SEPT/OCT/NOV/DECEMBER HAPPENINGS

2011 has been a momentous year, and the last few months have been particularly full. Here's a summary of successes by past and present students.

Fiction
Gay Hay wrote the story Fantail’s Quilt as a student in the Writing for Children online course. It’s a classic New Zealand story – a fantail, a rat, a morepork and the bush – strikingly illustrated and told in a deceptively simple way, and it’s receiving great reviews from children’s authors and leading booksellers. Read more by clicking on news tab on our home page.

In October Mark Sweet launched his novel Zhu Mao that he began on the novel course in 2007. Next year he’s going to write for this newsletter about the writing of this novel. It’s been published by Huia Publishers, and is an elegant story that encompasses both China and New Zealand.

Mark was also one of several Whitireia past and present students who featured in this year’s Pikihuia Awards for Maori Writers. Helen Waaka won the award for Best Short Story in English. Helen, from  Waipukurau, is currently a student on the Whitireia Novel course. Past and present Whitireia students have consistently been successful in these awards, and in 2011 three other award winners were Whitireia graduates, as were four of the six finalists in the Best Novel Extract category.

Maria Hansen gained 3rd place in the Dan Davin open short story competition 2011 for her story Her Son, a story she worked on in Short Fiction I online. It's great to see stories that began on this course, really shape up to something special.

Cushla Managh was a finalist in the Sunday Star Times Short Story competition with a story written while doing Short Fiction II online with Anna Taylor. "Anna was such a fantastic tutor, very encouraging and she always asked questions about my stories that made me think harder about what I was doing.  From memory, the brief for one writing exercise was to take a big idea or theme, and write about it.  I found the exercise really interesting to do and liked the bare bones of my story enough to keep working on it once Short Fiction II had finished.  When the deadline for the Sunday Star Times competition rolled around, I thought: why not? I was over the moon to be named as a finalist." In 2012 Cushla will be doing an MA in Scriptwriting at the IIML at Victoria University. 

Script magic
Fred Sao (year two of a Bachelor of Applied Arts, Creative Writing) reports: "I’ve just received a grant from the Creative Communities NZ Wellington local funding scheme to produce a play in schools called The Rhyming Taniwha." Fred adds, "The Writing Programme gives you great tools, and where you take them is up to you". Good advice!
 
Rebecca Barnes (scriptwriting Year 3) was selected for the second annual Short Film Lab in October. Six people were selected from over 60 applicants from around New Zealand, so big congratulations to Rebecca.

The six Radio NZ Shorts winners for 2011 included present student Puawai Swindells-Wallace, and past student Joe Ryan.

From the poets
Former student Anne Powell’s latest book of poetry, Tree of a Thousand Voices, was placed runner-up in the 2011 Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust Literature Awards. The Awards offer one of the country’s largest monetary prizes for literature and are for both budding and published writers whose work embodies the mind, body, spirit genre. Read more by clicking on news tab on our home page.

On a different note, the Writing Programme ran a limerick competition for the Rugby World Cup. The read-off made its way onto Youtube and into The DominionPost, which reported: "The most talked about groin in the country has inspired some budding wordsmiths. Students and tutors at Whitireia NZ Media Training Centre took part in the Great Rugby World Cup Limerick Read-Off last week. Carter's injury was a popular subject by all accounts. However, Radio Training School administrator Stevie Seddon took the main prize with her love letter to Carter.

Ode to Dan
There was a young man named Dan Carter
He made my heart beat a little faster
He aimed at the pole
And lined up the goal
And we've been in love thereafter!

Congratulations to Sandi Sartorelli too, winner of the mini competition in A Fine Line (The Poetry Society newsletter).

4th Floor Literary Journal
The latest issue of the 4th Floor had a great launch at the Ballroom Café in Newtown in November, and our big thanks to Hinemoana Baker who both edited it and oversaw the launch.
4th Floor Literary Journal

Also…
Tutors have been busy around the region in the last few months. Among many activities, Mandy Hager and Adrienne Jansen represented us well at the Australasian Association of Writing Programs' Annual Conference in Australia.
 
The Writing Programme hosted a writer’s event with Farida Sultana, the only Wellington event for this controversial writer whose autobiography Purple Dandelion featured at the Auckland Writers Festival – ‘a vocal, independent, inspirational Muslim woman, and founder of Shakti, a refuge and support organisation for ethnic women in New Zealand’. 
 

