March newsletter

This is a simple text version of our monthly newsletter. You can subscribe to this and to receive our book launch invites on the front page of our website.

Festival madness
NZ Festival Writers Week kicks off this coming Friday and we're there!

Along with our book launch for Caoilinn Hughes' Gathering Evidence and Dylan Horrocks' Incomplete Works on Sat 8 March, VUP writers at the NZFWW include Eleanor Catton, Elizabeth Knox, Damien Wilkins, Geoff Cochrane, Jenny Bornholdt, Emma Martin, Danyl Mclauchlan, Ashleigh Young, Marty Smith, Harry Ricketts, and chairing sessions, Pip Adam, James Brown and Kate Camp. The programme looks terrific.

Hokitika
On Thursday 13 March, we head to Hokitika for 'An evening with Eleanor Catton' at Hokitika's Regent Theatre. The whole town has got behind this event, with shops being encouraged to dress up for the day!

Reviews
Marty Smith's Horse with Hat and Kerry Donovan Brown's Lamplighter were launched in grand style recently and both quickly received excellent reviews. Horse with Hat was no. 2 on the NZ Bestseller List late last week and a Booksellers NZ review said, 'Marty Smith’s poems are by turns quirky, sad, punchy, amusing, thought-provoking, and above all they provide a sense of time and place and family.' In NZ Listener, Louise O'Brien said 'Lamplighter is notable next for the striking and sparkling originality of the world it imagines[...] Both fairy tale and contemporary fable, Lamplighter is a lovely surprise.' We can only concur.

Books to watch for
In April we will launch Tim Wilson's new novel News Pigs in Auckland, and Laurence Aberhart's ANZAC at Dunedin Art Gallery, alongside the opening of the exhibition of Laurence's Anzac photos. More about these brilliant new books next month.

Autumn giveaway
To mark the beginning of autumn we have two books to giveaway – Lamplighter by Kerry Donovan Brown, and Horse with Hat by Marty Smith. To be in to win, send us one sentence to this email as to why you love (or loathe) autumn. Be as poetic or prosaic as you like. Entries will be judged by VUP staff over coffee on Monday 17 March, so get in before then.

'Monsters' Prize Draw
Congratulations to Marie Hodgkinson who won a copy of Elizabeth Knox's Wake and two tickets to her 'Letting the Ghosts In' session at NZFWW.

Events in March

NZFWW
Fri 7 March-Weds 12 March

Some top picks

• Sun 9 March: 'Scenes of Secrets and Disguises' - scenes performed from Damien Wilkins' novel Max Gate
• Tues 11 March: 'Bursting the Baby Bubble' Monica Dux in conversation with Pip Adam.
• Tues 11 March: 'First Published' - free reading event at Meow Cafe, featuring Caoilinn Hughes.
• Weds 12 March: 'Letting the Ghosts In' - Elizabeth Knox in conversation.

The full Writers Week programme is here.

Book launch and publisher's party
Sat 8 March, 7.30pm-9.30pm. We launch Caoilinn Hughes' Gathering Evidence and Dylan Horrocks' Incomplete Works at 24 Blair St - The Atrium Exchange Building.

Hokitika
Thursday 13 March. 'An evening with Eleanor Catton' - Eleanor in conversation with Max Porter.
Bookings essential.