Editorial

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This year, the Quick Brown Fox has the honour of celebrating the Hagley Writers’ Institute’s tenth anniversary. This is a huge milestone for the little course that could, a place that has regularly turned out writers more than capable of meeting the world of New Zealand literature head on.

It was the brainchild of the Hagley principal Mike Fowler, well before he was principal. It has found its greatest champion in Morrin Rout, who has been an unflagging mainstay on the programme. Patronised by the iconic Margaret Mahy and then the wonderful Bernadette Hall, the course has selected and honed talent in Canterbury.

This year’s editors are a diverse group of readers. We each have a speciality and we all have strong opinions. The pieces from this edition have been agonised over in complicated spreadsheets, argued about in late night Skype sessions, and loved enough for us to eagerly present them to you.

We never really considered theming this edition. As the work began to roll in, it quickly became apparent that we would publish what we loved. And we have. What we have done is ensured that there is a selection of authors represented from across the years that the Hagley Writers’ School has operated. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed selecting them.

-Laura Borrowdale, Gail Ingram and Sam Averis

Laura Borrowdale is a Dunedin based writer and educator. She was in the founding class of the Hagley Writers’ Institute in 2008, and has gone on to become the editor of Aotearotica and a member of the Ink Pot Collective. She can be contacted through www.aotearotica.co.nz.
Gail Ingram is a poet, writer, editor and creative-writing teacher. Her fiction and poetry is widely published. She is the current editor of NZ Poetry Society Anthology and Associate Editor at Flash Frontier. You can find her work at www.theseventhletter.nz
Sam lives in Christchurch with his wife and daughters. His stories have appeared in Takahe, Geometry, and Flash Frontier among others. In 2016 two of his stories were highly commended in the NZ National Flash Fiction Day competition and in 2017 he was nominated for the best of the net awards. He is the website editor for Flash Frontier. Find him on his website and twitter @samaveris.