James Norcliffe

Last updated
James Norcliffe
Born3 March 1946
Greymouth, New Zealand
OccupationWriter
Website
jamesnorcliffe.com

James Norcliffe is a novelist, short story writer, poet, editor, teacher and educator. His work has been widely published and he has been the recipient of a number of writing residencies. Several of his books have been shortlisted for or won awards, including The Loblolly Boy which won the New Zealand Post Junior Fiction Award in 2010. He lives at Church Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, New Zealand.

Contents

Biography

James Norcliffe was born on 3 March 1946 [1] in Greymouth. [2] Some of his favourite books as a child were classics such as Coral Island, Treasure Island, The Heroes, Swiss Family Robinson, Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows, Elleston Trevor’s The Island of the Pines, and the Just William books and Bunter. [3]

He is a teacher, writer and editor and has published several collections of poetry and a number of novels for children and young adults. [2] His work has been published widely in journals both in New Zealand (including Landfall, Islands and Sport) and overseas, and his short stories for children have been widely anthologised. [4] He has been poetry and short story editor of takahē magazine [5] and poetry editor of the Christchurch Press, [6] and has worked closely with the Christchurch School for Young Writers, including editing the annual Re-Draft anthologies. [7] With Joanna Preston, he collected earthquake poems written in the weeks and months after the 2010 Canterbury Earthquake and subsequent earthquakes, and edited Leaving the Red Zone, an anthology of 148 poems by 87 poets from across New Zealand. [8] [9] [10] With Elizabeth Smither, he was judge of the 2016 Flash Fiction Day competition. [11] [12]

He has appeared at a number of festivals and other book events including the Queensland Poetry Festival (2008), the International Poetry Festival in Medellin, Colombia, (2010), the Trois Rivieres International Poetry Festival in Quebec (2011) [13] [14] and the WORD Christchurch Festival (2018). [15]

James Norcliffe has lived in or near Christchurch for much of his life, apart from spells in China (in the 1980s) and Brunei Darussalam (in the 1990s). [6] [7] He is married with two children and lives with his wife at Church Bay, Lyttelton Harbour. [2]

Awards and prizes 

Several of Norcliffe's books have been shortlisted for awards or named as Storylines Notable Books. [16] The Assassin of Gleam won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for the best New Zealand fantasy novel of 2006, and was shortlisted for the 2007 LIANZA Esther Glen Medal. The Loblolly Boy won the 2010 NZ Post Junior Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Esther Glen Medal and the Sir Julius Vogel Science Fiction Award. [17]

Norcliffe won the Lilian Ida Smith Award in 1990 [18] and the New Zealand Poetry Society's international competition in 1992. [17] [19] In 2003, he and Bernadette Hall received the inaugural Christchurch Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for ‘lasting contribution to literature in the South Island’. [17]

Norcliffe was awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 2000. [20] In 2006, he took up the Creative New Zealand Iowa University Fellowship and also took part in the Tasmanian Writers’ Island of Residencies programme. [19] He was Visiting Artist at Massey University in 2008 [21] and he was the recipient of the 2012 University of Otago College of Education / Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence. [22] [23] During this residency, he wrote his children's novel Felix and the Red Rats. [24] He was the Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing Fellow in 2018. [25] [26]

In 2022 he received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. [27]

Bibliography 

Under the Rotunda (Hazard Press, 1992)

Penguin Bay (Hazard Press, 1993)

The Emerald Encyclopedia (Hazard Press, 1994)

The Carousel Experiment (Hazard Press, 1995)

The Fun House Mirror with Alan Bunn and Marissa Johnpillai (Clerestory Press, 2003)

The Assassin of Gleam (Hazard Press, 2005)

The Loblolly Boy (Longacre Press, 2009)

The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer (Longacre Press/Random House, 2011)

The Enchanted Flute (Longacre Press/Random House, 2012)

Packing a Bag for Mars (Clerestory Press, 2012)

Shadow Play (Proverse Hong Kong, 2012. A Proverse Prize Publication. Pbk with an audio CD of all poems in the collection)

Felix and the Red Rats (Longacre / Random House, 2013)

The Pirates and the Night Maker (Longacre Press / Random House, 2015)

Dark Days in the Oxygen Café (Victoria University Press, 2016)

Twice Upon A Time (Puffin, 2017)

