Thursday, February 27, 2014

"Beautiful additions to Frame's extraordinary oeuvre" ~ The Australian

Skeletons of the fabulous
 
Felicity Plunkett of The Australian newspaper has reviewed two new Janet Frame titles that were recently published in Australia: The Mijo Tree (Penguin 2013) and Between My Father and the King (Wilkins Farago 2013).
 
It's a superbly intelligent and perceptive review, well worth reading (the reviewer is herself a poet).
 
 "Like the mijo seed, Frame sought an exceptional creative life. She tore the dark fruit of her early days apart and found in them seed for work that continues to appear, blossoming in this, her posthumous phase."
 
 
"Many of Janet Frame's stories are boned with the skeleton of the fabulous. With their 'once upon a time', their anthropomorphism and their small, clear fairytale phrasing, only gradually do they reveal their powerful musculature and darker currents."
 
 
"These two works are beautiful additions to Frame's extraordinary oeuvre."

Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014

will be held on Monday the 10th of March 2014 at 6.15 pm
at the Adam Auditorium of the Wellington City Galley
Doors open at 5.45 pm
Admission is free
 
The Mouth of the Whale (The Power of Pictures)
by Gavin Bishop
 
In his lecture celebrated children's author and illustrator Gavin Bishop will focus on the role of illustration in literature.
 
The Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014 is sponsored by the New Zealand Society of Authors in association with the New Zealand Festival and the City Gallery Wellington.
 
 

 

Monday, February 24, 2014

Janet Frame stories in Slovenian

 

Vstopate v človeško srce

(You are now entering the human heart
and other stories)

Janet Frame

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Still winning prizes




Ten years after her death, Janet Frame's writing is still picking up awards. The radio drama adaptation of her 3-volume autobiography AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (first broadcast on BBC4 last January) recently won the BBC Radio Drama Award for Best Series at the 2014 BBC Audio Drama Awards.



Lorraine Ashbourne (who plays Janet Frame), Philip Glenister (who presented the award), Anita Sullivan and Karen Rose
(BBC Media Centre).
 
Congratulations to Sweet Talk, to Anita Sullivan and Karen Rose, and to all the actors!

Of course for such a win to take place there are also a host of other people that have contributed to the success of the final production in our own various ways, and I'm sure we are all feeling pleased and satisfied that the excellence of this adaptation has been acknowledged.

See more about the adaptation on Anita Sullivan's web page.

For more context see my earlier posts:

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/janet-frame-serial-shortlisted-for-bbc.html

 http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/bbc-adapts-janet-frames-autobiography.html

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/new-bbc-radio-adaptation.html

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

NZ Herald Greatest New Zealanders

As part of their 150th Anniversary celebrations late last year the New Zealand Herald ran a 'New Zealander of the Year' series in which they retrospectively named our 'Greatest New Zealanders'.

Janet Frame was accorded this honour twice: New Zealander of the Year 1957 ('Literary Spellbinder') when her first novel Owls Do Cry was published, and New Zealander of the Year 1983 ('A Writer's Story') when she published To the Is-Land, the first volume of her bestselling autobiography.