Category: In the News

At the last SpecFicNZ AGM, our new lifetime membership policy was ratified. Fortunately no rats were injured, and some seemed to enjoy the experience.

Lifetime memberships are our way of honouring people who have made a huge contribution to speculative fiction in new Zealand (or internationally). These might be people who have created an exceptional body of work, or who have played a major part in nurturing our little corner of the SpecFic universe.

Anyone can be nominated for lifetime membership and nominees don’t need to be current or past members. Only a small number of lifetime memberships will be awarded every year. The SpecFicNZ committee will assess all nominations and announce any new lifetime memberships awarded at the next AGM. | Read More...

As the poster says: come along to the Dunedin Public Library’s fourth floor at 5pm on Thursday the 11th October for a chance to hear eight local Fantasy fiction writers read from and discuss their works, and ask questions. There will even be free books!

Featured writers are:

Andy Evans

Carolyn McCurdie

Daniel Stride

Deb E Howell

Jayne Castel

Kura Carpenter

RL Stedman

Sean P Martin

Each writer will read/speak for around eight minutes, plus time for some questions.

Kapiti News, 15 Mar, 2018

By Rosalie Willis
 

Teachers by day, writers by night.

That is the reality two Paraparaumu College teachers find themselves living.

Husband and wife, Matt and Debbie Cowens, both part of the English department at Paraparaumu College have had their latest work published in Te Korero Ahi Ka: To Speak of the Home Fires Burning, a New Zealand speculative fiction anthology.

The book is the work of Speculative Fiction New Zealand (SpecFicNZ), an organisation formed in 2009 and is the brain child of editors Grace Bridges and Lee Murray with the help of Aaron Compton. | Read More...

Wish Upon a Southern Star, edited by Shelley Chappell

Reviewed by Lee Murray

“Stories change, but fairy tales never go out of fashion. Like a basic item of clothing, they may be reshaped, trimmed, decorated with frills or remodelled altogether,” writes editor Shelley Chappell in the introduction to Wish Upon a Southern Star, a stunning new collection of fairy tales, freshly re-imagined by new and established writers from Australian and New Zealand. Chappell says, “the authors in this collection have run the traditional tales through the mill and come out with new cloth.” Indeed, some are barely recognisable, like Philippa Werry’s evocative and beautifully-crafted Snow from the South, a contemporary version of the Snow Queen, appropriately set in Antarctica at a time when ‘melt pools were forming in the sea ice”. New Zealand might have guardianship of only a small part of the frozen land, yet Kiwi readers will find a familiarity in this haunting retelling of the classic tale. | Read More...