Editor

Re-Draft 2 (with Alan Bunn) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2002)

Re-Draft 3 (with Alan Bunn) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2003)

Re-Draft 4 (with Alan Bunn) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2004)

Cupid on a Friday Night: Re-Draft 5 (with Alan Bunn) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2005)

Tennis with Raw Eggs: Re-Draft 6 (with Alan Bunn) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2006)

The Polar Bear Ward: Re-Draft 7 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2007)

D.I.Y Graffiti: Re-Draft 8 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press/School for Young Writers, 2008)

Fishing for Birds: Re-Draft 9 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press/ School for Young Writers, 2009)

The Steepest Street in the World: Re-Draft 10 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press/School For Young Writers, 2010)

The Temptation of Sunlight: Redraft 11 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press, 2011)

Walking a Tightrope in Bare Feet: Redraft 12 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press, 2012)

Mad Honey: Redraft 13 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press, 2013)

Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page (with Harry Ricketts and Siobhan Harvey) (Random House / Godwit, 2014)

The Word is Out: Redraft 14 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press, 2014)

They Call Me Ink: Redraft 15 (with Tessa Duder) (Clerestory Press, 2015)

Leaving the Red Zone: poems from the Canterbury Earthquakes (with Joanna Preston) (Clerestory Press, 2016)

Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand' (with Michelle Elvy and Frankie McMillan) (Canterbury University Press, 2018)

Related Research Articles

The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards, which ran from 1968 to 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tessa Duder</span> New Zealand author and former swimmer

Tessa Duder is a New Zealand author of novels for young people, short stories, plays and non-fiction, and a former swimmer who won a silver medal for her country at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games. As a writer, she is primarily known for her Alex quartet and long-term advocacy for New Zealand children's literature. As an editor, she has also published a number of anthologies.

Fifi Colston is a writer, illustrator, poet, wearable arts designer, costume and props maker for the film industry and television presenter. She has written or illustrated over 30 books and is also a veteran entrant, finalist and winner in the World of Wearable Art Competition. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

David Elliot is a New Zealand illustrator and author, known internationally for his contributions to the Redwall fantasy series by British author, Brian Jacques.

Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement is a New Zealand literary award established in 2003 by the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, the national arts development agency of the New Zealand government. Each winner in three categories of fiction, nonfiction and poetry receives a monetary award of NZ$60,000.

The Storylines Tessa Duder Award is a New Zealand award made to the author of a work of fiction for young adults aged 13 and above.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Neale</span> New Zealand novelist and poet

Emma Neale is a novelist and poet from New Zealand.

Barbara Helen Else, also known as Barbara Neale, is a New Zealand writer, editor, and playwright. She has written novels for adults and children, plays, short stories and articles and has edited anthologies of children's stories. She has received a number of awards and fellowships including the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature, the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and the Victoria University of Wellington's Writer's Fellowship.

Melinda Szymanik, born 1963, is an author from New Zealand. She writes picture books, short stories and novels for children and young adults and lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Gaelyn Gordon Award is awarded annually by the Children's Literature Foundation to a well-loved work of New Zealand children's fiction.

Leonie Agnew is a children's writer and teacher. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or won awards, including the Tom Fitzgibbon Award in 2010, the Junior Fiction Section, the Children's Choice Junior Fiction section and the Best First Book Award of the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards 2012, the Master of the Inkpot Competition in 2015 and the Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction in the New Zealand Book Awards for Chidlren and Young Adults 2022. She has also been the recipient of a writing residency at the University of Otago. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Storylines Notable Book Awards constitute an annual list of exceptional and outstanding books for children and young people published in New Zealand, by New Zealand authors and illustrators, during the previous calendar year.

Lorraine Orman is a New Zealand writer, librarian, writing tutor, competition judge and reviewer. She has written books for children and young adults and a number of her short stories have been anthologised. Her novel Cross Tides won the Best First Book Award at the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards in 2005. She lives in Christchurch.

Laurence Fearnley is a New Zealand short-story writer, novelist and non-fiction writer. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or have won awards, both in New Zealand and overseas, including The Hut Builder, which won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. She has also been the recipient of a number of writing awards and residencies including the Robert Burns Fellowship, the Janet Frame Memorial Award and the Artists to Antarctica Programme.

