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AT THE BAY | I TE KOKORU and Scorpio Books invite you to the launch of Jenna Heller’s new book, The End of the Beginning.All welcome, light refreshments provided. Arrive from 5.30pm for a 6pm start.
This event is free to attend – please RSVP by going to tinyurl.com/ScorpioBooksRSVP.
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ABOUT THE BOOK:
A tornado rips the roof from a strip mall. A girl is scorched by her own reflection. A daughter enacts revenge for her mother’s grotesquely inappropriate remarks. An unwell man prepares to leave his home and community for the last time. A woman contemplates her impending transformation into a sea creature, while another, gifted with second sight, finds that ghosts start to outnumber the living.
With plots that hinge on moments of unease, betrayal, or violence, these small stories focus on becoming and unforeseen departures. Ranging from North America to Aotearoa, they move through the captured time of childhood memory to the vastness of geological time as experienced by an escaping moon, and often, they lean into a queer and ecologically-inflected Gothic.
“Brilliant, tender and spare.” – Frankie McMillan
“With a delicate but strong sense of narrative voice, Jenna Heller has seized the flash form and made it her own.” – Tina Shaw
“These spare yet sumptuous stories ripple with wonder and warmth. They are also ruthless. Nothing under the sun escapes Jenna Heller’s sharp-eyed perception. The End of the Beginning is flash fiction at its finest.” – Michelle Ross
“These small stories riff on genre, but often lean into a dark humour that scratches at the unease in human relationships with other humans and with the environment, like a succession of brutal jokes. Jenna Heller is attentive to the ‘suitcase behind the smile’, to life as it is lived and its multiple alternate personalities.” – Alison Glenny
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jenna Heller was the joint-winner of the Meniscus Australian CLA Best Prose Prize 2019, shortlisted for the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing 2019, runner-up of the North & South Short, Short Story Contest 2019, winner of National Flash Fiction Day NZ 2020, runner-up for the Caselberg International Poetry Prize 2021, and was also selected for inclusion in the international anthology Best Small Fictions 2020, 2021, and 2023.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Five Lanes at the BNZ Centre. 120 Hereford St, Christchurch, New Zealand 8011, New Zealand
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