Publications:
ebook
Resolutions
Resolutions is a novel written by Karen Zelas, the first of a projected trilogy featuring family lawyer Rebecca Eaton. It is set in New Zealand.
When Lawyer for Children, Rebecca Eaton, is invited by martinet Jacqueline Thompson to be her Junior Counsel in a murder/infanticide trial, Rebecca sees a path to achieving her ambition of becoming a partner in the law firm. How can she know this will trip a series of events that will challenge all the beliefs and plans that give her world structure, purpose and peace? Pressure mounts as a Family Court case escalates to tragedy. Rebecca is grief-stricken and feels unreasonably responsible. Her competence is questioned, media hound her ...
But deep in the lush and rugged bush country of New Zealand, her intense involvement with a Maori family causes Rebecca to risk opening doors, to risk loving and being hurt ...
Our initial venture into epublishing, Resolution is available as a paperback (see below) or an ebook
from Amazon Kindle Stores - 'fiction books karen zelas' or www.amazon.com: search for Karen Zelas
Publication date (ebook): December 2020
ISBN: 978-0-473-55442-2
Print books
threads
Karen Zelas’s Threads
is a book about family – the genetic strands that run through generations; the ties of love and belonging that bind parents and children, siblings and cousins. But it’s also about damage and grief, and how to negotiate your way through dark passes – lockdown, cancer, a family history pieced together from fragment, myth and discovery. Uneasy poems for uneasy times, but woven through with love, beauty and hope. Poems as an embroidery of memories, so that they are made beautiful, so that they become art. But also poems as sutures – binding wounds, repairing harm. So that the work of healing can begin. So that the patient – all of us – might survive. Joanna Preston
Threads is a tangle of three poem sequences. Of the third, ‘Geography of Loss’, which was performed as a theatre piece, the following remarks have been made:
‘[I have] no doubt as to the work’s significance … the language sparkles [and] the story is vivid and heart-breaking.’ Bernadette Hall, Poet
‘Geography of Loss is … fascinating and beautifully written …’ Stuart Hoar, Playwright
Publication date: 17 November 2022
Title: Threads
ISBN: 978-0-473-65686-7
A5 130 pages
Soft cover
2 b&w illustrations
For further information contact Pūkeko Publications at pukekopublications@gmail.com:
Kōtuku shining flight
Pūkeko Publications has joined with Wickcandle Press
to publish
Kathleen Gallagher's fourth book of poetry
Kōtuku Shining Flight
New and Collected poems
1979 - 2022
This book includes Kathleen's first three collections: Tara, Gypsy and Twilight Burns the Sky, plus her new collection for which the book is named: Kōtuku Shining Flight.
'Kathleen weaves together te ao mauri and her experiences of te ao wairua - giving resonance to the multiple feathers worn bu manu kaitiaki Kōtuku. Whether you wade in the foreshore or seek the heights of flight, Kathleen’s poetic korero will find you whispering ‘ae tika, I understand’ Te Awhina Arahanga
‘Spare and lovely as a bird in flight, these poems trace a wide arc in delicate and precise language …’ Frankie McMillan
Publication date: 1 November 2022
Title: Kōtuku Shining Flight
ISBN: 978-0-473-64537-3
A5 340 pages
Soft cover, with flaps
Illustrated with delicate b&w pencil drawings
Further information from wickcandlefilm@gmail.com or ring 03 332 9192
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Away With Us Poetry by Lucy Barge Published October 2021 Lucy Barge is 17 years old, already a published and prize-winning poet, a musician, and with a flair for design. Her poetry surprises; it is sophisticated, even precocious. This is Lucy’s first collection of poetry, designed with an eye for the word upon the page to an extent rare in a young woman of her age. Lucy uses language not only to ease the rub of her interior self against the external world, but also so others may find solace and support navigating the challenges and anxieties of their teenage years. She has stepped into the river and come out the other side. This debut collection is honest, fresh, shocking and gives up sharp bright poems that reward reading again and again. Five of these poems have won or been placed in competitions. Poet and editor, Gail Ingram says: ‘Lucy’s poetry is written with the technical assurance of someone twice her age. Bullies are ‘lice’ in one poem; in another the narrator is ‘raw as a sliced onion’. Everyday objects – teacups, sanitizer, clocks and swings – are examined with the intensity of words cut back to their barest and charged with anxiety. Words are broken into sound – ‘thru umm ing’ and ‘cry ing’, adding intensity and depth. Lucy manages line-breaks like a pro.’ Poet Emma Shi says: ‘Lucy Barge writes with striking and aching honesty, tenderness and defiance. She gathers all the learnings from her own coming of age to deliver a confident and generous debut collection.' ISBN: 978-0-473-58894-6 (Softcover) Poetry Mental health Adolescence Bullying Pages: 97, b & w Cover design: Lucy Barge Size: 14.5 x 21 cms Further information from Lucy Barge: email lucybmusic17@gmail.com or visit her instagram @lucy_b_poetry |
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Legacy: Celebrating 33 Women Artists, painting Otago, New Zealand
poetry & biographies by Robynanne Milford
Central Otago and the Lakelands are vast and daunting, wildly beautiful, harshly unforgiving, a spring of creative inspiration for women artists since early settler days …
Robynanne Milford has sought out these artists and their works, and written poems inspired by their paintings. The resulting poems are featured in this collection, alongside the artworks that inspired them. Accompanying these are biographical notes, compiled in part by original research and interviews of descendants.
