New Zealand Books is this country’s only periodical devoted to reviewing books by our writers.
Each edition's 26 lively pages brings you in-depth reviews, comment and opinion, poetry, letters, and a prize-winning cryptic crossword. Many New Zealand Books reviewers are themselves well-known writers: the quarterly gives them space to produce essays in their own right.
It will keep you abreast of this country’s literary culture, challenging you with informed argument and good humour. No one who cares about our books can afford to miss it.
Review journal celebartes its first 20 years!
New Zealand Books is marking its 20
th year of publication with a celebratory summer issue (publication date 2 December 2011).
The quarterly is the only periodical dedicated to reviewing this country’s books. It focuses almost entirely on New Zealand publications, and also carries opinion on any and all book-related topics, new poetry and occasional work in progress.
Its audience is the general reader, rather than the specialist. It treats books in depth at a time when many regular publications are either doing away with their books pages or cutting back their coverage of books.
Published by Peppercorn Press Charitable Trust, NZB began life as a conversation between poet Lauris Edmond and editor and music specialist John Mansfield Thomson. They brought together a group of friends willing to sink $500 each into the new venture, which was modelled on
The London Review of Books.
Other founding members of Peppercorn Press were Vincent O’Sullivan, Shelagh Duckham Cox, Martin Bond and Pat Hawthorne.
The first issue came out in April 1991, edited by J M Thomson. Later editors included political commentator Colin James and poet Bill Sewell. Harry Ricketts has been co-editor since 1998, Jane Westaway since 2003.
The journal is published with the support of Creative New Zealand, as well as that of its readers, reviewers and advertisers.
