Karen Mills’ new novel about a 13-year-old Otara girl selected for an international speech competition has struck a national chord. ‘Tasting Stars’ is a heart-wrenching tale that sold out on publication day this week.
Karen was interviewed on TV 1’s prime-time show Seven Sharp; has been profiled in the Women’s Weekly and featured on Alison Mau’s Drive Time. Karen graduated from our Thirty Week Fiction Course in 2016.
Heroine Rose has a gift for oratory, and is attuned to the social and political events of the times. She cottons onto the speeches of Martin Luther King and his vision for justice and peace, particularly amongst the downtrodden folk of the world.
Her competition speech is so powerful she is selected to present it to the Prime Minister in Wellington.
But Rose has a grim secret – both she and her mother are regularly beaten by Rose’s father. She can’t eat her school sandwiches one day because her lunch is speckled with her mother’s blood.
In an ironic twist to the novel, the little 13-year-old Rose’s speech is about violence … and the necessity for kids to be loved and cared for, and for children to prosper and grow without the fear of being injured.
The book is based closely on Karen’s own life.
At her launch on Wednesday, Hub Director John Cranna said: “Karen has told a tale that not only helped banish the demons of her own life, but says something about the human capacity to transcend the most horrific of childhoods”.
Karen raised a family and returned as a teacher to her childhood school in Otara, where she was able to assist other abused children. She became an active volunteer in the charity Destiny Rescue, which has rescued over 2000 children in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, India and the Philippines and prevented them from being bought and sold like chattels, and delivered into sexual slavery.
Amongst all this, Karen also found time to write ‘Tasting Stars’. Karen’s personal mentor on the Thirty Week Fiction Course was author Elizabeth Smither, a winner of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature.
Thanks to sponsors Nancy King, John Clark and an anonymous donor we’ve been able to award four scholarship for our Advanced Fiction Course this year:
Matt Run Carroll is 23, and has been working in the fantasy genre since he was a teenager. In his novel ‘Lifebringer’, a young conman bluffs his way into a magical academy of healers despite having no magical ability … only to find his lies are the least of his problems.
Lucille Henry is a psychotherapist, and her novel concerns a teenage girl of Caribbean descent who hears voices that threaten her family; she has to distinguish between fantasy and reality before it's too late.
Former journalist Lynne Dunphy’s novel ‘Whalebone Gate’ is about Orla Kenny, a 14-year-old foundling, living in a post-global warming world. She is pulled through to the Shadowlands, where people change shape according to their dreams, fears and fantasies. Guided by mysterious tattoos appearing on her arms, Orla must find her way home, and discover the secrets of her past.
Tatjana Walters, a corporate business manager, is writing a novel about children at the end of WW II. ‘Bruno’ is set during the winter of 1945, as a young girl fights for survival in the gruelling war-torn landscape as the Russian Army advances into Germany.
Matt Run Carroll
Lucille Henry
Lynne Dunphy
Tatjana Walters
Underwater with the Director
In his relentless search for the perfect manuscript, Hub Director John Cranna descends 25 metres to the seabed and enters a submerged limestone cave on a far-flung Tongan Island: www.creativehubber.blogspot.com
SPECIAL OFFER: Recruit a friend to our next Introduction to Creative Writing course (2nd November – details below) ) and receive a FREE copy of Hub graduate Eileen Merriman’s controversial novel new, ‘Pieces of You’ published by Penguin Random House'. 😊
Upcoming Courses
Introduction to Creative Writing
6-8.30pm Thursday 2nd November, 2017, six weeks (or any time online)
Have a go! This course is intended to introduce you to some of the basic skills and techniques that can make writing so enjoyable. You might already keep a journal, or have written some poetry or short stories, but would like to find out about some of the tools professional writers use to make their work publishable. If so, this course is for you. Graduates receive a 10% discount on our 30 Week Fiction Course. Taught by Creative Hub director John Cranna. More detail..
Thirty Week Fiction / Memoir Course
Start: 8-9pm, Tuesday, 26th September 2017, or any time Online
This course is intended for those who want to write a novel, short stories, or a memoir / autobiography. We provide a stimulating environment in which you can discover your authentic writing voice. Craft and technical issues arise organically from discussion of student work in a group environment. Students keep a reading and writing journal, which helps chart their development. The main craft issues of dialogue, character, plot and structure, point of view, description, voice and theme will be addressed during this course. Each student will be matched to an established NZ fiction / memoir writer, for extended personal mentoring. Personal mentors on our fiction / memoir courses in 2017 included Tessa Duder, Sue McCauley, Fiona Sussman, Bob Glancy, and Elizabeth Smither. In addition, a number of successful NZ writers, some publishing in London and New York, will run workshops on the course. At the end of the course, the student will be provided with an analysis, in the form of a publishers readers report, on the strengths and weaknesses of her / his manuscript. Twenty graduates of this course have published novels or won prizes in national awards in the last three years. If you have completed the Introduction to Creative Writing Course, or Summer Fiction School, you receive a 10% discount on the course fee. More detail here ...