Legacy crosses boundaries: it is a book for art lovers, as much as for poets. The cover illustration is Doris Lusk’s watercolour Late Afternoon, Lake Wakatipu, 1958, by courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa. This is a large format book, for browsing – a serious coffee table book.
Legacy is the third book of poetry by Robynanne Milford that explores in poetry the (almost invisible) women of early Central Otago, the first two titles being Aspiring Light (Pūkeko Publications, 2015) and Finding Voice: Women on the Dustan 1860 – 1900 (Whitestream Press, 2018).
Publication date: 28 July 2021
Legacy
Poetry. Art reproductions. Biography.
Publisher: Pūkeko Publications
Design & layout: Karen Zelas
ISBN: 978-0-473-56779-8 (soft cover)
Cover illustration:
Late Afternoon Lake Wakatipu by Doris Lusk, courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa.
Size: 21 x 29.7cms (landscape)
Pages: 143
Images: Colour: 32
Black & white: 31
Read the first 4 chapters HERE
Resolutions is a novel written by Karen Zelas, the first in a trilogy featuring family lawyer Rebecca Eaton and set in New Zealand. Each book stands alone, within a broader story.
When Lawyer for Children, Rebecca Eaton, is invited by martinet Jacqueline Thompson to be her Junior Counsel in a murder/infanticide trial, Rebecca sees a path to achieving her ambition of becoming a partner in the law firm. How can she know this will trip a series of events that will challenge all the beliefs and plans that give her world structure, purpose and peace? Pressure mounts as a Family Court case escalates to tragedy. Rebecca is grief-stricken and feels unreasonably responsible. Her competence is questioned, media hound her ...
But deep in the lush and rugged bush country of New Zealand, her intense involvement with a Maori family causes Rebecca to risk opening doors, to risk loving and being hurt ...
‘This is storytelling at its most thought-provoking and gripping. Rebecca Eaton wrestles with the practicalities and cultural sensitivities of protecting families in distress. Underpinning the narrative tension, post-quake Christchurch, the wild West Coast and the brooding water and bush of Marlborough Sounds come alive in the author's deft hands.’ – Gail Ingram
‘Karen Zelas skilfully combines the elements of tension, pace, friction and urgency to create a novel which has the reader turning pages. The characters are engaging, and the visual and atmospheric images of South Island, New Zealand, evocative. Resolutions is literary crime fiction at its best.’ – Paddy Richardson
Publication date: 28 July 2021
ISBN: 978-0-473-57930-2 (Softcover)
Literary fiction. Crime. Legal procedural.
Pages: 323, b & w
Size: 14.5 x 21 cms
Resolutions is a novel written by Karen Zelas, the first in a trilogy featuring family lawyer Rebecca Eaton and set in New Zealand. Each book stands alone, within a broader story.
When Lawyer for Children, Rebecca Eaton, is invited by martinet Jacqueline Thompson to be her Junior Counsel in a murder/infanticide trial, Rebecca sees a path to achieving her ambition of becoming a partner in the law firm. How can she know this will trip a series of events that will challenge all the beliefs and plans that give her world structure, purpose and peace? Pressure mounts as a Family Court case escalates to tragedy. Rebecca is grief-stricken and feels unreasonably responsible. Her competence is questioned, media hound her ...
But deep in the lush and rugged bush country of New Zealand, her intense involvement with a Maori family causes Rebecca to risk opening doors, to risk loving and being hurt ...
