30 Week Fiction / Memoir Course - classroom
Course also available ONLINE anytime. This course is for those who want to write a novel, short stories, or a memoir / autobiography. We provide a fun and stimulating environment in which you can discover your authentic writing voice. Many graduates of this course have published books, some in London and New York. See ‘Reviews’ above.
The two semester CLASSROOM version of the course runs from Sept 2025 until May 2026 with a break for one-on-one mentoring over the summer. It is chaired by John Cranna, Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. John was voted Best Post-Graduate Teacher by students at AUT University. The course can done ONLINE at any time. It features the same course material, but you are provided one-on-one guidance by an experienced tutor, an internationally published author.
The main feature of the CLASSROOM course is a weekly three hour group meeting, in which student work is discussed and critiqued in an informal but supportive environment. Craft and technical issues arise organically from discussion of this work. Students on both versions of the course keep a reading and writing journal, which helps chart their development.
A number of successful NZ fiction writers and editors hold specialist craft workshops during the course; these include new rising authors such as Ruby Porter and Rosetta Allan, plus established writers Eileen Merriman, Fiona Sussman, Stuart Hoar, Dominic Hoey and former Penguin-Random House fiction publisher Harriet Allan who provides insight into the kind of manuscripts they accept. The main craft issues of dialogue, character, plot and structure, point of view, description, voice and theme will all be addressed during group sessions.
In addition, each student will be matched to an established NZ fiction / memoir writer or editor, for one-on-one mentoring. This is the thirteenth year the course has run, and personal mentors on the course include Elizabeth Smither, Lynn Davidson, Ruby Porter, Rosetta Allan, Stuart Hoar, David Howard, and Jessica Wilson. Several of our teachers have won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement
At the end of the course, the student will be provided with an analysis, in the form of a publisher’s readers report, on the strengths and weaknesses of her / his manuscript. Successful completion of the course will result in the award of the Higher Certificate in Writing from the Creative Hub.
In the last three years thirty of our graduates have published novels or won prizes in national or international writing awards. See ‘Reviews’ above for details.
Location: 27 Princes St, central Auckland
Start Date 2025: Tues, 23 Sept, 6pm-9pm
(Note: It is likely we will offer an identical Sun 10am-1pm stream this year as well.)
Weekly sessions at this time with half hour meal break.
Two semesters, Sept-Dec, and Feb-May 2026
Course Fee: $6,990 incl GST if you have completed an Introductory or Three Day Course (10% discount) … Course fee may be paid in interest free monthly payments over two years.
Course fee if you haven’t completed an introductory course – $7,767 incl GST.
Free onsite parking.
Our Tutors
These are Some of Our Student Successes...
Eileen Merriman
By 2025, our Thirty Week Fiction Course graduate Eileen had published thirteen novels with Penguin Random House. Eileen’s novel ‘Pieces of You’ was published in 2017. This is the compelling story of a young woman who is uprooted from her home city and whose life begins to disintegrate. ‘Catch Me When You Fall’, was published in 2018, and tells the story of a girl who has leukemia, and her relationship with a boy suffering bi-polar disorder. Her next novel ‘Invisibly Breathing’ was published in 2019, and since then she has published ten more. Eileen works as a doctor. She has won prizes in UK and NZ short story awards, including the national Sunday Star-Times Award four years in a row.
Ann Glamuzina
Ann’s elegiac novel ‘Rich Man Road’ reached No 1 on the Booksellers NZ fiction sales list. The novel is published by Eunoia Books, a publishing house made up of former students of Hub Director John Cranna. Ann says of her novel: ‘My extended family lives in Croatia and I have grown up with the rich stories and legends of the Dalmatian coast. During WWII, my relatives escaped the German occupation, spending time as refugees in the British run camps in El Shatt, Egypt.’ The novel follows the journey of one of these relatives who migrated to New Zealand. Ann’s novel received a glowing review from Rae McGregor on National Radio, which helped catapult it to No 1 position.
Gina Cole
Graduate Gina’s first collection of short stories, ‘Black Ice Matter’ was published by Huia Books and won the Hubert Church Prize for Best First Book of Fiction. Her novel ‘Na Viro’, a science fiction / fantasy work, was published in 2022. Gina is a graduate of our 30 Week Fiction Course and is a family lawyer of Fijian and British ancestry. In ‘Black Ice Matter’, a woman is caught between traditional Fijian ways and the brutality of the military dictatorship; a glaciology researcher falls into a crevasse and confronts the unexpected; two women lose children in freak shooting accidents. Gina has won several national writing awards and has been published in Pasifika and other literary journals. She is an Honorary Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa.
Greg Hall
Greg Hall’s novel ‘Good Sons’ was profiled on Radio NZ and Television New Zealand to coincide with Anzac Day. It is a harrowing but uplifting story of three young men whose lives are overtaken by the First World War. It culminates at the battle of Passchendaele in which more than 800 young New Zealanders lost their lives. Greg is a Director of the Passchendaele Society, and a former senior banking executive.
Heidi North-Bailey
Graduate Heidi’s book of poetry ‘Possibility of Flight’ has been described as ‘a thoughtful and intimate collection that ends unexpectedly with fireworks’. She was short-listed for the 2023 $10,000 Gifkins Award for her latest novel. She won the Shanghai Writers Scholarship to write in China. She was also awarded the Hachette / NZ Society of Authors Trans-Tasman mentorship, to work with a senior editor at Hachette Australia on the manuscript of her latest book. Her work has appeared in New Zealand and international journals. Heidi lives in Auckland, and when not being kept busy with her six-year-old, squirrels away time to write.
Fiona Sussman
Fiona’s latest novel, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, was published internationally in 2023 and was the most borrowed book from Auckland Public Libraries in that year. She won the Dame Ngaio Marsh award for the best crime novel of 2017, and the Sunday Star Times short story award in 2018, when John Cranna’s graduates took 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes in NZ’s best-known short story award. Her first novel ‘Shifting Colours’ based on her experience of apartheid in South Africa, is published by Penguin in New York, and Alison and Busby in London. Her second novel, ‘The Last Time We Spoke’ plumbs the dark reaches of urban NZ. Fiona has worked as a general practitioner and graduated from the fore-runner to our Thirty Week Fiction course, taught by Hub director John Cranna. www.fionasussman.co.nz
Rosetta Allan
“Rosetta Allan’s debut novel ‘Purgatory’ (Penguin) is one of those books that draws you into its exquisitely crafted, atmospheric and entirely believable world within the first couple of pages. The time is 1865, the place is Otahuhu, New Zealand – back then just a small outpost designed to create a boundary between the slowly expanding settler’s Auckland, and the edge of the Waikato, still protected by King Country Maori.” NZ Booklovers. Rosetta’s second novel, ‘Unreliable People’ was published in 2019 and her third novel ‘Crazy Love’ in 2021, both by Penguin Random House. Rosetta is a graduate of our Thirty Week Fiction Course and a Hub tutor.
