Latest small craft:
Rachel Dore presents a weekly chat with New Zealanders who know about writing and books, no matter where in the world they’re living. You’ll hear conversations with all kinds of authors and writers, in all genres. It’s a pot-luck show – a guest may be an established author, a new writer, a writing tutor, a […]
Mad About Roosters Liana Ashenden Picasso sketched a rooster like it was going to expire from choking. He sketched with charcoal, outlining thickly, and rubbed out with an eraser. The page was smudged above the rooster’s tail, which curved up and over like horsehair. The tongue protruded from a gaping beak, the eyes were wide […]
Connections: Place and people Birds Katherine Mansfield (KM) grew up beneath the hanging cages of songbirds, and always loved their ‘sweet sweet’ chirruping. Writings about her childhood in the remote rural Karori valley on the outskirts of Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington often mention birds and birdsong. The 1903 story ‘About Pat’ fictionalises their Irish gardener based on […]
Editor note: The stories discussed in this essay can be found in Vincent O’Sullivan’s Pictures by Goya and other Stories and also more recently printed in Selected Stories (VUP, 2019; ed. Stephen Stratford), noted in the opening paragraph. Page numbers refer to this 2019 collection. Vincent O’Sullivan is a novelist, poet of distinction, librettist, anthologist, […]
Comments from the judges of the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day competition Flash fiction should emphasise compression, concision and language working at maximum force to convey a situation or scenario, or best of all some insight or epiphany transcending the mundane and the quotidian. Flash fiction needs to be good at suggesting the allusive, the […]
Brooke Singer writes and performs in the band French for Rabbits, called ‘pioneers’ of atmospheric, delicate dream-pop and have received international acclaim for their emotionally evocative music.