SpecFicNZ Monthly Bulletin – October 2019

Aurora Oceania

Sir Julius Award winning editor, Cassie Hart has been very busy launching a new online community for Māori, Pasifika, First Nations and other Indigenous creators of speculative works, in the Oceanic/Pacific region.

The Aurora Oceania group can be found on Facebook where Cassie hopes to bring visibility to the amazing and varied work that this particular marginalised group of creatives offer in the science fiction, fantasy, horror and related genres.

You can also read more about this fantastic initiative at Cassie’s website.


New Story Launch

SpecFicNZ member James Rowland has a new short story included in Aurealis #124 – “Inheritance”. Described as a “classy tale entwining reality and magic, history and conjecture,” it takes the form of a fake art history essay – except the paintings are magic.

You can buy a copy of Aurealis from their site here: https://aurealis.com.au/store/aurealis-124/

James’s was nominated for a Sir Julius Vogel Award this year. The Glassblower’s Peace was shortlisted for Best Novella/Novelette. His writing can be found at his website https://jamesrowlandwriter.wordpress.com


Open call for submissions

Tabatha Wood is leading a team of people assembling a charity anthology with a creepy, canine theme entitled “Black Dogs, Black Tales”. The collection will raise awareness and money for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. Tabatha is a dark specfic writer and creator of the online support group Well-Written, which also hosts monthly workshops and meet-ups in Wellington.

There is an open call out for submissions of horror and dark speculative fiction stories up to 6000 words. The deadline is February 2020, so you have a bit of time to think. You can find out more about the callout here and follow the Facebook page here.


Monthly bulletins will be posted at the beginning of every calendar month. Cut off dates to ensure your content is included is three days before the end of the month. (eg. for the November 2019 bulletin we would prefer all info to be sent to us by the end of the 27th October.)

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