Group projects: past themes

Between 2017-2022 STEM writers have produced six themed collections of joint work.

2017: Love/Which alters - a collection of ‘not romances’ - love stories with a twist - published for Valentine’s Day.

2018: Past/Present - a collection of fictional pieces sparked by the buildings and ‘street furniture’ of Nelson city and port. There is a map included, to help readers ‘plot’ their way around Nelson past…

2019: Working away, unseen. The title is drawn from a comment by nineteenth-century Nelson feminist writer, Mary Ann Muller, whose identity remained hidden for many decades. This collection of writing uses the devices of fiction to capture the lives and influence of less well-known Nelson women, from the Nelson hospital’s first Matron, to inn-keepers, silent-movie musicians, and the first winner at the Tahuna Back-Beach car races of the 1950s!

2019: Nelson noir. Is it even possible to write noir fiction, in Nelson? This collection shows in a myriad of ways, that it is - and that we need to confront the murkier sides of our past.

2020: COVID operations. These ‘stories from a locked-down Nelson’ were all produced during 2020’s national lockdown, while STEM writers worked, like everyone else, on ZOOM. They capture the strangeness of finding ways to engage creatively with that pandemic experience.