Blog Title
Newsroom run stories in April 2020 from our graduates Dr Himali McInnes, and Dr Eileen Merriman, on their work on the Covid front line here Newsroom
Reviews & Successes
In the past three years, we have had 30 students go on to achieve national and international awards and publications.
You could be our next big achiever…
These are Some of Our Student Successes...
Eileen Merriman
At mid-2022, our Thirty Week Fiction Course graduate Eileen had published ten 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 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 collection of short stories, ‘Black Ice Matter’ was published by Huia Books. 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
Heidi’s book of poetry ‘Possibility of Flight’ has been described as ‘a thoughtful and intimate collection that ends unexpectedly with fireworks’. She won the Shanghai Writers Scholarship and the Asia Foundation short story competition. 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 in 2022. 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 by Penguin Random House in 2019.
Other Successes From The Last Few Years
- Joe Janiszewski wins a prize in the Graeme Lay Short Story Award 2023
- Kathryn van Beek wins a McNeish Churchill Writing Residency to Hungary 2023
- Danny Macaroni wins the Forest and Bird Short Story Award 2023
- Leeanne O’Brien wins the $10,000 Sargeson Short Story Award Oct 2022, NZ’s richest short story prize
- Fiona Sussman’s novel The Doctor’s Wife published by Bateman Books, Sept 2022
- Colleen Maria Lenihan’s Kōhine, a collection of short stories, published by Huia Books, August 2022.
- Lucas Miles’ story published in the Oxford International Anthology of Flash Fiction, May 2022
- Third book in Eileen Merriman’s Silence of Snow trilogy published by Penguin Random House, April 2022.
- Elena Philps memoir Wolf at My Door published by Palabra Publishing, May 2022
- Fiona Sussman’s fourth novel Addressed to Greta, Bateman, wins the Booklovers Award (Fiona is a graduate of the forerunner to our 30 Week Fiction Course)
- Eileen Merriman’s novel The Silence of Snow short-listed for the 2021 Booklovers Award.
- Mandy McMullin wins a Society of Authors Mentoring Award
- Katie Newton prizewinner in the 2021 Sunday Star Times Short Story Award (8th consecutive year Hub graduates have been prizewinners in NZ’s best-known short story award).
- Mandy McMullin wins the NZ Society of Authors Heritage Short Story Award
- Kathryn van Beek’s short story collection Pet published by Mary Egan Books
- Pip Mckay wins 2020 1st Pages International Award, and trip to Paris with judge Sebastian Faulks
- Jude Peters’ second novel, Sanctuary published on Amazon
- Fiona Sussman short listed for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, May 2020
- Suzanne Ashmore’s novel Meltwater short-listed for the 2020 Booklovers Award
- Jill Varani wins 1st prize in the Sunday Star Times Short Story Award, Dec 2019.
Mandy McMullin and Leanne Radojkovich win 1st and 2nd prize in the 2019 Graeme Lay short story award - Heidi North’s book of poems We are Tiny Beneath the Light published by the Cuba Press
- Kirsty Powell’s novel The Strength of Eggshells published by Cloud Ink
- Eileen Merriman’s fourth novel Moonlight Sonata published by Penguin Random House
- Suzanne Ashmore’s novel Meltwater published
- Eileen Merriman’s third novel Invisibly Breathing published by Penguin Random House.
- Rosetta Allan’s second novel Unreliable People published by Penguin Random House
- Nidhi Eipe invited to read at the Cork International Poetry Festival, Ireland
- Jeannie McLean’s novel Caught Between short-listed for the 2019 $10,000 Michael Gifkins Prize
- Jeff Murray’s novel Melt, published
- Josie Laird’s novel All About Kate published by Swooping Kereru Books
- Sidney Mazzi’s novel The Art of Hunting Humans published on Amazon
- Fiona Sussman, Eileen Merriman & Kathryn van Beek win 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes in the 2018 Sunday Star Times short story award.
