What it became was the genesis for Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey, which arrived April 17. Olsen, 66, has released two books in the past month, the 19th and 20th of her 20-year career months after recovering from COVID-19. Growing Up Elizabeth May: The Making of an Activist, was co-authored with May’s daughter, Cate May Burton, and is aimed at young change-makers. Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey which currently sits at No. 8 on the B.C. Bestsellers list is about Canadian identity. The common thread in both and every book by Olsen is storytelling. “Storytelling is my method of communicating. Writing was an extension of that.”
Three Cheers for the Maker of the Modern Essay: Michel de Montaigne
I am a lover of essays.
Every morning, shortly after dawn, I sit at my laptop, coffee at hand, and explore the internet looking for pieces to read for enjoyment or as a kickoff for an article of my own.
On my bookshelves are scores of novels, once also a favorite genre, but over the years I have amassed equal numbers of volumes of essays, collections by such diverse writers as Joseph Epstein, Richard Mitchell, Alice Thomas Ellis, Hilaire Belloc, and Florence King. Here too are anthologies like Phillip Lopate’s “The Art of the Personal Essay” and Epstein’s “The Norton Book of Personal Essays.”
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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.
Composite: Stuff
Airini Beautrais’ Bug Week is the first short story collection to win the Acorn Prize in over a decade, and the second ever.
First-time nominee Airini Beautrais was awarded the country’s premier fiction prize at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on Wednesday night. The Whanganui-based author beat out two previous winners and a previous nominee to win the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, becoming the first winner for a collection of short stories in over a decade. Beautrais took out the $57,000 prize for
Bug Week, her first work of prose following four books of poetry. It is only the second ever short story collection to win the Acorn Prize.
Whanganui writer Airini Beautrais has won the premier award at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her book
Bug Week - it s her first book of fiction and it s also the first time the category has been won by a collection of short stories in more than a decade.
Airini Beautrais.
Photo: Tracy Grant
Beautrais won the $57,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction with a book that convenor of judges Kiran Dass described as a knockout from start to finish. Casting a devastating and witty eye on humanity at its most fallible and wonky, this is a tightly-wound and remarkably assured collection. Atmospheric and refined, these stories evoke a strong sense of quiet unease, slow burning rage and the absurdly comic, Dass said.