Tutors

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor originally from the Chesapeake Bay, now based in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. She works with novelists, short story writers, memoirists, essayists and poets to help them find their voice and hone their words.

She is Assistant Editor for the international Best Small Fictions series and has been Reviews Editor for takahē (2018-2020) and Landfall (2020-2022). She is also founder of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and National Flash Fiction Day NZ. She has co-edited numerous anthologies, including the forthcoming A Kind of Shelter: Whakaruru-taha (with Witi Ihimaera, Massey University Press, 2023). Other anthologies include Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (with James Norcliffe and Frankie McMillan, Canterbury University Press 2018), Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand (with Paula Morris and James Norcliffe, Otago University Press 2020), Breach of All Size: Small stories on Ulysses, love and Venice (with Marco Sonzogni, The Cuba Press 2022) and A Cluster of Lights: 52 writers around the world (with John Wentworth Chapin, Pure Slush 2023).She has guest edited at SmokeLong Quarterly and has judged writing competitions for South Island Writers’ Association, Whangārei Poetry Walk, Reflex Fiction, Retreat West, Bath Flash Fiction Award and more. In 2021 and 2022, she judged the Bath Novella-In-Flash Award.

A Pushcart nominee, a Watson Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar and a finalist or winner in a handful of international writing competitions, Michelle was once upon a time a German historian and university lecturer. She has been the recipient of a New Zealand Society of Authors/Auckland Museum Library grant and a New Zealand Society of Authors mentorship grant. She is also a NZ Society of Authors Mentor and Manuscript Assessor. In 2022 she became chair of the Otago/ Southland brnach of the NZ Society of Authors.

Michelle’s poetry, fiction, travel writing, creative nonfiction and reviews have been widely published and anthologised. Her book, the everrumble (Ad Hoc Fiction 2019) – a small novel in small forms – was published in 2019. The book was long-listed in The Guardian‘s Not-The-Booker Prize and. Her hybrid collection, the other side of better, was released in 2021, also to critical acclaim.

More about Michelle’s editing, teaching and writing at michelleelvy.com

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Lola Elvy brings the 52|250 programme to youth and students. She founded the youth journal fingers comma toes in 2015 and is the chair of New Zealand’s National Flash Fiction Day youth competition. She writes music, poetry and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction. In addition to writing, she is passionate about language, art, and the environment, and speaks English, German, and Swedish. She worked tutoring English as a second language at a Montessori school in Germany in 2019, and is now based in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her poetry and stories have been featured in Fast Fibres, Olentangy Review, and the anthologies The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (2018) and A Cluster of Lights: 52 writers around the world (2023).

Lola has edited emerging writers in poetry and short stories, essays and novel excerpts. She enjoys the challenge of working across forms and experimenting to bring out each writer’s distinct voice. Key principles of writing apply to any form, and the boundaries can become blurred as the language and technique sharpen.