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems is an annual award for a cycle or sequence of poems with a common link or theme. It is named after Kathleen Grattan, an Auckland poet, who died in 1990. The award was first made in 2009.

John Millen Lasenby, commonly known as Jack Lasenby, was a New Zealand writer. He wrote over 30 books for children and young adults, many of which were shortlisted for or won prizes. He was also the recipient of numerous awards including the Margaret Mahy Medal and Lecture Award in 2003 and the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction in 2014.

Joanna Orwin is a New Zealand writer of fiction and non-fiction for adults and children. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or have won awards, including Children's Book of the Year in 1985 and the Senior Fiction category of the New Zealand Post Book awards for Children and Young Adults in 2002. She lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Pauline Cartwright is a writer of novels, picture books, stories and poems for children. She was awarded the Choysa Bursary in 1991 and the University of Otago College of Education / Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence Fellowship in 2003. She lives in Alexandra, New Zealand.

Sandy McKay is a New Zealand children's writer, freelance author and adult literacy tutor. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or have won awards, including Recycled, which won the Junior Fiction section of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2002. She lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Joanna Preston is an Australian poet, editor and creative writing tutor based in New Zealand. She has published two award-winning collections of poetry.

References

  1. ↑ "Interview with James Norcliffe". Christchurch City Libraries Nga Kete Wananga o Otautahi. 2002. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 "James Norcliffe". Storylines. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  3. ↑ Green, Paula (14 November 2013). "Reading Festival: James Norcliffe was a child for so long!". Poetry Box. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  4. ↑ "James Norcliffe". NZSA The New Zealand Society of Authors (Pen NZ Inc) Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  5. ↑ "James Norcliffe". Best New Zealand Poems 2005. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  6. 1 2 "James Norcliffe". Virtual Learning Network. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  7. 1 2 Rapatahana, Vaughan (18 September 2015). "Three southern gentlemen poets: David Eggleton; David Howard; James (Jim) Norcliffe". Jacket2. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  8. ↑ "Joanna Preston and James Norcliffe - Canterbury Poems". Radio NZ. 28 February 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  9. ↑ Zelas, Karen (1 March 2016). "Earthquake poetry anthology launch". Takahe magazine. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  10. ↑ Matthews, Philip (30 March 2016). "Poetry from a broken city". Stuff. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  11. ↑ Styles, Rebecca (29 February 2016). "Interview: Rebecca Styles with 2016 NFFD Judges James Norcliffe and Elizabeth Smither". Flash Frontier. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  12. ↑ Black, Eleanor (20 June 2016). "Fifth National Flash Fiction Day biggest yet". Stuff. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  13. ↑ "Ten days of poetry". Jottings. 12 October 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  14. ↑ "James Norcliffe ANZL Member". ANZL Academy of New Zealand Literature Te Whare Matatuhi o Aotearoa. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  15. ↑ "Sometimes, What You Don't Say Is the Story". Word Christchurch Festival 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  16. ↑ "Storylines Notable Books Awards". Storylines. Archived from the original on 12 December 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  17. 1 2 3 "James Norcliffe". Penguin Books New Zealand. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  18. ↑ "NZSA Lilian Ida Smith Award : recipients to 2017". NZSA The New Zealand Society of Authors (Pen NZ Inc) Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  19. 1 2 "Norcliffe, James". New Zealand Book Council Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa. May 2016. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  20. ↑ "The Robert Burns Fellowship - previous recipients since the Fellowship was established". University of Otago Te Whare Wananga o Otago. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  21. ↑ "Visiting Artist Scheme". Massey University Te Kunenga ki Purehuroa. 2 November 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  22. ↑ "The University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence - Previous Recipients". University of Otago Te Whare Wananga o Otago. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  23. ↑ Haggart, Matthew (14 September 2011). "Continuing a 'fine tradition'". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
  24. ↑ "Q & A with James Norcliffe, author of Felix and the Red Rats – a finalist in the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards". My Opinion on Various Books. 20 April 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  25. ↑ "The Writers". Randell Cottage Writers Trust. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  26. ↑ Norcliffe, James (Spring 2018). "A distinctive residency". New Zealand Author. Issue 314: 31–32.
  27. ↑ Chumko, André (1 December 2022). "Writers honoured by prime minister for their contribution to New Zealand literature". Stuff . Archived from the original on 1 December 2022. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.