Helen Lowe's Blog, page 248
August 26, 2012
Almost Here: The Christchurch Writers’ Festival 2012, August 30 – September 2
Yes, it really is almost here—the Christchurch Writers’ Festival 2012. Only three sleeps now until Thursday and the opening events! (And of course the first two I want to go to are scheduled back to back: how does that work?)
Seriously though, this is a significant milestone for Christchurch and the Writers’ Festival event given that the 2010 festival was cancelled as a result of the September 4, 2010 earthquake and the rescheduled event for April 2011 could not be run becasue of the devastati...
August 25, 2012
“Absent Antipodeans”—Bob Kuhn Reads Speculative Fiction by Australian & New Zealand Authors at Worldcon 70, 2012
Except on rare occasions, the World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention is always held in the Northern Hemisphere, most usually in North America—a far step for most Australian and New Zealand speculative fiction authors.
But this year US-based voiceover artist Bob Kuhn has stepped in and set up “Absent Antipodeans” (7.30 pm, Sunday 2 September), a reading event in which he will read from the work of Australian and New Zealand authors who cannot be present themselves. Obviously this is a tre...
August 24, 2012
The Magic of Poetry at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival
“Dylan Thomas wrote, ‘I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on in the world between the covers of books… All of which were words, words, words, and each of which were alive forever…’”
True to the spirit of Dylan Thomas, there is a feast of magical poetry events at this year’s Christchurch Writers’ Festival. Some of those appearing, like Bernadette Hall and Tusiata Avia, are already poets I am privileged to know. Others—like poet laureates past and present Cilla McQueen and Ian...
August 23, 2012
More Thoughts on “Risking Delight”—Plus, “What If?” In The Context of Harry Potter
On Wednesday, I posted on “Risking Delight—The Awesomeness of Diana Wynne Jones & ‘Power of Three’” in which I said:
“When I closed the covers (of “Power of Three”), I felt thoroughly satisfied. Yet I also felt something more, something as important to me as a writer as it is as a reader. The US poet, Jack Gilbert, wrote (in ‘A Brief for the Defense‘) that: “We must risk delight.” On re-reading Power of Three I experienced delight both as a reader and as a writer reading another author’s work....
August 22, 2012
Where The Ideas Come From: About “Thornspell”
Last week I posted links to three new reviews for my books and one of them was for my Kids’YA novel, Thornspell (Knopf, 2008), from Australian reviewer Tehani Wessely, here.
So although I’ve talked a reasonable amount, both here and through the GATHERING blog tour, about where some of the ideas and influences for The Wall of Night series came from, today I thought I’d focus on Thornspell.
Ursula Le Guin says (in Steering the Craft, something like) that the ideas are “just there” and we pull the...
August 21, 2012
Risking Delight — The Awesomeness of Diana Wynne Jones & “The Power of Three”
Recently on the Supernatural Underground I posted “All About… The Awesomeness of Story” (which may be a post worthwhile reading in and on itself—just sayin’ 
)
A long while before that, around about the time I first started blogging and learned of Diana Wynne Jones’ terminal illness, I posted here about her profound influence on me as first a reader, and subsquently an author. If you’re interested, you can read that tribute, here.
A book I specifically mentioned then was Power of Three, as foll...
August 20, 2012
Tuesday Poem: “For a new Technician” by Sarah Jane Barnett
The room is shuttered by a grey curtain.
There is a red telephone on the corner table
next to the heart monitor. The chair looks
like a La-Z-Boy or the seat an astronaut
would be strapped into, ready for blast off.
The public crowd around the rocket,
well out of range behind a one-way screen,
anxious and stern, the rumble in the walls
crawls inside their stomachs. They wonder
if they will see a light so bright it burns
coral in the clouds? Will they have to look away?
The astronaut m...
August 19, 2012
Developing “The Wall of Night” Series Map
Map design by Peter Fitzpatrick
On July 26 I featured a post on world building in the context of The Wall of Night series and the world of Haarth, here.
As part of that post I included the image of the Wall of Night series map and today I thought it might be fun to focus in on the process of developing the map—both from my point of view as the author, but also from the viewpoint of the artist, Peter Fitzpatrick.
I hope you enjoy.
Introducing the Map: Helen Lowe
As a kid, I was fascinated by the ma...
August 18, 2012
What’s Coming Up…
Poetry is taking a front seat on the “What’s Coming Up” front here “…on Anything, Really” over the next few weeks.
Firstly I have some great poets lined up for the Tuesday Poem feature including:
Tuesday 21, Sarah Jane Barnett with a poem from her new-out collection, A Man Runs Into A Woman
Tuesday 28, my fellow 2012 Ursula Bethell Resident in Creative Writing (University of Canterbury) David Eggleton; the poem is from his collection Time of the Icebergs
Tuesday 4 September, the featured poet wil...
August 17, 2012
A Weekend Book Quote from William Styron
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should lead several lives while reading it.’
– William Styron, 1925-2006
A US novelist and essayist, the author of — amongst other titles — Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie’s Choice.
I feel this quote gives all novelists a wonderful goal to aspire to.
To find out more about William Styron, you can read his obituary from the New York Times, here.
