, which is the setting for a series of Eurydice poems.
Kerrin P Sharpe
Kerrin P. Sharpe is a teacher of creative writing. She has recently published in Best New Zealand Poems 08 and 09, Turbine, Snorkel, Bravado, Takahe, NZ Listener, Poetry NZ, Junctures, Sport and The Press.
Kerry Donovan-Brown
Kerry Donovan-Brown grew up in the seaside township of Waikuku. He began studying writing at the Christchurch School for Young Writers and has just finished his degree in English Literature at Victoria University. This is his first published work.
Lynn Jenner
Lynn Jenner’s first collection of poetry, Dear Sweet Harry, was published by Auckland University Press in July 2010. In 2008 Lynn completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML, where she won the Adam Foundation Prize for the folio form of Dear Sweet Harry. Her poems appeared in Best New Zealand Poems in 2008 and 2009. She is currently enrolled in the PhD programme at the IIML. Lynn spent the weeks immediately following the September earthquake in Christchurch, with only an e-Reader for literary company. She found the story of Anna Karenina strangely helpful in understanding the nature of earthquakes.
Marama Salsano
Marama Salsano is a Gisborne writer of Te Aitanga a Mahaki and Tuhoe descent. In 2010, her project as part of her thesis for the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML was a novel entitled Skin.
Marisa Cappetta
Marisa Capetta is a Christchurch artist and poet published in The Press, Takahē, International Literary Quarterly, Crest to Crest Anthology of Canterbury poets, Shot Glass Journal, a guest reader for the 2010 Canterbury Poets Collective autumn season of readings and Gap Filler, secretary for Takahē Collective Trust and treasurer for the CPC. This poem was written during typees with Joanna Preston, an important teacher and influence. It explores tensions and dynamics of relationships.
Mercedes Webb-Pullman
Mercedes Webb-Pullman has just completed work on her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. Her poem, 'The Red Pearl', comes from this folio, about growing up in New Zealand in the 1960's.
Patrick Fitzsimons
Patrick Fitzsimons did an MA at the IIML this year. He lives in Newtown.
Philippa Tucker
Philippa Tucker lives in the Wairarapa with her husband and three young sons. She is a mother always and a writer/editor when the occasion demands. In 2006 she completed the poetry stream of an Iowa Workshop at the IIML. She has recently been published in Blackmail Press, and has another baby due out next July.
Phoebe Smith
Phoebe Smith lives in Island Bay and teaches children’s drama classes. She has written a number of plays for performance and recommends you hold your breath for work-in-progress, Apocalypse: The Musical.
Pip Adam
Pip Adam is a Wellington short story writer whose work has appeared in Sport, Glottis, Turbine, Landfall, Lumière Reader, Hue & Cry and Blackmail Press. Her first collection of stories, Everything We Hoped For, was published by Victoria University Press this year. She is currently completing a PhD Creative Writing at the IIML. Her project investigates how the language and experience of structural engineers might be used to write short stories about buildings. You can follow her at https://twitter.com/PipAdam
Rachel Bush
Nelson writer Rachel Bush has been published in periodicals such as Sport, Landfall, The Listener and in Faber’s Introduction. She is the author of three books of poetry.'Sing them' was written before beginning a project in which she wil work with composer Gillian Whitehead and Dunedin-based singer, Amanda Cole.
Rachel O'Neill
Rachel O’Neill is a writer, artist and editor living on the Kapiti Coast. She has written poetry, stories and art criticism. Selected writing appears in JAAM 28, Hue and Cry, Paper Radio (www.paperradio.net), Turbine 08 and Turbine 09. 'Trade Me Tale' is a poem five years in the making that has always been partial to the irreverent phases of friendship, longing and belonging.
Rayne Cockburn
Rayne Cockburn completed the MA at the International Institute of Modern Letters this year. Her manuscript, a novel set in South Africa, won her the 2010 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing, which is awarded to the author of the best portfolio in the Writing for the Page stream
Rhydian W Thomas
Rhydian W. Thomas was born in Maesteg, Wales and now lives in Wellington. In 2010, he completed an MA in creative writing at IIML, and is currently working on a book of poetry titled Cold War Games. He is also a musician (recording as The Body Lyre; at present finishing a year-long album project called Escape Songs) and a tutor in Philosophy at Victoria University. You can find more information here.
Rose Collins
Rose Collins worked as a human rights lawyer before completing the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2010. She has lived in Lyttelton, Dublin, New York and Wellington where she now shares a ramshackle Victorian villa with her partner, new baby, four friends and two dogs. She visited Positano for the first time in 2001, though she never made it as far as the perforated mountain.
Sarah McCallum
During the last year Sarah McCallum spent uneven amounts of time mowing lawns, watching DVD box sets of The Wire, glazing windows, sitting on Intercity buses, and writing a series of creative non-fiction essays for an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. She also had the excellent fortune to spend parts of 2010 sequestered in a small space with nine poets and a memoirist.
Shruti Navathe
Shruti Navāthé is living the high life in a falling down house in Wellington. She spends her time tilting at windmills, blackberrying, negotiating tangled loyalties and writing. Mostly dusty prose, occasionally, something else. Simone Kaho attended the IIML MA in Creative Writing over 2010. She considers the performance of poetry on stage to be as important as its publication on the page and has been invigorated and inspired by watching and performing at the ‘Poetry Live’ open mic in Auckland since 2007. Simone performed at the 2010 Side Stream Poetry Brothel, with Hinemoana Baker at the launch of her second book, Koiwi Koiwi, at the opening of the Aotea Square in Auckland, at Poetry at Our Edge of the Universe, a poetry/music/music event for National Poetry Day 2010, and at Poetry Pick’n’Mix, alongside her classmates.
Simon Reeve
Normally a patent examiner, Simon Reeve spent 2010 studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. His poetry has previously appeared in booklet-form (First Anniversary, 2008) and in JAAM 28.
Sonja Yelich
Sonja Yelich lives in Devonport, Auckland. Her latest poetry book is get some (Auckland UP, 2008). She held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship from January - June 2010.
Trevor Hayes
After four years spent teaching English in Spain, Trevor Hayes returned to Aotearoa to complete a degree in Spanish Language and English Literature. He has just completed his MA in creative writing at the IIML. 'Pieces of Eight' is his homage to the Spanish and Latin American poets who have inspired and influenced him over the years.
Trina Saffioti
Trina Saffioti grew up in Churton Park and now lives in Karori. She has completed the Short Fiction, Poetry and Children's Writing courses at the IIML. Her first children's book The Old Frangipani Tree at Flying Fish Point (Magabala Books) was published in 2008. Her next book Stolen Girl (Magabala Books) comes out in March and is based on her what her grandmother's experiences might have been as one of the Stolen Generation.
Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle
Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle is 20 years old and lives in Auckland. She studies English and Psychology at the University of Auckland. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Snorkel, Landfall, and Poetry NZ, and are forthcoming in brief, Colorado Review, and the International Literary Quarterly. |