Launched!

Magpie Hall is now officially out in the world. Available at all good (New Zealand) bookstores yada yada. I feel something like relief.

It had a great launch at Mighty Mighty, which was the perfect venue - it conjured up all the lushness of a Victorian tattoo parlour. The book was launched by my good friend Gemma Gracewood who said unbelievably nice things about Magpie Hall and about me. Afterwards we discussed the fact that while Rosemary Summers isn't based on anyone we know, she is someone we could imagine knowing (indeed, Sally, the manager of Mighty Mighty, is herself a tattooed lady who collects taxidermy). After the speeches, Gemma was joined on stage by three more friends (Nigel, Carmel and Andy) from the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, and they serenaded us with songs by Nick Cave and The Be Good Tanyas, both inspirations for the novel and on my list.

The launch was somewhat overshadowed by the sad death earlier in the week of our friend Heather McKenzie. She was sorely missed and will continue to be so.

Further to my last post about my new website, within days of it going up it was chosen as one of 8 great author websites, alongside the likes of Dan Brown, Peter Carey and Isabelle Allende! Thanks to my fantastic designers Sharon Blance and Brence Coghill. Sharon also took my author photos. If any authors out there would like to contact them in view to having their own website done, please feel free to leave your contact details in the comments here and I will pass them on. They were wonderful to work with and really listened to what I wanted, the result being my dream website. These two are multi-talented and are also the best swing dancers around.

Finally, if you are in Christchurch, I am doing an event tomorrow night (Tuesday, November 10) with Women On Air at Our City, Oxford Terrace. For more details visit www.womenonair.org.nz, or www.rachael-king.com. Please tell your friends!

Festival report #1.

The Christchurch Writers Festival is over. It was a great but exhausting few days, and I didn't even go to as many sessions as I would have liked. I think I'm tired from a combination of going to hear writers, being a writer on panels myself, being 'on', partying (ie drinking) more than I'm used to, and still having to be the usual mother when I came home. But hell, it was fun.

Chairing a session in particular takes it out of you as you're responsible for the whole thing running smoothly, and I am a compulsive over-preparer for that kind of thing (although strangely when I am there as a panellist I find it easier to prepare nothing at all), so it took me all week to write introductions and to generally feel anxious. Well, I'm happy to report that the Friday session did run smoothly, despite being told when I arrived that Mark Sarvas wasn't going to make it (which would have meant rewriting my introduction, coming up with more questions and dumping the rather nice intro I had written for Mark). Luckily I found out in time that he would in fact be coming; he'd just be a little late. This actually provided a bit of flair to the session as Mark arrived in a flourish about halfway through.

I couldn't have asked for an easier group of writers (Anya Ulinich, Christine Leunens, Maxine Alterio, Mark Sarvas) to chair. They all had plenty to say, and rather than sticking rigidly to my plan for the session, I just let it flow organically, with readings and questions that arose out of the pieces that were read. I do wish we'd had more time, as we were really only just getting warmed up when it came to an end. Four writers is one too many for a session such as that, even if we did have more time. Mark Sarvas in particular could have had a session all to himself to talk about his book, Harry, Revised and his blog The Elegant Variation (more on this when I write about the blogging panel we were both on). But I guess no matter how well a writer performs on the day, the nature of festivals and their resources is that sometimes people have to share the stage, and it would have been a gamble to give a writer who is really unknown in New Zealand a session all to himself.

I did, however, get feedback that it was a good taster for the works of the writers involved and that plenty of people went out and bought their books after.

I have to say that a highlight of the festival for me was meeting and hanging out with the wonderful Anya Ulinich. She is one cool chick and we had lots of laughs. And quite a few drinks.

More on the festival here, here, here and here.

Prizes and diversity.

I have just spent the weekend in Wellington for the tail end of Writers & Readers Week. One of the best sessions I went to was the Prize in Modern Letters readings. I don't normally go for readings, because I perfer to hear writers talk, but when you haven't read any of the entries and there are six of them, it's really nice to get a taste for what the books are like. The standouts for me were Michele Amas, Mary McCallum and Jo Randerson. Jo's story started out as a light, jokey sort of a tale and took the most unexpected gut-wrenching turn. Powerful stuff. Mary proved herself very adept at writing a sex scene without tipping over into ickyness, smut or coyness.

The winner on the night was David Beach who was quite a character, reading some poems from the point of view of God and I think he won a lot of fans with his nervous and charming delivery. The judge of the award, Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space and former editor of The Paris Review, said she found herself wanting to argue with his book, Abandoned Novel, which is a pretty good recommendation. I have to say I wasn't suprised by her selection after I saw her speak on the panel Who Owns the Story? with Jane Parkin and Fergus Barrowman. When asked by the chair what she looks for in work to publish, she made it pretty clear that she favours the experimental over the polished, which to me immediately ruled out four of the candidates I saw read.

Which got me thinking about how subjective awards are - not that there is anything wrong with that. I think the most important thing is to make sure that awards have varying judges so that a whole range of work gets rewarded. I can't help feeling that the Sunday Star-Times short story competition, which, along with the Katherine Mansfield is seen by many as one of the most important writing competitions in New Zealand, should look at getting a fresh judge. Owen Marshall* has judged that competition for a long time. The effect is that anyone whose stories are rejected by him one year can't then enter the same story again the next year because they already know he doesn't like it. Therefore all they can really do is keep trying with new stories and they may just end up writing the kind of story they think he likes rather than what they really want to write. And I reckon what can happen is that a sort of norm develops for the kind of stories that win awards, which are often the only ones that get read by the general public. And then there becomes a public perception about what 'good' writing should be. New Zealand's short story landscape becomes less diverse. If Owen Marshall had been judging the Prize in Modern Letters, the outcome would have been very very different.

*This is nothing against Owen, who is a fine judge and a great writer.