What’s Coming Up This Week: An Event, A Guest Post—& A Spot Prize Opportunity
Awards Celebration & Keynote Address
Christchurch had two winners and a further two finalists (in multiple categories) in the recent Sir Julius Vogel Awards, given annually by the Science Fiction (and) Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) for excellence in New Zealand created Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. There’s a fabulous trophy too, designed by the famous WETA Workshop.
SpecFicNZ Christchurch has decided the Christchurch writers’ success is more than worthy of celebration and is hosting an event at Fendalton Library this weekend (kick-off is at 1.30 pm.)
As a past Sir Julius Vogel Award winner, I am delighted to be giving the keynote address for the event and I understand the two Award winners will also be making speeches as well as reading from their work. Light refreshments are being provided and there will be the opportunity to meet and chat with all the writers afterward.
As you may recall, I launched Thornspell at Fendalton Library, way back in 2008, and since I understand this will be the first event there since the 2010-11 earthquakes, it feels doubly great to be going back on Saturday.
I’ll be specifically featuring both the finalists and winners later in the week, including excerpts and information about their work. In the meanwhile, here’s a larger version of the invite poster:
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Also This Week: Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World
I’ll have another guest post in the “Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World” series up on SF Signal — and this time I’m featuring a NZ heroine by a NZ author. There’ll be a spot prize for anyone who guesses the heroine and author correctly (in a comment left on this post) ahead of the feature posting. 🙂
(Members of the SF Signal team excluded from the guessing and spot prize—sorry, Paul!)
Oh boo, no prize for me 🙁
On the other hand, I think its very cool that you’re a guest speaker at the Vogels this year!
Nope, not this time anyway!
By the way, my guest stint is not for the official Vogels ceremony but for a local event to celebrate our Christchurch & environs finalists and winners. The rationale behind having a celebration, besides simply wanting to awhi local writers and their success, is that with the NZ literary scene currently in something of an awards and sponsorship doldrums –despite the recent Auckland Writers’ Festival enjoying record attendance–it seems more important than ever to “press pause” and take time to appreciate writing achievement,storytelling and books. Since writing can also be something of a lonely occupation, it’s also about coming together as a community for a very positive reason.
Thanks for the clarification. Sorry about that.
No need to apologise! A perfectly understandable mistake, particularly when looking in on our local scene from the far side of the world.
I hope this event goes well on the day.
Thanks, June; I’m looking forward to it. 🙂