{"id":251,"date":"2010-06-24T10:00:08","date_gmt":"2010-06-23T22:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=251"},"modified":"2010-07-04T15:31:06","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T03:31:06","slug":"elizabeth-knox-spec-fic-christchurch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/06\/24\/elizabeth-knox-spec-fic-christchurch\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Knox & Spec-Fic Christchurch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Elizabeth Knox: The Angel's Cut<\/p><\/div>\n

Well known speculative fiction writer, Elizabeth Knox<\/strong><\/a>, author of the Vintner’s Luck <\/em>and the Printz award<\/strong><\/a> winning\u00a0 Dreamhunter\/Dreamquake<\/em> duology, was in Christchurch last night for an event sponsored by Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM<\/strong><\/a> (the radio station and programme for which I do interviews.)<\/p>\n

The weather was agin the event, but\u00a0 Elizabeth Knox has a dedicated following so the numbers, although smallish, were enthusiastic as Knox spoke of her love of the Fantasy genre; although, in fact, she describes her writing as “fantastic naturalism”\u2014fantastic happenings (if I have this right) in worlds that are very real. For example, even though the world in the Dream-<\/em> duology is not our world, the society described is realistically Edwardian. And in terms of topography and landscape, very like Nelson\/Golden Bay in New Zealand. (You see, not just<\/span> Middle-Earth.)<\/p>\n

Knox also spoke of the current gulf that exists between so-called “literary” fiction and the rest of literature today, a gulf that led her to steer away from the “Fantasy” label with novels such as Vintner’s Luck<\/em>, in order to be taken seriously as a writer. If I understood Knox correctly, she believes that the gulf is artifical and so-called “literary” fiction simply another genre that has cleverly managed to occupy the moral high ground of the literary world. She then went on to talk about what for her is the great attraction of writing ‘Fantastic Naturalism’, in that it enables the writer to step outside\u00a0 the straitjacket of realism, e.g. how the world really is, and\/or the constraint of how history really happened, and make one’s own rules.<\/p>\n

The evening concluded with a reading from Knox’s latest book, The Angel’s Cut<\/em>, which is the sequel to Vintner’s Luck <\/em>and follows the fortunes of the angel Xas in 1930s Hollywood. Audience members also had the opportunity to talk informally with Knox afterward.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Amongst the audience were eight of the incipient SpecFicNZ<\/a>, <\/strong>an umbrella organization for NZ writers of SpecFic (including Fantastic Naturalism), which will be launched in Wellington in August, as part of Au Contraire<\/strong><\/a>, the 2010 Science-Fiction Fantasy convention. (SciFi, Fantasy, SpecFic, Fantastic Naturalism\u2014as you can see, we’re definitey spoiled for choice of terminology.) Once the Knox event\u2014definitely<\/span> what brought us all out!\u2014was done, we repaired to a local coffee house (The Coffee House, in fact)\u00a0 for refreshment and conviviality in what was definitely a first ‘meet in person’ for most of us.\u00a0 Writers of Epic Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Speculative Short Fiction and Supernatural Horror were all represented. Most importantly, a good time was had by all\u2014and we have\u00a0 agreed to ‘do it again soon’ over the traditional long lunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well known speculative fiction writer, Elizabeth Knox, author of the Vintner’s Luck and the Printz award winning\u00a0 Dreamhunter\/Dreamquake duology, was in Christchurch last night for an event sponsored by Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM (the radio station and programme for which I do interviews.) The weather was agin the event, but\u00a0 Elizabeth Knox has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}