MEDIA RELEASE

Report from Christchurch

Rebecca Mace
Published in association with the New Zealand Listener, with a foreword by Pamela Stirling. Rebecca Maces rst-hand accounts of the Christchurch earthquakes in the New Zealand Listener provided an often searing account of the disaster. They were powerful and immediate because Mace herself lived there, personally affected by the devastation. As Mace explains in Hope and despair, the rst chapter of this BWB Text, her own house was badly damaged and she and her family were forced to move out. But other families faced injury and even death. Written over a period of two years, Maces Report from Christchurch traces the citys struggle to recover from the disaster and plan for the future. We agree wholeheartedly with Bridget Williams Books that the enduring insights of Rebeccas reports deserve to be shared And though Rebecca wrote that at times she felt like an observer in someone elses disaster movie, she was so directly engaged that she has captured moments not only of struggle and survival but also of optimism and energy. Pamela Stirling, foreword BWB Texts offer a new form of reading for New Zealanders. Commissioned as short digital-only works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.

Publishing Wednesday 3 April 2013 RRP$4.99 ISBN 9781927131862 (EPUB), ISBN 9781927131879 (KINDLE)) Available direct from www.bwb.co.nz and from major retailers including Amazon, Kobo and eBooks.com Also available as a bundle with other BWB Texts from the BWB website

About the author

Rebecca Mace is an experienced journalist who joined the New Zealand Listener in 2007 as the magazines South Island writer. Since starting out in journalism in 1988 she has written for the Christchurch Star, The Press, National Business Review, Independent Business Weekly, North&South, Unlimited magazine and the New Zealand Herald. She is a recent winner of the Bruce Jesson Journalism Prize in support of a book she is writing on the Pike River mining disaster. She lives in Christchurch, where she says the strange and broken has become normal. She and her husband have a 21-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter. Rebecca Mace is available for interview. Tom Rennie is available for discussion of BWB Texts. Review copies of Report from Christchurch are available. For interviews or review copies, please contact Angela Radford: angelaradford@xtra.co.nz, 027 540 1104

For more information or a review copy, contact publicist Angela Radford P O Box 12474, Wellington 6144 Phone: 04 473 8128 Email: info@bwb.co.nz www.bwb.co.nz Phone: 09 579 7351 Mobile: 027 540 1104 Email: angelaradford@xtra.co.nz

What are BWB Texts?

A BWB Text is a short, digital-only piece of highquality New Zealand writing, produced swiftly and distributed globally online. Read on smart phones and e-readers, tablets and desktop computers, BWB Texts connect an exploding online readership to some of New Zealands best authors, reading and ideas. BWB Texts draw on the publishing expertise of Bridget Williams Books to bring readers an exciting mix of New Zealand reading: cutting edge commentary sits alongside reective narrative, debate alongside history, articles follow memoir, and information precedes stories. Launching with Paul Callaghan: Luminous Moments, the rst set of BWB Texts now includes: Maurice Gees Creeks & Kitchens: A Childhood Memoir, Rebecca Maces Report from Christchurch (in association with the New Zealand Listener), and Kathleen Joness I think ... I am going to die.: Katherine Manseld at Fontainebleau. More BWB Texts, including Hamish Campbells The Zealandia Drowning Hypothesis and Sir Tipene ORegans New Myths and Old Politics, will be released regularly throughout 2013.

How will BWB Texts work?

The BWB Texts programme is inspired by emerging overseas publishing models focused on short form digital-only works, often referred to as e-singles. Sharing similar characteristics as these offshore initiatives, BWB Texts are short digital-only works, produced quickly to ensure topicality, retailed at low cost, and distributed to the widest range of devices possible. BWB Texts are crafted in-house at BWB using a digital production workow powered by Infogrid Pacic, with covers from Base Two. The strength of BWBs commissioning strategy based on providing excellent research and writing about New Zealand is widely recognised. BWB Texts build from this expertise, using the exibility of this new approach to provide readers with a broad sweep of topics: New Zealand history; contemporary issues; biography and autobiography; other New Zealand narrative non-ction (for example, travel writing and science). BWB Texts are available directly and DRM-free from our website (www.bwb.co.nz), in addition to a wide range of retailers including Amazon, Kobo and eBooks.com. Bundled sets of BWB Texts will also be made available. School, public and tertiary libraries in New Zealand and abroad will be able to purchase copies via distributors ebrary, EBL and Wheelers.

Why are BWB Texts important?

Debate new readers, new thinking BWB Texts provide a new meeting space, connecting our histories, technologies, shifting readers, emerging and established authors, and our shared futures. Quality serious writing amidst the online noise The internet is disrupting the quality and nature of our reading. BWB Texts help connect important ideas and a readership confronted with the noise of modern media. Silence the challenges facing media BWB Texts represent a response to these challenges, one that draws on these technological shifts to nurture great writing, both as BWB Texts and within the wider BWB publishing programme. Global immediate and crossing boundaries Produced within weeks and worldwide in distribution, BWB Texts broadcast New Zealand voices and stories across boundaries.

Who is behind BWB Texts?

BWB Texts was instigated by publisher Tom Rennie and journalist Max Rashbrooke, in partnership with BWBs director Bridget Williams. The trio became a quartet with Geoff Walker bringing years of New Zealand publishing experience to the team as commissioning editor alongside Max Rashbrooke. Together, we have fashioned a contemporary vision drawing on many years of strong publishing experience.

Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge the funding support of the BWB Publishing Trust (www.bwbpublishingtrust. org.nz) that makes this new digital imprint possible.