LANDFALL announces new editor, competition winners, and new NZ book review website

Critic, poet and non-fiction writer David Eggleton is to be the next editor of Landfall. Six times winner of the Montana NZ Book Reviewer of the Year Award and invited judge of many literary competitions around the country, Eggleton brings years of reviewing and assessment experience to the role of sifting creative writing and essays from both emerging and established writers.

‘At a time when New Zealand books are becoming less visible in other media, David will bring his special expertise as a reviewer to The Landfall Review and, early in 2011, with the assistance of funding from Creative New Zealand, he will expand this part of the magazine on to the internet in The Landfall Review Online,’ says Landfall publisher Wendy Harrex of Otago University Press.

Also announced in Landfall 220 are the winners of two major writing competitions.

Winner of The Landfall Essay Competition, judged by Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen, is Wellington writer Ian Wedde’s ‘The Grass-Catcher’: ‘His search for and examination of the twin within is honest and tender,’ she says.
Runners-up are John Newton, writing about the impact of European refugees on our culture, and Tim Corballis, on our changing cities. An essay on nursing by Stephanie de Montalk is highly commended.

The Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry is New Zealand’s major poetry prize and in 2010 is judged by Vincent O’Sullivan.
His choice from the many collections of work submitted was ‘This City’ by Jennifer Compton, a long resident in Australia, who still writes as a New Zealander. Compton’s volume ‘sustains a questing, warmly sceptical mind’s engagement with wherever it is, whatever it takes in, and carries the constant drive to say it right,’ says O’Sullivan. Two other collections were runners-up: Ian Wedde’s ‘The Lifeguard’ and Victoria Broome’s ‘The Big Red Engine’.

Landfall 220 is themed ‘open house’ and makes an exhilarating read. There’s new voices, an eclectic range of poetry, a whole bunch of ‘first-person’ fictions, reviews of dozens of recent New Zealand books, and terrific artwork by Max Oettli and Andrew Ross.

Landfall 220 will be on sale from Monday 22 November 2010