Beyond the Persimmon Tree - Book Launch

You are invited to join members of International Writer's Workshop NZ Inc (IWW) and friends to celebrate the launch of their 2011 Anthology, Beyond the Persimmon Tree, with special guest Johanna Emeney, one of New Zealand's rising poetry stars.

Named after a moving short story by up-and-coming North Shore writer Gay Johnson, this is a collection of 100 fiction and non-fiction short stories and poems from 38 past and present members of IWW and includes Alice Hooton's America, the winner of the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, in 2009.

In Beyond the Persimmon Tree, the stories and poems read like a colourful travelogue of adventure and experience.

From travelling around the Coromandel with a crossword to savouring the incense of spices and colourful sensations of Iran, we dine beneath an orange Australian outback sunset – then discover a mountain in Peru that's not all it's cracked up to be.

We meet immigrants arriving to the shores of their new land; go on a hair-raising cyclo ride through the clamouring streets of Vietnam and are fascinated by jive talking on a Greyhound bus. We join a black kitten with attitude on the back of a motor cycle and celebrate a winning team's success on a remote island in Greece.

We walk through the warm-scented rose gardens of Parnell and are immediately transported to the vineyards of Alsace.

We read of love lost and found, and rediscovered; of murder and mystery and intrigue; of humorous anecdotes and stories with twists and stings in their tales; of runaway children, scarecrows — and ghosts.

Beyond the Persimmon Tree costs $25 and is being launched in conjunction with New Zealand Book Month.

Highlights
- Free entry
- Light refreshments
- Special guest Johanna Emeney
- Books for sale

Event listed by IWW

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