News from Victoria University Press

Two new titles in December Dylan Horrock's long awaited graphic novel is released this month. Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is the thoughtful, erotic and funny story of cartoonist Sam Zabel as he struggles with creative block. Dylan has been working on Sam Zabel for over ten years now and he said that his love of imaginary worlds as well as his struggles writing monthly comics for big publishers found a life in the work. "Imaginary worlds had always been a big thing for me. Immersion, exploration, indulgent daydreaming. When I started thinking about story, I was going through a rough patch in my relationship with fiction and fantasy. I was spending so much time in imaginary worlds that had been made up by other people, many of which were (to be frank) pretty horrible places, that simple pleasure of entering a fictional reality stopped being fun and became a chore. So in the end, I did the only thing I could think of: I started dreaming up a story that would allow me to explore the mess I was in." Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is available for purchase now at all good bookstores or through our online bookstore. $35, p/b. Dylan will be reading and signing copies at an instore session at Unity Books on Friday 12 December, 12pm–12.45pm. All welcome. Creamy Psychology surveys photographer Yvonne Todd's work, from her earliest work in the late 1990s to her most recent Gilbert Melrose project (reprinting photographs of small town life taken in the 1950s by her second cousin) and her series Ethical Minorities (Vegans). The book features new essays by Todd, Misha Kavka (on Todd and soap operas), Megan Dunn (Todd and anorexia), Robert Leonard (Todd and cults), Claire Regnault (Todd and costume) and Anthony Byrt (Gilbert Melrose). Creamy Psychology is released the same week as a major exhibition of Todd's work opens at City Gallery, Wellington. Todd will be in conversation with curators this weekend. More information here.   Forthcoming in 2015 A preview of two new novels and two new poetry collections due out in early 2015. New Hokkaido by James McNaughton, novel, p/b, $30. February 2015. It is 1987, forty-five years after Japan conquered New Zealand, and the brutal shackles of the occupation have loosened a little: English can be spoken by natives in the home, and twenty-year-old Business English teacher Chris Ipswitch has a job at the Wellington Language Academy. But even Chris and his famous older brother – the Night Train, a retired Pan-Asian sumo champion – cannot stay out of the conflict between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Free New Zealand movement. When Chris takes it upon himself to investigate a terrible crime, he is drawn into the heart of the struggle for freedom, guided along the way by the mysterious Hitomi Kurosawa and the ghost of Kiwi rock ’n’ roll legend and martyr Johnny Lennon. New Hokkaido is a fascinating counter-factual history and an adventure that thrills and disquiets at every turn. More