Helen Lowe's Blog, page 148
June 11, 2015
Celebrating Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award Winners: A.J. Fitzwater
This coming Saturday, I’ll be giving the keynote address at an event to celebrate Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists and winners.
Today, I’d like to shine the spotlight on Award winner, A.J. Fitzwater.
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A.J. Fitzwater: Sir Julius Vogel Award For “Best New Talent” The following is drawn from Amanda’s Sir Julius Vogel Award citation:
“A.J. (Amanda) Fitzwater is a Christchurch based writer whose short fiction has been widely published, including in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crosse...
June 10, 2015
Celebrating Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award Winners: Rebecca Fisher
This coming Saturday, I’ll be giving the keynote address at an event to celebrate Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists and winners.
Today, I’d like to shine the spotlight on Award winner, Rebecca Fisher.
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Rebecca Fisher: Sir Julius Vogel Award For “Best Fan Writing” Rebecca is a Christchurch-based reader, viewer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. A graduate of the University of Canterbury, she has a Masters degree in English Literature — mainly, she claims, because she was able...
June 9, 2015
Celebrating Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award Finalists: Shelley Chappell & Tim Stead
This coming Saturday, I’ll be giving the keynote address at an event to celebrate Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists and winners.
Today, I’d like to shine the spotlight on the two finalists, Shelley Chappell & Tim Stead.
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About Shelley Chappell: Finalist: Best Novella Category for
Ranpasatusan
Finalist: Best Collected Work for Beyond The Briar (2014)Finalist: Best New Talent Award
Born and raised in Christchurch, Shelley graduated with a PhD in children’s and young adult fa...
June 8, 2015
The Tuesday Poem: On The Edge
standing
on the edge
light falls
……………….away
cry out
voice lost
……………….beneath
a white sky
shout downwards
count……….the silence
a single echo
…………………back
.
Helen Lowe
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A few weeks back, I featured Garden peas (Mendel’s Law, 1866), a poem by Helen Bascand. I noted Helen’s passing on April 27, and that I had been privileged to be a member of the same poetry group as Helen for a number of years. This was one of the first poems I worked on with Helen and the other members of the group, so it fe...
June 7, 2015
What’s Coming Up This Week: An Event, A Guest Post—& A Spot Prize Opportunity
Awards Celebration & Keynote Address Christchurch had two winners and a further two finalists (in multiple categories) in the recent Sir Julius Vogel Awards, given annually by the Science Fiction (and) Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) for excellence in New Zealand created Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. There’s a fabulous trophy too, designed by the famous WETA Workshop.
SpecFicNZ Christchurch has decided the Christchurch writers’ success is more than worthy of celebration and i...
June 5, 2015
Fun With Friends: David Mueller-Cajar Live @ Orange, 16 June
David Mueller-Cajar
My friend, musician and composer David Mueller-Cajar, will be performing in concert at Christchurch’s Orange Studio on Tuesday 16 June at 7.30 pm.
David began learning the French Horn at Darfield High School and went on to graduate with a Bmus(hon)(1st class) in composition and performance from the University of Canterbury in 2009. From 2010-2012 he studied under world-famous Professor Michael Hoeltzel at the Rostock Conservatorie of Theatre and Music. In 2012 he had the o...
What I’m Reading This Weekend… How About You?
Yesterday I talked about my most recent “read and enjoyed”, Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl In Coldtown.
With that out of the way, the books I have on the reading table for this weekend are:
Isabel Allende’s classic Of Love and Shadows, which has been on the table for some time but has now worked it’s way much closer to the top.
Joe Abercrombie’s Half A King, which will be my first Joe Abercrombie read (I know: shock, horror–but better late than never, right? Right!) and I believe may be his f...
June 4, 2015
Read & Enjoyed Recently: “The Coldest Girl In Coldtown” by Holly Black
As I said recently in my post on Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven: “…it’s not the genre but how the genre is executed that really counts.”
It’s also relevant that I mentioned being a tad over vampire novels, particularly the YA variants.
Nonetheless, Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl In Coldtown is a vampire novel and I enjoyed it all the same. It’s an entertaining, well-paced read, with a number of interesting and sympathetic characters (as well as a number of decidedly unsympathetic ones)...
June 3, 2015
The Top 25 SF Signal Posts For May: I Make The Cut!
I was thrilled to receive an email from John De Nardo of SF Signal yesterday, advising that last month’s feature post on Dianora Di Certando—from Guy Gavriel Kay’s novel, Tigana—was one of the Signal’s Top 25 posts for May: w00t!
And although I’m not taking way from my own role in having written the article, I do think a great deal of the credit must go to Guy Gavriel Kay for having penned so memorable a character as Dianora, in such a compelling and enduring book as Tigana.
You can check out...
June 2, 2015
Big Worlds On Small Screens & Fantasy/Sci-Fi Films You’ve Probably Never Heard Of: Rebecca Fisher Discusses “Primer”
~ by Rebecca Fisher
I was given one piece of advice before watching this film: that I would have to watch it twice, since it’s impossible to understand the first time around.
Written, directed, produced, edited, scored and starring Shane Carruth, Primer is a low budget sci-fi film that involves two long-time friends who invent a time travel machine in their garage. Their discovery is almost by accident and the device is about the size of a microwave, but soon plans are made to design a large...