JUNE/JULY/AUGUST HAPPENINGS

news and events from the Creative Writing Programme

Whitireia Writing at Te Papa   Word Up: New Generation Writing
In this exciting inaugural event writers from the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme performed an entertaining and eclectic mix of poetry at Te Papa on August 13. Many of the poems were set to music, thanks to tutors from the Whitireia NZ School of Music. The line-up also included a ‘Word Choir’ - a totally new take on the traditional singing choir. 

Word Up was a collaboration with PTown Poets and writers from Hui Publishers, aimed at celebrating words in all their diversity.

Writing encouragement
There’s nothing like public recognition when you’re doing the hard work of writing fiction, and several Whitireia Writing students (current and former) got to savour that sweet taste when they were shortlisted for the Pikihuia Awards recently.

To hear more from Writing the Novel students Helen Waaka and Olivia Giles, who were among the shortlisted, go to the news tab on our home page.

Waterloo school
Four students and Writing Programme course coordinator Mary-Jane Duffy had a great morning introducing 10 year olds to the wonders of poetry recently. Teacher Patrick Simpson says the children also enjoyed meeting real writers. Writing Programme student, Portia Paul, created a narrative poem from lines from the children’s writing, which was then named Room 1 Rocks.

Award-winning author began at Whitireia
Seven years ago Lynn Jenner had written very little and was just beginning as a student on the first year of the Whitireia Writing Programme. Now she is undertaking her PhD in Creative Writing and celebrating the success of her book Dear Sweet Harry which has just won the 2011 NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry.

Read more about what Lynn valued at Whitireia, and her take on the benefits of writing programmes by clicking on the news tab on our home page.

News from the onliners....
Online student Emma Darragh-Heath is delighted to have had her children’s story, My Font Family, accepted for publication in Three-Thirty, a new children's magazine produced in Melbourne.  Emma was a student on the first semester’s Writing for Children course tutored by Julia Wall.

Former online student, Rachel Sawaya, has won the World Wildlife Fund's Ocean:Views award with her short story Paying Back the Ocean. Rachel graduated with a Diploma in Creative Writing this year and is currently doing her MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University.  You can read her winning story on the WWF website.

Publishing successes
Second year student Sandi Sartorelli is rapt about recent successes with poems. Her work will be appearing in the next issue of Blackmail Press  and in the Eye of the Telescope featuring science fiction poetry. And she’ll even get paid for some of it!

Nicola Easthope is looking forward to Spring, when her poetry collection Leaving my arms free to fly around you will be published by Steele Roberts. Nicola completed a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing in 2005.

Jan Bolwell, who graduated in 2010 from Renee's Creative Non- Fiction writing course, has had an excerpt from her book Going Up Central accepted for this year's 4th Floor Literary Journal.

Musical interlude
Poetry students on the first year programme at Whitireia discovered a whole new side to short lyrical phrases when they met up with musician and Whitireia Music Tutor, Dan Adams recently.

“I thought song writing was easy, but Dan explained how you use lots of different art forms to create lyrics for a really good song – you need to have hook lines that lure the listener in, and also create ‘bridges’ and an effective chorus,” says Lance Uluilelata.

Read more about lyric-writing and poetry from Lance and Lucy McCahon, by clicking on news tab on our home page.

Staff news
We’re delighted to welcome more talent into the scriptwriting area of the Writing Programme. Steve Barr is a screenwriter, producer, and development consultant with extensive Hollywood experience. He is tutoring second and third year students. To read more about Steve’s background go to the website.

Steve is joined by Donna Banicevich Gera. Donna is tutoring the first year students in scriptwriting in the second semester. Donna was a student at Whitireia in 2008. She was tutored by Renee and wrote Anton’s Women, a play about Croatian immigration. She went on to get her Masters at Victoria University in Scriptwriting. Her plays and short films have won awards and been professionally produced in NZ. Read more about Donna’s background on the website.

During July, Tutor Adrienne Jansen judged the Junior Section in New Zealand Poetry Society’s International poetry competition. She says “I read 400 or so poems from school students around the country. Some of them were amazingly accomplished, and there were poems that I carried in my head for days afterwards. I'd say that poetry is doing just fine.” 

April/May happenings

more news and events from the Creative Writing Programme