Readings

The New Zealand Night will introduce the audience to a world foreign to most Europeans. Our contributors show very different sides of it: Beryl Fletcher, a prize-winning feminist novelist, will read from her moving memoir The House at Karamu. The lively, ironic prose of Sarah Quigley should not be missed either. Cathie Dunsford, accompanied by her translator and musician Karin Meissenburg, presents a performance containing excerpts from her three novels Song of the Selkies, Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior and Cowrie. Reinforced by elements of New Zealand Māori culture, such as traditional welcome ceremonies and indigenous songs, the performance allows the audience to experience New Zealand in a way that is bound to be emotionally overwhelming.

Beryl Fletcher

Beryl Fletcher has published four novels: The Word Burners (1991, second edition 2002), The Iron Mouth (1993), The Silicon Tongue (1996) and The Bloodwood Clan (1999). Her first novel won a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize. In 1994 she was chosen to represent New Zealand at the prestigious International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, USA. In 1999 she was appointed Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her books have been translated into Korean and German (Random House, Munich). Her latest book, published in April 2003, is a memoir set in New Zealand and Australia, The House at Karamu. All of her books are currently available from Spinifex Press, Melbourne, Australia.

Sarah Quigley

Born in New Zealand, Sarah Quigley is a novelist and poet whose work has been widely published. She has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Oxford, and her poetry and fiction have won many prizes, including the Commonwealth Pacific Rim Short Story Award. In 2003 Sarah Quigley was featured in Britain as one of Waterstone’s 20 Faces of the Future. Her new novel Fifty Days appeared with Virago in July 2004, and her previous novel, Shot, has recently been long-listed for the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Having lived in England and America, she has been based in Berlin for the last four years.

Cathie Dunsford

Cathie Dunsford has twenty books in print and in translation and is the author of the best-selling Cowrie novel series, published in seven countries. She is the recipient of top New Zealand Arts Council grants for her award-winning books in the Cowrie series. Together with her partner Karin Meissenburg she has toured the Pacific Islands and Europe to present their performance. Cathie is director of Dunsford Publishing Consultants, which has brought 174 authors into print globally, and she lectures in writing and publishing at Auckland University.