Marilyn Duckworth to deliver the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture

Held each year as part of New Zealand Book Month, the Janet FrameMemorial Lecture is delivered by the New Zealand Society of Author’s currentPresident of Honour.  It has been ourdelight to have Marilyn Duckworth  (pic right -  photo Marty Friedlander) in this role for the 2011-2012 period and we arepleased to announce that she will be delivering this important lecture at TePapa, Wellingtonon Thursday 1^st March 2012. 

This lecture is intended to provide an overview of the “state of thenation” for literature and writing in New Zealand,such that the reading public may have a greater understanding of what it meansto be a writer in New Zealand. Marilyn’s lecture is aptly entitledLearning to Swivel and will addressthe changing face of New Zealand literature, ‘reflecting on the very different pathand mode of travel for an aspiring novelist today’.   “Once books spoke for themselves. Writersfound their own way, without being taught, and without needing to be part oftheir own marketing machine” Marilyn comments, drawn from “a personalhindsight, gazing across more than fifty years.”

Marilyn describes herself as anovelist and sometime poet.  She was bornin Auckland and spent her childhood in England but has lived mainly in Wellington. Her first novel, A Gap in the Spectrum, was publishedwhen she was twenty-three; her fifth, Disorderly Conduct (1984),won a New Zealand Book Award.   Herfifteenth novel Playing Friends was released in 2007.  She has held the Katherine MansfieldFellowship in Menton, a Fulbright Fellowship in the USAand also writing fellowships at Victoria and Auckland universities. In 1996 Leather Wings was short listed for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 2000 shestartled herself by publishing her autobiography, Camping On The Faultline.

The lecture launches a month-long series of celebrations for New Zealandauthors, illustrators and books.  It willtake place on Thursday 1^st March2012, at 6pm on the Marae, Te Papa, Wellington.  Admission is free.

This event is open to the public and will appeal to teachers, librariansand book-lovers everywhere. 

6pm Thursday 1^stMarch 2012, Marae, Te Papa, Wellington