Florian Habicht/Supplied
New Zealand gem James & Isey has completed its fifth weekend in cinemas with a box office of $530,000. It’s already in the top 10 best-selling NZ documentaries of all time. “It makes my heart sing that I am attending an Orchestra Wellington concert this Saturday that is already sold out,” blogged Creative New Zealand chief executive Stephen Wainwright last week. “Looking back a year ago, it was only in my most optimistic moments that I would have visualised this outcome.” Since borders closed, interest in our arts has felt keener. We’re wearing masks on public transport, but we’re not avoiding sitting together in venues. After only three weeks on local cinema release in March
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.
AUCKLAND
1 Helen Kelly: Her Life by Rebecca Macfie (Awa Press, $50)
From the publisher’s blurb: “Kell
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Members of the Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington community won six of the eight annual awards at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards last night.
Five of the winners are alumni of the University’s renowned International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) Creative Writing Master’s programme, while the sixth is an emeritus professor in the University’s English programme.
Three of the winning books were published by Victoria University Press (VUP).
“To have five winning graduates from the International Institute of Modern Letters indicates that our reputation as the best place to learn creative writing in Aotearoa New Zealand is well earned. It is truly outstanding to see our alumni leading in their chosen field,” says Professor Sarah Leggott, Dean of the University’s Wellington Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
In the past year, he was named Wellingtonian of the Year in the Environment category, has featured in two documentaries about his life, and has had his autobiography picked up by Victoria University Press (VUP).
The Alarmist: Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change tracks Lowe’s journey from a high school dropout surfer in Taranaki to Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientist. Lowe was the lead author on the largest-ever report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which the organisation won the 2007 Peace Prize. He was recruited for his life’s work at the age of 23 by legendary climate scientist Charles David Keeling, who developed an early gas analyser and set up the world’s first record of atmospheric carbon on Mauna Loa, Hawaii.