- Julie Ryan’s book of poems Last of the Halcyon Days published by Steele Roberts Publishing
- Eileen Merriman’s novel Pieces of You published by Penguin Random House
- Colleen Lenihan awarded a place on the Te Papa Tupu Maori Writer’s Programme plus a Michael King Writers Centre Residency
Sarah O’Flaherty’s - book Fresh Start – A Guide to Eliminating Unhealthy Stress published on Amazon
- Karen Mills’ novel Tasting Stars published by Mary Egan Books. (See her TV1 Seven Sharp’s interview below in ‘Media Comment’ below)
- Pip McKay awarded a Society of Authors Complete Manuscript Award
Sze Ning Ooi awarded a 2018 Society of Authors mentorship
- Colleen Maria Lenihan was first runner up in the national Lillian Ida Smith Award for her collection Cherry Blossom Girl
- Fiona Sussman’s novel The Last Time We Spoke won the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel (Fiona is a graduate of the forerunner to our 30 Week Fiction Course)
- Rosetta Allan was awarded a 2018 Michael King Writers Centre residency
- Andrea Hotere’s book Undreamed Of – 50 Years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship pub by Oxford University Press
- Kirk Lafferty’s story K Road published in the Phantom Billstickers Cafe Reader
- Karen Mills’ story Stern Faced Angels published in Headland magazine
- Greg Hall’s novel Good Sons – A novel of the Great War published by Mary Egan publishing
- Leanne Radojkovich’s short story collection First Fox published by Emma Press UK (Leanne is a graduate of the forerunner to our 30 Week Fiction course)
- Sally Christie’s story The Caretaker published in Headland magazine
- Emma Vere-Jones’ children’s book The Wetter the Better published by Duck Creek Press
- Gina Cole’s short fiction published in Jan 2017 issue of NZ Listener
- Heidi North-Bailey won the Hachette / NZ Society of Authors Trans-Tasman mentorship
- Eileen Merriman was a prize-winner in the national Sunday Star Times Short Story Award for the third year in a row.
Media Comment and Graduate Interviews
Blog Title
Newsroom run stories in April 2020 from our graduates Dr Himali McInnes, and Dr Eileen Merriman, on their work on the Covid front line here
Blog Title
Newsroom run stories in April 2020 from our graduates Dr Himali McInnes, and Dr Eileen Merriman, on their work on the Covid front line here
Blog Title
Newsroom run stories in April 2020 from our graduates Dr Himali McInnes, and Dr Eileen Merriman, on their work on the Covid front line here
Creative Hub Students Have Said
Introduction to Creative Writing & Summer Fiction School with John Cranna
“A five-star course!”
“Very useful and enjoyable. It helped to clarify a number of issues I was unsure about, or only subconsciously aware of.”
“Excellent. Really enjoyed it. Challenging, fun, exploratory. Enjoyed the fact that things were revealed slowly, week by week.” “Informative, enlightening – huge learning curve.”
“Found writing in class daunting, but appreciated the challenge. The ‘homework’ helped establish a writing routine I plan to continue.”
“I really enjoyed it. Loved the dialogue workshop and the instruction on scene structure, which I found really helpful.”
“I liked having weekly projects to work on as it encouraged me to sit and write when I have a tendency to procrastinate otherwise.”
“Really enjoyed hearing the other students’ work!”
30 Week Fiction Course with John Cranna plus a number of leading NZ writers
“The visiting writers were great. I also really enjoyed working with the group, and the process of reviewing and being reviewed. The group feedback was extremely useful. We quickly established trust.”
“Exposure to a number of NZ writers was not only a highlight – just meeting them – but the ideas they imparted were of great interest. This gave great depth to the course.”
“The critiquing process was helpful in my development as a writer. Reading others’ work and seeing how they structure their work and attack problems has been invaluable. It was very helpful to see working writers and hear their insights and to benefit from their skills.”
“I liked the discipline of continuing to write and critique work. I find that process valuable and illuminating. Group feedback was very valuable, and I gained a lot of insights into my work, and it kept me motivated to progress my writing. I wouldn’t have achieved much without it!”
“Everything worked. The best thing is the people in the group. We are so lucky. I think the trips to the pub afterwards (and other socialising) is an important part of it … it builds trust and team spirit. The group to me is like ‘The Inklings’ – Tolkien and CS Lewis’s group. What a model to base us on! We have the same structure … but of course they had no email, so they read aloud their work!”
“I feel empowered by what I learned on the course … There is no substitute for the Commendation, Recommendation, Commendation method we got on this course. You can’t get that from any book …”
“The weekly critiquing of work was brilliant. I liked the way theory was interspersed with this … it was a good refresher. Although I was at first put off by the test idea, it was actually a good way to see what we retained – a surprisingly great deal!”
