Pages tagged with: publishing

Kiwis love books. To celebrate New Zealand Book Month, we have come up with 31 reasons to love New Zealand books and writing. Check back each day in March for a new story about books, writers and their work.

Wes Jack was a reporter on the 'Tiki Times', a POW camp newspaper. Here he describes how it was put together and how it survived the war. Hear Wes Jack discussing the camp newspaper.

Historian and poet Keith Sinclair has argued that the decade of the 1950s was the time 'when the New Zealand intellect and imagination came alive'

The 'Tiki Times' was a hand- printed and illustrated newspaper produced weekly at prisoner of war camp E535, Milowitz, Poland from August 1944 to January 1945. Milowitz was a coal mining camp where 500 New Zealand POWs worked alongside Polish miners, together with a few English, Spanish and Cypriot prisoners.

In some ways war interrupted the work of New Zealand writers; in others it acted as a stimulant. For those who joined the armed forces, such as Eric McCormick, Bruce Mason and Dan Davin, experience of travel and danger gave creative impetus and a new perspective on their country of birth.

During the inter-war years no other monthly magazine matched New Zealand Railways for its commitment to promoting a popular literary culture in New Zealand.

From the mid-1830s the printed word became a new weapon in the campaign to bring Christianity to Maori.

The story of New Zealand writing wouldn't be complete without acknowledging the important role sport has played as a source of inspiration for many New Zealand writers. For some writers sport is a subject of loathing, but the reality is Kiwis can't seem to get enough of sports books.

Sir Walter Buller’s comment that ‘the flesh of the pukeko [is equal] to that of the best English game’ distasteful. But Buller, the author of A history of the birds of New Zealand

The Edmonds cookery book has sold over 3 million copies since it was first published in 1907, making it the best-selling New Zealand book by far.

Crawford Somerset's Littledene: a New Zealand rural community (1938) was a groundbreaking sociological study of a typical New Zealand small town - Oxford in North Canterbury. According to commentator Brian Easton, the book 'combines the wry insights of a sociologist and the lyric observations of a poet'.

The Esther Glen Award for children and young adult books is our oldest literary prize

The New Zealand government has a long history of promoting and publishing historical works of all kinds, ranging from the 50-plus volumes of Second World War history to the cutting-edge digital projects of the early 21st century.

In 1889 former Premier Julius Vogel wrote a futuristic novel entitled Anno domini 2000; or, woman's destiny in which women held the highest posts in government and poverty had vanished.

The forties and fifties were favourable times for poets and poetry, and lively communities of poets sprang up in the main centres, particularly Wellington and Auckland. Debate about the nature of poetry led to some heated exchanges.

Founded in 1947, the quarterly Landfall soon became New Zealand's foremost literary magazine. It was edited until 1966 by the somewhat reserved and intense Otago poet, editor and lecturer Charles Brasch.

First edition of the 'Tiki times' POW newspaper plus information about the editor.