James Norcliffe is an award-winning poet, educator, editor and
author of books for adults and children.
He was the 2018 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing
Fellow, the 2012 University of Otago College of Education Writer in
Residence, the 2006 Fellow at Iowa University and the 2000 Robert
Burns Fellow at Otago University.
In 2003, Norcliffe, with Bernadette Hall, received the inaugural
Christchurch Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for 'lasting
contribution to literature in the South Island'. Norcliffe has
taught English in Christchurch, China and Brunei. He won the Lilian
Ida Smith Award in 1990, and the New Zealand Poetry Society's
international competition in 1992.
His children's fantasy novel The Assassin of Gleam won the Sir
Julius Vogel Award for the best New Zealand fantasy novel of 2006,
and was shortlisted for the 2007 LIANZA Esther Glen Medal. In the
Christchurch Press, Trevor Agnew wrote that Norcliffe had avoided
producing what could have been 'just another cardboard fantasy
cliche' and had 'breathed life into his characters and situations.
The result is a skilfully told story, with a dark mood and a sense
of urgency. It is clear that a master storyteller is at work from
the first sentence...' In New Zealand Books, Heather Murray
identified Norcliffe's 'experience as historian and poet to create
a logical, believable and exciting story out of an alienating and
threatening world'. She concluded- 'Though Norcliffe creates
frightening worlds, he grounds his story and characters in
acceptable reality through using known language'.
The Loblolly Boy, published in 2009 in New Zealand, Australia and
the United States, was described by acclaimed children's writer
Margaret Mahy as 'a rich fantasy - alive with original twists
surprises and mysteries'. It won the 2010 NZ Post Junior Fiction
Award, was shortlisted for the LIANZA Esther Glen Medal for Junior
Fiction and the Sir Julius Vogel Science Fiction Award, and won a
Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Book Award.
In Science Fiction World, Gerard Woods wrote of The Loblolly Boy
that Norcliffe 'has written that rare children's book, as much a
joy for adults to read as for children'. USA's Booklist described
The Loblolly Boy as 'an imaginative and richly atmospheric fantasy
with sympathetic characters...a haunting story that will capture
most readers' imaginations'. 'The Loblolly Boy by James Norcliffe
is an entrancing, exciting, unexpected read...it has a wondrous,
magical fairy-tale ambience...I never quite knew where it was going
or how it would be resolved,' wrote George Ivanoff in Australian
Speculative Fiction in Focus (ASFF). Fran Knight, writing in Read
Plus, highly recommended The Loblolly Boy as an 'intriguing,
engrossing and wholly satisfying...highly original fantasy story',
while in the same publication Peter Pledger declared it 'A unique
and original fantasy, complete with adventure, magic and appealing
characters, this is a tale that was hard to put down.'
A sequel, The Loblolly Boy & the Sorcerer, released in 2011 and was
a finalist in the Junior Fiction category of the 2012 New Zealand
Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. The Enchanted
Flute, described in the Otago Daily Times as a 'Part Grimm's fairy
tale, part classical mythology, part outdoor adventure...inspired,
in part, by a piece of classical music' followed, and was a
finalist in the 2013 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.
Norcliffe's 2013 novel Felix and the Red Rats is a riveting
adventure which sees the margins between fiction and reality, and
the past and the present, dangerously blur. Dave Pope, in Hawkes
Bay Today, noted that 'like all good stories this one has a plot
within a plot within a plot. It keeps the reader wanting more, as
minor characters are drawn into this dark tale.' It won a
Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Award in 2014.
The Pirates and the Nightmaker, a continuation of the loblolly
boy's adventures, was published in 2015. It won a Storylines
Notable Junior Fiction Award and was a finalist in the junior
fiction category of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and
Young Adults in 2016.
In a review in The Sapling, Sarah Forster described Norcliffe's
2017 novel Twice Upon a Time as 'traditional quest storytelling at
its best, from a master of the form' and declared that 'James
Norcliffe is a national treasure.'
He lives in Church Bay with his wife, Joan Melvyn.
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