Oceania

MEET THE MOBSTERS

Click on an author photo to link to  the FLASH MOB story!

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Scar Schwartz (left) is a writer living in Melbourne, Australia. He likes to make his writing easy because he thinks the easy things are hard and the hard things are easy.

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Piet Nieuwland TOP 15 FINALIST (right) writes and performs poetry and although he was born in Australia, is very much a New Zealander. He lives near Whangarei and enjoys views of Tangihua and Tutamoe.

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Kathryn Jenkins (left) unexpectedly started re-writing flash fiction as a result of a workshop exercise in 2011 and has written at least one a month since. She says “re-writing” because she dabbled with two 50 word stories 15 years ago, one of which, Big, Mean and Ugly, appeared in Brian Edwards’ Book of Incredibly Short Stories. It is re-published here along with her second story of that era, Fireproof, which has gone through a number of drafts to reach its final form.

She is still surprised at what turns up on the page and wonders where the ideas come from. (If asked, she will deny drunkenly insisting her wider family come up with words and themes over Christmas dinner as prompts for new stories!) She hopes one day to have enough material to produce a book of flash fiction.

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Mike Crowl (right) is a Dunedin writer, composer, actor. He discovered flash fiction a year or so ago, and has been writing pieces regularly since. In 2012, a musical he wrote was presented at the Mayfair Theatre in Dunedin.

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Maggie Rainey-Smith TOP 15 FINALIST (left) is a novelist, poet, blogger, book reviewer and short story writer. Two novels published by Random House, 2005, 2007, and third novel at final edit stage. Current chair of the Wellington Branch of NZSA, membership officer for Friends of the Randell Cottage Trust, and on the Wellington Writer’s Walk committee. Writer, wife, lover, mother, grandmother.

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Kate Mahony (right) has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand (2006). Her short fiction has appeared in Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 6, (Random House), Turbine, Takahe (Vols 71, 74), the International Literary Quarterly (Issue 14), Flash Frontier (August, 2012, September, 2012, January, 2013), the anthology Tales for Canterbury (Random Static, 2011), Blue Crow Magazine (Australia), Microw 8 at Full of Crow (USA), Blue Fifth Review (Canada), and Blackmail Press.

One of her short stories, A Good Person, was a finalist in the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award in 2008. She teaches short story writing at the Community Education Centre, Wellington.

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Miles Hughes (left) is a New Zealand writer, living in Auckland. Five of his books, published in 2012, are currently available as e-books on Amazon.com/Kindle. These include the novels: The Coconut War; Birthright-Mātāmuatanga and Catalan; the young adult novel: Servant of the King: Part 1 of the Templar Trilogy and the travel narrative Egyptian Escapade. His non-fiction work 150 Years of New Zealand Shipyards 1795-1945 was also published in 2012 and is available in pdf format on CD-ROM. In 2013, he published Knight of the Temple: Part 2 of the Templar Trilogy and Defender of the Realm: Part 3 of the Templar Trilogy, thus completing The Templar Trilogy. These are also available on Amazon.com/kindle. He has recently completed the novel, Richmond Road, soon to be published. The writer also writes Flash fiction, short stories and poetry. He was recently an award winning co-producer of the Spoken Word event ‘Spit.it.out’ at the 2013 Auckland Fringe Festival.

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Martin Porter (right), born in Jersey C.I. studied Astrophysics in London and Leeds, taught Physics in Jersey and now lives a quieter life in Whangarei, New Zealand. He has recently had poems published in Auckland’s Poetry Live ‘Live Lines 4’ and ‘Wavelengths’, an anthology of Channel Island writing. He was the winner of the Channel Islands Writers Competition (poetry section) 2005 and the Whangarei Libraries 2012 flash fiction competition.

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Derek Jones (left) is a New Zealand author who exists near Puhoi, North of Auckland. He has recently finished writing The Ghostwriter in the Machine – the unauthorised autobiography of Anonymous_Author© and has pledged to write using his real name until the fictional literary voice he created has its memoirs published. Patently, judging by the book’s description, he may be submitting as Derek Jones for some time.

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Rachel J Fenton (right) was born in Yorkshire, but a protracted dander in the forest led to her emergence in New Zealand where she can be found wandering the shortlist of the “Fish Poetry Prize” and the “Royal Society of New Zealand Manshire Prize”. She won AUT’s Creative Writing Prize.

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Madeleine Slavick TOP 15 FINALIST (left). Author. Photographer. Blogger. Her books include Fifty Stories Fifty Images (of Hong Kong), Something Beautiful Might Happen (published in Tokyo) and China Voices (with Oxfam), and her blog <touchingwhatilove.blogspot.com> has visitors from over 100 countries. She has lived in the USA for 25 years, in Hong Kong for another 25, and now lives in New Zealand.

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Jan FitzGerald TOP 25 (b. 1950, right), has been published in all the mainstream NZ literary journals since the 1970s and in The London Magazine, Acumen (UK), Orbis (UK), and others. Her latest poetry book is entitled On a day like this (Steele Roberts, Wellington, NZ). Jan works in Napier , NZ, as a full-time artist.

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Mercedes Webb-Pullman (left): IIML Victoria University Wellington New Zealand MA in Creative Writing 2011. Her work has appeared online (Danse Macabre, Black Mail Press, Turbine, 4th Floor, Swamp, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, Bone Orchard Poetry, poetryrepairs, Connotations) and in print (Mana magazine, Poetry from Lembas, The Readstrange Collection, and 3 books) She lives on the Kapiti Coast, is Editor/Pacific for Danse Macabre eJournal.

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Bronwyn Angela White (right) has presented her poetry and creative writing at social events, faith community services, in poets’ pubs and cafés. One summer semester, Bronwyn took a Religious Studies paper and a Poetry Workshop at Victoria University of Wellington. She learned about writing and hermeneutics from religious studies and about faith in the poetry sessions.

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Angela Brett (left) is a mathematician by training, programmer by trade, physicist by association, superhero by night, and writer by the deadline. She writes short stories, poems, comics, software and other things inspired by science, souvenir playing cards and sugar highs.

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Kathy Sewell (right) was born in Cornwall Park, Auckland. Her vivid imagination often got her into trouble as a child. As an adult she learned to channel it through stories and writing plays. Several have been performed throughout the North Island. She has almost completed her B.A. at Massey University and has had her first children’s book published with Te Whare Nga Kupu. A writerholic refusing treatment or a cure as she loves her alphabetical addiction….

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Andrew M. Bell (left) writes poetry, short fiction, plays, screenplays and non-fiction. His work has been published and broadcast in New Zealand/Aotearoa, Australia, England, Israel and USA. His most recent publications are Aotearoa Sunrise, a short story collection, and Clawed Rains, a poetry collection. Andrew lives in Christchurch with his wife and two sons and loves to surf.

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