ELIZABETH KNOX is one of New Zealand’s most successful contemporary fiction writers. Her best-known novel, Te Vintner’s Luck (1998), was a huge success—winning the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the inaugural Tasmania Pacific Region Prize (2001), as well as being adapted into a film in 2009. Mortal Fire, a novel for young adults set in the same world as her previous young adult novels Dreamhunter and Dreamquake, will be published in the US by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2013. Her forthcoming novel Wake is a supernatural thriller revolving around a horrible disaster in a New Zealand town—survivors find themselves trapped in a town of corpses as they try to solve the mystery of the event.
BILL MANHIRE is often described as one of the finest New Zealand poets of his generation—his collections have won the New Zealand Book Awards poetry prize five times. He was the inaugural Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate and in 2005 was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and honoured as an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate. He received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and is currently the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. His forthcoming collection, Selected Poems, looks back over his long career.
ANTHONY MCCARTEN’s novels have been translated into 14 languages and his début, Spinners (Picador, 2000), was voted one of the top 10 novels of that year by Esquire magazine. His third novel, Death of a Superhero, won the 2008 Austrian Youth Literature Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 German Youth Literature Prize. McCarten’s big screen adaptation, starring Andy Serkis and Tomas Brodie Sangster, had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011 and its US premiere at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. Te sequel, In the Absence of Heroes, was published in February in New Zealand, as was Brilliance (Alma Books), a novel based on Tomas Edison’s life. McCarten received early international success with his play “Ladies Night”—translated into 12 languages, it remains New Zealand’s
PAULA MORRIS is a fiction writer of English and Maori descent. Her first novel, Queen of Beauty, won Best First Book at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2003, and her short story collection, Forbidden Cities, was a Commonwealth Prize regional finalist in 2009. Morris is the editor of the Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories and her own short stories have been widely published and broadcast in New Zealand, the UK and the US. She is also a successful writer of young adult mystery novels and her most recent novel, Rangatira (Penguin) was named as a finalist in this year’s New Zealand Post Book Awards.
CATHERINE ROBERTSON’s début novel, Te Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid, hit the top spot on the New Zealand bestseller list as soon as it was released. Robertson’s second novel, Te Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence, was released in New Zealand in early August.
A New Zealander now living in Los Angeles, MARK STAUFER has created Te Numinous Place, described as the “world’s first multi-dimensional work of fiction”. Staufer, the former head of production at Universal Studios in London, has written a supernatural thriller that uses technology to create a new, experimental medium—the narrative moves past the screen into the real world with an interactive element that changes the reading experience.
PETER WALKER is a New Zealander who has lived in London since 1986 and worked for 10 years on the Independent and Independent on Sunday where he was foreign editor. His first book, Te Fox Boy (2001), tells the story of his cross-country tour of New Zealand in search of a 19th-century story about a Maori boy, Ngatau Omahuru, who was kidnapped during a battle and then brought up by the Premier, William Fox. Walker followed up Te Fox Boy with Te Courier’s Tale, which recounts the life of Reginald Pole, a friend of Michelangelo and the much- loved—then much-hated—cousin of Henry VIII.
Knox Walker
McCarten
Morris
Robertson
Manhire
Staufer
12 OCTOBER 2012 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT FRANKFURT 15