News & Reviews
News
Recent reviews of our books:
PROMISED NEW ZEALAND
'Freya Klier has done these people a major service by tracing their story from Europe to NZ'
– Nelson Mail; Accessed 13/2/2010
'Not being German or Jewish, I picked up this book wondering whether it would have any relevance so many years later. It turned out to be a book that is impossible to read objectively. Here is human tragedy and the will to survive written on a huge scale by tracing the lives of a few.'
– Nelson Mail; Accessed 13/2/2010
'Along with the Author, I hope this book will be read by a younger generation' – Hawke's Bay Today; Sat, Feb 20, 2010
LANDFALL 218
'David Eggleton ...has produced a mix of writers that is immensely satisfying ... [It is a] Landfall issue that pulsates with intellectual, emotional and poetic life. I loved it.'
– Canvas magazine, Weekend Herald; February 27, 2010
THE PAVLOVA STORY
'The Pavlova Story is superbly written, informed and informative, making it highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in distinctive regional and cultural culinary traditions in general, and the pavlova tea cake in particular.'
– Wisconsin Bookwatch: November 2009 (Midwest Book Review)
'The carefully placed illustrations, old advertisements, and book covers from Leach’s collection enliven her book and make it fun. Written in a style that is somewhat chatty, it will appeal to both interested cooks and more serious students of culinary history with its well researched and documented details.'
– Gastronomica Summer 2009
Seresin Landfall Residency in the media
The Sunday Star Times is running a piece on the Seresin Landfall Residency this weekend (16/17 Jan). In addition, Radio NZ have an interview with C.K Stead online, featuring wide-ranging discussion on literature, the process of writing, New Zealand and the Seresin Landfall Residency. Find it here
Note to NZ writers: the application deadline for this year's residency is Jan 31 2010.
December newsletter
Download Otago Highlights newsletter for December 2009
Seresin Landfall Residency 2010
Writers, be aware that applications for this residency need to be in by 31 January 2010. Full details on how to apply are here.
The inaugural winner of the Seresin Landfall Residency, CK Stead, stayed in a Water Mill in Gaiole, Tuscany, made available by Seresin Estate and one of two possible locations for the 2010 resident. Here is an extract from his diary during his stay:
16/9/09: Rain. It's been coming and going in light showers for the past few days but now it's here and feels rather familiar and comfortable. It will be 'good for the garden' and swell the grapes. Have I mentioned the vegetable garden here at the Molino? It has been wonderful, especially the tomatoes and the herbs. The stream is up, and cloudy. The occasional gardener, Ivo, has stopped by to check on the footbridge over it, which I noticed is chained to a tree – must sweep away in flood time. The work on South-West of Eden is finished at last (and alas?) and I must now get on with preparing something for my 'plenary' presentation at the Mansfield-Menton Fellowship 40-year celebrations at the end of the month. I'm going to have to focus mainly on her presence in my own fiction and poems, because I have none of the books here I would need to do a proper scholarly and/or critical job. At least that will be 'different'. But I hope there's a chance to mention Sheila Winn, who largely financed the first Menton fellowships, and especially Celia and Cecil Manson, those grand old Mansfield enthusiasts who first floated the idea. Without those three it would never have happened, and they are seldom acknowledged.
CK Stead's diary will be published in full in Landfall 219.
Jenah Shaw, who was awarded a special residency as an emerging writer by Michael Seresin to celebrate the establishment of the award, chose to stay at the second possible location for the 2010 resident, a cottage at Waterfall Bay in Marlborough, where she completed her first novel.
Here is an extract from her diary, which is available in full on Landfall's Facebook page, here.
'Earlier it rained – I woke up to the noise of it everywhere, looking out the window to the thick covering of clouds and tried vaguely to divine the time. But everything was grey – the sun was lost – there was no way of telling and eventually I got up. It rained through the morning and into the early afternoon; even now the window to my left is still traced by stationary drops of water. There is a slant of light lying in a diagonal through the open door, and the thrush that lingers by the window is somewhere just on the other side of the glass from me, singing.
Today, until now, I haven't writ an inch. No, not a word on the novel, not a letter, nothing at all. I have, instead, sat along the couch beneath the map of the Marlborough Sounds reading Wuthering Heights while all across the Bay it rained. I have made copious amounts of hot drinks, heated soup – I took a bath and read an article about the Obamas' relationship with the media. I made some more coffee, made a fire, wrote some letters, and resolved – just now – that I should take a walk and chase that last tail of daylight up across the hill before the clouds cover the sky or we turn towards night. ...
----
After so much rain how can the night-time be so clear? It makes no sense but there it was, in the earliest hours of this new morning, and all the stars distinct and numerous in the sky, and there – the Milky Way twisting its pale body up behind the line of the hill.'
** Kathleen Grattan Award Poetry 2009
Otago University Press announces The Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry 2009
The Award is for an original collection of poems or a long poem by a New Zealand or Pacific resident or citizen. The winner receives a prize of $16,000 and will be published by Otago University Press in 2010.
Judged in 2009 by Ian Wedde
Winner: Leigh Davis with 'Stunning Debut of the Repairing of a Life'
 The amazing manuscript was written during and after a course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy for a brain tumour. Sadly Leigh died in October so did not receive news of this award.