‘This is storytelling at its most thought-provoking and gripping. Rebecca Eaton wrestles with the practicalities and cultural sensitivities of protecting families in distress. Underpinning the narrative tension, post-quake Christchurch, the wild West Coast and the brooding water and bush of Marlborough Sounds come alive in the author's deft hands.’ – Gail Ingram
‘Karen Zelas skilfully combines the elements of tension, pace, friction and urgency to create a novel which has the reader turning pages. The characters are engaging, and the visual and atmospheric images of South Island, New Zealand, evocative. Resolutions is literary crime fiction at its best.’ – Paddy Richardson
Publication date: 28 July 2021
ISBN: 978-0-473-57930-2 (Softcover)
Literary fiction. Crime. Legal procedural.
Pages: 323, b & w
Size: 14.5 x 21 cms
broken lines / in charcoal, edited by Joanna Preston and Karen Zelas, is an anthology of poems by 37 poets, new, emerging and well-established. These poems had their origins in the Poetry Classes of Joanna Preston.
The title is from Suzanne Nesbitt's poem 'Innocence'. The cover artwork is by poet and artist Kate Rennie.
Publication date: 24 September 2020
ISBN: 978-0-473-52742-6
Pages: 148
37 poets - new, emerging, well-established.
128 poems - varied, surprising, breath-taking, heart-felt, their beginnings in the Poetry Classes of poet and tutor, Joanna Preston.
'I love broken lines / in charcoal. Editors Joanna Preston and Karen Zelas have brought together an anthology brimming with sumptuous poems by names well known and new. Reading work by Gail Ingram, Jeni Curtis, Jane Simpson, Marisa Cappetta, Lynn Tara Austin, Ian McCartney and so many more, I found myself, in turns, moved and awestruck. This collection is a fitting testament to the power of workshops to enrich authors’ lives and poetry.' – Siobhan Harvey
'This is a rich and satisfying collection, adroitly curated by Joanna Preston and Karen Zelas. The result? Wonderful poems: careful poems, daring poems, cheeky poems, quirky poems; poems of delight, poems of grief; formal voices, free-spirited voices; each voice individual and memorable.
Many writers have become prominent nationally, while others are relatively new; all are worth reading. broken lines / in charcoal is a celebration of the imagination and a fine tribute to the art of poetry.' – James Norcliffe
'What the poems in this remarkable anthology have in common is a love of the exuberance and mutability of language. What sets them apart is the diversity of voices. From the experimental tone of the beginner to the assured cadence of the seasoned writer, there is much to delight and savour.' – Morrin Rout
'broken lines / in charcoal is a book of treasures that speaks to our collective poetic inheritance.' – Johanna Emeney
Podcast interview
Listen to Morrin Rout talking with Joanna Preston and Karen Zelas about broken lines / in charcoal on Bookenz Plains FM Podcast at https://d2j8uygm5y8062.cloudfront.net/StationFolder/plainsfm/Bookenz%2029%20Sept.mp3
Includes readings by Helen Mongillo, Irena Tojcic and Ian McCartney.
Contents Under Pressure by Gail Ingram blends poetry, narrative and collage, and is complemented by collage-style illustrations by Rata Ingram. It tells the story of a mother-turned-graffiti-artist and her teenage sons, who experience mental health and drug issues as they grow up through the after-effects of the Christchurch earthquakes.
Contents Under Pressure reads as a novella in verse.
Published:2019
ISBN: 978-0-473-47034-0
Pages: 85
Illustrations: 7; b&w
Gail Ingram has pulled off something special here. - Sue Wootton
Years after the Christchurch earthquakes, the breakages continue. A young physics student is falling apart. His mother takes to the streets at night, tagging her rage and anguish onto the city's walls. Their story is raw, painful, brave and at times strangely hilarious. Language is shattered in these pages, street art conjures up the nightmares. There's energy to burn here. - Bernadette Hall
To hear Gail Ingram discussing her book with Morrin Rout on Bookenz at Plains FM, click HERE
Aspiring Light is Robynanne Milford's third book of poetry. It comprises poems of celebration and lyrical beauty that trace the early history of Wanaka and celebrate the wilderness of Central Otago.
Milford was inspired in part by the works and pursuits of artists, musicians and writers drawn to this region in the 1940s.
ISBN: 978-0-473-31412-5
Published: 2015
feathers unfettered: 25 New Zealand Birds is a collaboration between Karen Zelas and Hawkes Bay poet and artist Jan Fitzgerald.
Both the poems and illustrations are quirky, but ornithologically accurate.
ISBN: 978-0-473-28797-9
Published: 2014
b & w
Pages: 63
