Bringing the Past to Life: Panel
Friday 15 August, 6:00 - 8:00pm
Waikato Museum, 1 Grantham St
Free Event, refreshments served.
Chair Tina Shaw guides Deborah Challinor and Monty Soutar in conversation about the power of historical fiction and how they make their stories come alive. Join us at 6pm before the panel begins for refreshments in the museum foyer. Poppies Bookstore will have books available.
This event is sponsored by
Friends of Waikato Museum and Gallery HarperCollins, Bateman Books and supported by Poppies Hamilton with books for sale and signing.
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Author
Deborah Challinor is an award-winning and consistently best-selling author of nineteen historical fiction novels, a young adult novel, and two works of non-fiction about the Vietnam War. In 1999 she completed a PhD in history at Waikato University, for which she won a New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association Military History Scholarship in 1996. She was recognised as a Distinguished Alumni at Waikato University in 2017, and in 2018 she became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature and historical research.
In the past Deborah has written an opinion column and feature articles for the Waikato Times, edited special publications and books, and taught New Zealand history, and researching and writing historical fiction, at university level for several years. These days she writes fulltime and her books are sold in New Zealand and Australia, and in eBook, audio and large print formats.
Author
Monty Soutar has been a teacher, a soldier, a historian, and he has worked for government, museums and iwi rūnanga. He has a research background that spans almost forty years, in which time he has had access to closely guarded tribal and family manuscripts. In 2015 he was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and historical research. He continues to serve on the Waitangi Tribunal.
Dr Soutar is the author of Whītiki Whiti Whiti E! Māori in the First World War and Ngā Tama Toa: The Price of Citizenship: C Company 28 (Māori Battalion 1939–1945). Whītiki is a major publication about Maori participation in the First World War and the award-winning Nga Tama Toa focussed on Maori participation in the Second World War.
In 2021 he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship to write the Kāwai series. He has published two books in the series. For Such a Time as This, was published in September 2022 and Tree of Nourishment was released at the end of last year. Both novels went straight to number one on the NZ Fiction bestsellers list.
Photo: Melka Oakley
MC
Tina Shaw is a novelist and editor who has received many awards for her work, including the CNZ Berlin Writers Residency and the University of Waikato Writer In Residence. She won the 2018 Storylines Tessa Duder Award with Ursa which was published in 2019 by Walker Books Australia and received a Storylines Notable Book Award. As editor, her 7th edition of the Bateman NZ Writer's Handbook was published in 2023. Her novel manuscript A House Built on Sand won the 2023 Michael Gifkins Prize and was published in 2024 by Text Publishing, Melbourne. Tina works as a book reviewer, mentor, manuscript assessor, publisher, and is editor of the NZSA quarterly publication NZ Author. She divides her time between Taupō and Whāingaroa Raglan.
