Introducing Anna Mackenzie

Anna Mackenzie lives on a farm in Hawke’s Bay, NZ, where she writes contemporary, speculative and historic fiction. Her nine titles have netted her seven Notable Book Awards, an NZ Post Honour Award, Sir Julius Vogel Award and other accolades. She wrote her first book when she was seven – and is very glad her mother kept it!

Anna says:

“My interest in WWI is based in family stories. I wanted to properly understand my grandfather’s and other family members’ experiences.

“A real high point of writing Evie’s War was having a writing residency in Belgium, which allowed me to thoroughly immerse myself in WWI history. I could walk battlefields, seek out buildings where hospitals had been based, study landscapes, weather, the day-to-day things our servicemen and women would have experienced. And of course, I wrote!

“Sometimes the research made me cry: standing at my great-uncle’s grave, listening to ‘The Last Post’ played beneath the Menin Gate in Ieper, walking around trenches and cemeteries – there was so much suffering and waste. It’s impossible not to feel saddened by it. But even during the very worst of it, our capacity for love and friendship – our humanity – shines through.

“I was surprised by how very real, and alive, those young men and women felt – and continue to feel – to me, and by how fascinated I’ve become by war and its aftermath. WWI isn’t yet ready to let me go.”

In addition to writing novels Mackenzie edits magazines, teaches creative writing, mentors beginning writers and travels ‘whenever it fits in’. She is Vice-President of the New Zealand Society of Authors.

Titles: High Tide (2003), Out on the Edge (2005), Shadow of the Mountain (2008); Sea-wreck Trilogy – The Sea-wreck Stranger (2007), Ebony Hill (2010), Finder’s Shore (2011); Elgard series – Cattra’s Legacy (2012), Donnel’s Promise (2013); WWI – Evie’s War (2015).

• WEBSITE: www.annamackenzieauthor.com
• FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/annamackenzie.nz.author

Introducing Philippa Werry

I was born in Christchurch and grew up in Wellington, Auckland and New Plymouth. As a child, I wrote stories and poems for the Children’s Page of the Evening Post newspaper. Checking on a Saturday night to see if any of my stories had been published was an established part of my childhood. The rest of the family used to check too, and I would get phone calls from my dear great-aunts if anything was in there. I still have the book that I pasted all my stories into, and I often take it along when I do school visits. 

Another big influence was Ida Gaskin, my wonderful English teacher at New Plymouth Girls’ High School. Ida treated me as a writer. She died in January 2016, aged 96.

After high school and university came overseas travel, an MA in English Literature, marriage, more study (library diploma) and more travel, including long overland trips through Asia and Europe. All this time I was writing letters and travel journals, but it wasn’t until I was at home with small children that I started to write again seriously. I read a newspaper article about the School Journal and thought that might be something I could do in the small pockets of time I had available.

My first stories, poems and plays were published in the School Journal in the 1990s. Later I became interested in non-fiction and covered many different topics for educational publishers. Scholastic has published five of my children’s novels, including Enemy at the gate, shortlisted for the 2009 NZ Post children’s book awards. New Holland has published three non-fiction titles and a picture book, Best mates, illustrated by Bob Kerr. Other work (both plays and short stories) has been published in anthologies.

In recent years, my interest in history has translated into writing historical fiction and non-fiction, with an emphasis (partly because of family history) on war-related stories. Anzac Day: the New Zealand story was shortlisted in the 2014 NZ Post children’s book awards, and Waitangi Day was shortlisted in the children’s choice section in 2015.   

Interview questions:

Positive (happy) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

One positive experience I had was getting in contact with lots of people all around the world who helped with my research or let me use their photos. I also found it very positive to be writing and thinking a lot about peace.

Sad (tragic) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.
When researching by reading old diaries and letters, you come across many sad entries.  One of the most poignant that found its way into the book is the diary entry by Australian WW1 nurse Elsie Tranter, written on Armistice Day. Many soldiers had mixed feelings about celebrating on that day; of course they were relieved that the war was over but their reactions were often quiet and muted.  

But the nurses only got a few hours off to celebrate, if they were lucky. Men didn't stop dying just because the Armistice had been announced, and the nurses still had sick and wounded patients to look after.

Interesting (that surprised you) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

I was surprised and pleased that there are so many peace memorials in New Zealand. We often focus on the war memorials but actually there are a lot that commemorate peace, and they come in all sorts of different and interesting forms, such as peace poles, flames, bells, walks, plaques and buildings.  

Introducing Melinda Szymanik

Melinda Szymanik has been a writer of children's fiction across a wide range of ages for over fifteen years with many publications to her name. Her first novel was completed during an NZSA mentorship and she is now herself a mentor for this programme. Her picture book The Were-Nana (Scholastic, 2008), illustrated by Sarah Anderson, won Children’s Choice at the 2009 NZ Post Children’s Book Awards, and she also won Librarian's Choice at the 2014 LIANZA Awards for her junior novel A Winter's Day in 1939 (Scholastic, 2013).

