Dundee international book prize

I made the shortlist of the Dundee International Book Prize with my novel Some Things the English. I am beyond stoked.

Congratulations to my fellow shortlistees:

Sheena Lambert, Amy Mason, Veronica Birch, Rosaliene Bacchus, Jasper Dorgan, Suzy Norman, Robin Martin, Lora Hughes, and Ben East.
 
The judges for this year's prize are Kirsty Lang, Neil Gaiman, Scott Pack, Felicity Blunt and Stuart Kelly. They've now got the task of whittling the shortlist down to the final three.

Many thanks to Literary Dundee director, Anna Day. 

Best of luck to us all!

Two flash

I am reading at two events this month to celebrate National Flash Fiction Day.

The first will be at Auckland City Library, 2-4 PM, Sunday June 22.

 

The second will be as a guest of Leanne Radojkovich at The Auckland Performing Arts Centre, 7.30pm, Saturday June 28. 

Come along! There's a possibility I'll be reading a couple of pieces at each event - and I won't read the same piece twice.

My thanks to respective organisers Gus Simonovic, Kirsten Warner, Michelle Elvy and Leanne Radojkovich.

Write things

Connecting Writers: The Writing Process Blog Tour

What am I working on?

I work in several genres and I’m the features editor for a flash fiction journal, so right now I’m working on a comic interview, a graphic novel, several short stories and poems, plotting out a couple of novels and putting together the June issue for Flash Frontier.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My work isn’t easily categorised as one genre or another, so I’d say diversity is my niche. For example, my comics lean towards poetry, my fiction towards art, and so forth. I’m interested in meta-fiction and such work tends to defy genre restraints.

Why do I write what I do?

Writing’s a privilege that I haven’t always had and likely, such is the need to earn money, I’m unlikely to have for much longer, so I’m making the most of it. I’m interested in giving voice to characters from social groups who tend not to be represented frequently in literary fiction, poetry and comics.

How does my writing process work?

I wrote a guest post about my writing process here, for Alison Lock's blog.

Thank you for this, Catherine McNamara. I'm passing the baton to Teresa Stenson, who will post next week.

Genre us

Alison Lock generously invited me to her blog to talk about genre-hopping. Thanks, Alison! You can read my thoughts here.

The seen

Sincere thanks to Céire Hopley for including my Wellington cartoonist inspired poem "Two Sunsets in Three Panels" in the June issue of Kapiti Coast arts scene pamphlet The Seen.