Shortlisted:
Kate Camp's 'The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls'
Wystan Curnow's 'The Art Hotel'
Gregory O'Brien's 'Topiola'
** Landfall Essay Competition 2009
The purpose of the competition remains as it was at the outset: to encourage New Zealand writers to think aloud about New Zealand culture, and to revive and sustain the tradition of vivid, contentious and creative essay writing in this country. The winner receives a prize of $3000 and is published in Landfall 218.
Judged in 2009 by David Eggleton
Winner: Ashleigh Young's essay 'Wolf Man'
Runner-up: John Newton's essay 'Becoming Pakeha'
Highly commended: Henry Feltham's essay 'We are Lost Here' is also published in Landfall 218.
Media for In the Paddock and On the Run by Dianne Bardsley
The Dominion Post / Indulgence: Interview with Dianne Bardsley 12 December 2009.
'Dianne Bardsley has mined the "rich vocabulary" of the land to create a dictionary that covers all aspects of agricultural history ... It is an academic publication, btu one that anyone with an interest in words, farming of New Zealand will enjoy. You can dip in and out – and much more happily than a sheep in a washdyke.'
Radio New Zealand / Country Life
Dianne was interviwed by Cosmo Keutish-Barnes in early December. A podcast of the interview is available on their website at http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts/countrylife.rss (Scroll to bottom of the page to 'Intro and Guest').
Media for Promised New Zealand
Sat 16 Dec: Feature in The Dominion Post
December NZ Herald feature and review TBC
Late December: Sounds Historical review and other general book reviews.
'A dazzling debut': Another glowing review for The Summer King
Waikato Times ran a fantastic review on The Summer King recently calling Joanna Preston's work 'a dazzling debut', and 'her ability to find those febrile links between idea and image is radar accurate.'
'Lidia of the Lace Doilies, for instance. Here the poet is described as an aging ex-hooker, harlot, courtesan, at the end of her days, holed up in some care facility holding court 'fat and placid/termite queen of the nursing home'. Such startling, apposite and rambunctious figuration demonstrates Preston's metaphorical acuity, keen eye and economy of expression'...In Counting Blessings she reveals things she has been lucky to avoid in life, like hair catching fire, being stalked by a wolf or seduced by a god...There are poems about savage fencing wire attacking people, an orange tree with fruit glowing like campfires, the sale of a bull with a backend like a butcher's block'...
Other Summer King Reviews
The Otago Daily Times ran a review of The Summer King recently, calling Joanna Preston's first volume of poetry 'moving' and 'original'. Read more of the review here
Award for The Pavlova Story
Following hot on the heels of its Montana Book Awards nomination, The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand’s Culinary History has won Food Book of the Year 2009 at the New Zealand Guild of Foodwriters Culinary Quills Awards. Congratulations to Otago author Helen Leach!
December newsletter
Download a copy of our two-page newsletter with information about our December 2009 titles and an easy fax order form.
Download Otago Highlights December 2009
Catalogue
Our 2009 catalogue is available as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file. To read on-line or print our 48 page catalogue, mouse-click here.
Bluff poet and Otago University Press author Cilla McQueen has been appointed New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2009–2011.
Cilla now has a blog as Poet Laureate. You can find it here (http://nzpoetlaureate.natlib.govt.nz/)
McQueen has received the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry three times and many other honours, including a Fulbright Visiting Writers’ Fellowship at Stanford University and a Goethe Institut Scholarship in Berlin.
A CD of Cilla performing her poems, with backing by Dunedin musicians, A Wind Harp is published by Otago University Press. 
Books by Cilla published by Otago University Press are:
AXIS, Poems and Drawings
A selection of poems from the eighties and nineties, including ‘singing landscapes’ and ‘conversations in crowded rooms’.
ISBN 1 877372 05 6, $34.95
Fire-Penny
Quiet observations on friends, animals, memories, dreams, weather. Bluff poems.
ISBN 1 877372 05 6, 64 pp, $29.95
Soundings
Continues and develops the themes of homeland and loss,colonisation and displacement that have preoccupied McQueen, who is descended from St Kilda refugees.
ISBN 1 877276 38 3, $29.95
Markings
Traces the lives of her ancestors and the living history of her husband’s people. The sea is a constant backdrop to both.
ISBN 1 877133 92 2, $24.95
Montana Book Awards
Congratulations to all the winners in this year’s awards. Good to see university presses so prominent. And congratulations to The Listener for winning the Best Review Pages Award and to David Eggleton, Reviewer of the Year and editor of Landfall 218.
Book Launches
We’ll keep you informed about launches for Otago University Press books.
For further information email publicity@otago.ac.nz
Facebook
Dont forget.... Landfall has a Facebook page. Find us at 'Landfall Journal' or follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/landfall.journal?ref=name
Audio interviews
A number of topical radio interviews about OUP books and authors can be found on the Radio New Zealand National website. Use the Search function for Arts on Sunday 24.5.09 (Nicholas Thomas, Rauru), and Sounds Historical 10.5.09 and 17.5.09 (Ann Thwaite, Passageways) programme archives at http://www.radionz.co.nz/
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