Summer Fiction School
Have fun with a like-minded bunch of scribblers. This is the twelfth year of our popular weekend fiction schools (Fri night to Sun 5pm, 10th-12th Jan, 2025), and the event has its own unique atmosphere in our beautiful Victorian house on the edge of leafy Albert Park.
We show you the basic writing techniques used by professionals, such as creating memorable scenes, transforming your own life experiences into fiction, and writing great dialogue. What is the Hero’s Journey? What is Show, Don’t Tell? What is the best way to end a story? What are the five common traps start out writers fall into? We offer a supportive group environment in which you can explore your writing ideas and connect to other aspiring writers.
You may have dabbled a bit already, or be writing a novel, or you might simply want to learn how to start. At the end of the course you will received detailed feedback on a story of your own choosing that you have created over the three days. We offer you a free follow-up workshop later in the year. Graduates also receive a 10% discount on our popular 30 week Fiction / Memoir course.
Tutored by John Cranna, Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. John’s books have been published in NZ, Australia, UK and in France. Voted best Post-Graduate teacher by students at AUT University. He also edited NZ’s largest circulation magazine for five years.
Dates: Jan 10-12th January 2025 (Friday night to Sunday 5pm).
Times: 6pm-8.30pm Friday, then 10am-5pm Sat, Sun (hour lunch @ 1pm)
Venue: 23 Princes St, central Auckland. Dedicated free parking. (Large, well-ventilated room.)
Course Price: $498 incl GST (pay now, or pay later)
Our Tutors
These are Some of Our Student Successes...
Eileen Merriman
By 2023, 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 third novel ‘Invisibly Breathing’ was published in 2019. 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
Gina’s first collection of short stories, ‘Black Ice Matter’ was published by Huia Books and her novel ‘Na Viro’ was published in 2022. Gina is a graduate of our Thirty Week Fiction Course and is a family lawyer of Fijian and British ancestry. In these stories, 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 prizes in several national writing awards and has been published in several Pacifica and other literary journals.
Greg Hall
Greg Hall’s novel 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 three-year-old, squirrels away time to write.
Fiona Sussman
Fiona’s latest novel, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, was published internationally in 2023. 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.
