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G R E AT G E T S Crime Time hosts crime-writing royalty Val McDermid (who’s sold 17 million-plus books) and Michael Robotham of the Joseph O’Loughlin series – in person, not by video link, on 11 September. They’re joined by New Zealand-born author J P Pomare, winner of a Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel. Lawyer/author Brannavan Gnanalingam will chair. The session is organised by Verb Wellington, which is also staging a session with Mohamed Hassan, the New Zealand-based author of essay collection How to Be A Bad Muslim, 29 September.

SURPRIZE Local writer, student, and Asian New Zealander Emma Sidnam is “incredibly excited” to have been awarded the 2022 Michael Gifkins Prize For An Unpublished Manuscript from among 13 finalists, and received a contract with Australian publisher Text and a NZ$10,000 advance against royalties. Next year, they’ll publish her novel Backwaters, about a girl who is ambivalent about her Chinese heritage, and uncovers a family secret. The prize honours the late Wellington writer and literary agent Michael Gifkins.

NOW YOU SEE THEM… From moko kākāriki (a gecko with a bright blue mouth) to kōwaro (a fish that can survive out of water for months), new all-ages book Tiaki (Bateman Books) highlights Aotearoa’s ‘less glamorous’ native species. It’s nicely written and illustrated by local Jean Donaldson, a self-confessed bird fanatic who works at Massey University research centre Toi Āria: Design for Public Good.

NEW AGE Poet and creative-writing teacher Sarah Jane Barnett was in her 30s when her father came out as transgender. It took some getting used to. With her parents’ permission, Sarah Jane writes about this in her excellent memoir Notes on Womanhood (OUP), part coming-ofmiddle-age story, part feminist manifesto. She touches on topics including her complicated relationship with society’s beauty standards, the “male gaze”, sexist healthcare, her almost androgynous grandmother, and juggling work, motherhood and life admin (there’s a relatable shrunk-socks-in-the-dryer vignette).