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The New Zealand writing scene

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The New Zealand writing scene news

Dear Sir,

When I published my first novel, The Fake Celebrity in China, in 2008, I was keen to get exposure for it in New Zealand. I contacted the New Zealand Society of Authors, and asked them if they would be interested in reviewing it, in their e-zine, an online magazine.

I received a very enthusiastic response from a woman, who was the Northland representative. She requested a copy of the book. I duly sent it.

A short while later, I received another e-mail from her, informing me that she had sent my book to a female reviewer, and that she had disliked my book so much, that she felt she could not review it. She apologized, and that was that. To be honest, I took it as a compliment.

I read their following e-zine, and saw that my book did not even get a mention. Ironically, I noticed an article in the e-zine, concerned with the suppression, and oppression of Chinese writers, by the Chinese government, calling for support from New Zealand writers to help their cause.

Later, I learned the expression, “political correctness”. The Chinese government silenced writers who they did not consider politically correct. I struggled to see the difference, between the way the New Zealand Society of Authors had treated me, for not being politically correct, as they saw it.

I guess that is the point, it does not matter who decides, but the fact that anyone decides.

Amusingly, over a decade later, if you check the current national board of the New Zealand Society of Authors, you will see it is represented by eight people, all female.

Jack Freestone.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. The only way to get into the “coterie” is to call yourself as “Jackie” and claim to be gender neutral as well as get sun burnt to “colour” yourself a bit. Dont forget to retweet the one coming from the Board members to all your friends and whanau, and scartch their back as often as you can in Facebook and other online media postings.

    • 103.53.22.233 is the IP address of authors.org.nz and hosted by Cloudscale Ltd, NZ. I completely blocked all the IPs under the net range 103.53.22.0 – 103.53.22.255, CIDR 103.53.22.0/24

      I am free of this sh*t for good. They dont exist anymore, and cancelled them for good because their connection exists only in the cyber world and not in real world.

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