News from the New Zealand Book Council

Kia ora and welcome to your members’ newsletter from the New Zealand Book Council.

We've been very busy the last few months working on a lot of great resources and events for adult and children readers.

We produced three new thought-provoking Talking Books podcasts: We interviewed award-winning crime writer Michael Robotham; a panel of experts discussed two high-profile and controversial books of 2015; and (going live next week) we devled into the world of NZ romance writers. You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes here.

We also brought digital to the classroom and created four new video resources for our Writers in Schools programme. You can watch the trailer for the videos here.

In October we toured Gavin Bishop around six schools in Nelson and Motueka as part of a collaboration between our Writers in Schools programme and the Nelson Arts Festival. He was also interviewed at the Arts Festival by one of his biggest fans, Will Roddick, from Nelson Intermediate School. 

We also toured Des Hunt through the Wairarapa in late October. He worked with groups of students at the Taita Public Library, Whareama School, Longford Intermediate, Kuranui College and Opaki School. The feedback we got was fantastic: "He really got students, especially the boys, engaged," a teacher from Longford Intermediate said. "They were mesmerised by Des' presentation".

We held two Speed Date An Author events, one in Carterton as part of the Kokomai Festival, and one at the National Library in Auckland. There were a lot of hilarious moments! Much to the students' delight, Rhondda Greig's pet hen laid an egg during a life drawing workshop, and Auckland students were grinning ear to ear listening to John Carr *J Doggg*, the 'Godfather of Geriatric Rap'. 

There were two exciting announcments last month regarding the children's books awards. Firstly, the LIANZA Children's Book Awards and the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults have merged into one super Children's Book Awards. You can read about the merger here.

The second exciting announcement was that the New Zealand Book Council was contracted to administer the 2016 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. It's a very exciting time for us, and we have many beautiful books flowing into the office right now. Very distracting!

We hope you have a merry Christmas, and we look forward to seeing you in 2016!

Ngā mihi

Catriona Ferguson
Chief Executive