 

Recipient of the University of Otago, College of Education, Creative New Zealand Children's Writer's Residency in 2014, Melinda was also granted a University of Otago Wallace Residency at the Pah Homestead in 2015. She recently completed a Diploma in Children's Literature from the University of Canterbury (2015), following on from a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature awarded in 2004.

Melinda has been on the NZSA's Youth Mentorship Selection Panel twice, convening the panel in 2015. She blogs regularly on books and writing, runs writing workshops for children and adults, and regularly visits schools as part of the NZ Book Council's Writers in Schools Programme. Her latest picture book, Fuzzy Doodle, illustrated by Donovan Bixley will be published by Scholastic in June.

Interview questions:

Can you please tell us the positive, sad, and interesting things that occurred while you wrote the book. 
 

1). Something positive was learning so much more about my father’s childhood. I knew some of the major events but writing the book helped me join the dots between them and I felt closer than ever to my dad.

2). Something sad was knowing how bad conditions were and how much he had had to endure.

3). Something interesting? That so many Polish people were deported out of Poland by the USSR and became this incredible diaspora that even reached New Zealand.

 

Introducing Glyn Harper

Glyn Harper is Professor of War Studies at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He is Massey's Project Manager of the Centenary History of New Zealand and the First World War. A former teacher, he joined the Australian Army in 1988 and after eight years transferred to the New Zealand Army, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Glyn was the army's official historian for the deployment to East Timor and is the author of numerous history books for adults. His children's books include Le Quesnoy, Jim's Letters and Roly, the Anzac Donkey. In 2015 Glyn and illustrator Jenny Cooper won the Best Picture Book Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, as well as a Storylines Notable Picture Book Award, for Jim's Letters, a moving story about a correspondence between two brothers during the First World War. In 2016 Penguin Books NZ published 'Gladys goes to War'. It has been number one in the bestseller list since its release.

We asked Glyn to answer the following questions about his book 'Gladys goes to war'.

Something Positive (happy) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

I     I was excited to uncover Glady's story. Such an amazing woman deserved to have her story told.

 

Something Sad (tragic) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

      Gladys'  husband, William Henning died in September 1918. Her two brothers also died in the war; one just days before the end of the war. She also had a severe case of influenza which permanently damaged her lungs.

      Something Interesting (that surprised you) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

       I was surprised that Gladys achieved so much: working on cars and as a car sales rep, learning to fly, driving across Australia and as a member of the RSL.

Introducing Peter Millett

Peter Millett loves writing humorous stories that the whole family can enjoy. His most popular NZ books are The Anzac Biscuit Man, Humpty Rugby and Moa's Ark, and his most well-known overseas titles are the Boy Zero Wannabe Hero and Johnny Danger series. His picture book The Anzac Puppy won the Children's Choice award at the 2015 NZ Book Awards.

I asked Peter Millett to tell us something positive, sad and interesting that occurred when writing the book.

1.       Positive (happy) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

The people of Cannock Chase hold Kiwis in the highest regard and go out of their way to honour our WW1 contribution.

2.       Sad (tragic) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

 The tragic case of soldiers who died on the transport ships getting to the UK before seeing any action or training.

3.       Interesting (that surprised you) you discovered while writing/illustrating the book.

 Contacting a retired UK journalist who vividly remembered interviewing Fred Smith in 1965. Fred's excellent research helped inspire my book. 

Introducing Diana Menefy

Diana Menefy            

Diana was born in Christchurch. Growing up in the South Island gave her a rich collection of experiences and images: the snow on the mountains, the autumn colours, the north-west winds - having to push her bike home as the payoff for an express ride to school.

In 1974 Diana and her husband bought the dairy farm in Tapuhi, Northland. Life on the farm with a river that flooded and three adventurous children was a great background for a budding writer.  Her first stories and articles were published in the New Zealand Farmer and School Journal in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 For the next ten years most of her published work was non-fiction although she had several short stories in anthologies. She worked as a part-time feature writer for the local paper, then went freelance to work on commissioned histories. Running parallel with this was a passion for children's literature that culminated as the specialty for her master's degree in education in 2001.

2001 saw her first junior novel River Crossing and her sixth commissioned non-fiction book The Centenary of Whangarei Hospital  published. Learning Media accepted four of her readers for the American market and sales of Pounamu New Zealand Jade, a book aimed at the tourist market, were reaching towards 12,000. This was also the year Diana started to work for NorthTec tutoring and doing the course design for the online diplomas of applied writing. She is now a principal academic staff member at Northtec.

In 2010 Shadow of the Boyd was published by HarperCollins and went on to be shortlisted in the N.Z. Post Children’s Book Awards and won the LIANZA Esther Glen Medal in 2011. In 2013 Diana was asked to write one of the Kiwis at War series for Scholastic.  1915: Wounds of War was published in 2015.

1915: Wounds of War
Teaching notes: http://www.scholastic.co.nz/Club/pdfs/1915_wounds_of_war.pdf
ISBN: 9781775432746
RRP $19.00