About Julie
I am a writer. My writing, both non-fiction and poetry, is inspired by the Marlborough Sounds and local landscape. In early years I lived in Tonga and read my way through the Tonga College Library. This gave me a life-long love of reading and an appreciation of the value of libraries.
Part of my schooling was in Uganda, East Africa, at a multi-ethnic high school. I attended Auckland University and gained a Bachelor of Arts degree. I have lived and worked in England, Austria and Papua New Guinea and travelled on the continent. For five years I lived in a cottage in Days Bay across the road from the house where Katherine Mansfield spent holidays. My book Katherine Mansfield in Picton was one of 40 books selected by the NZ Society of Authors to be on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012. I also compiled a Chronology of Picton and Queen Charlotte Sound (Volume 1 to 2009), for the Picton Museum. |
You can find some of my poems on the website, others appear in a number of anthologies and in the Aotearoa Sound Archives. In 2011 I co-edited a poetry anthology, Reflections. Two of my poems have been selected for display in the Nelson Museum window. I was Top of the South Branch delegate to the NZSA National Council from 2008 to April 2010. My skills include proof reading and editing and I often get involved in Council-initiated community projects. I am an active member of Picton Poets, Writers of Picton and Marlborough Writers and am on the committee that organised the inaugural Writers’ Forum in Picton and subsequent Writers’ and Indie Publishers’ Forums. My interest in conservation means I belong to Eco artists New Zealand and a proportion of my sales go towards environmental projects. By being a ‘Friend’ of Kaipupu Point Wildlife Sanctuary I supported the establishment of a bird sanctuary in Picton Harbour. I also belong to Picton Dawn Chorus trying to bring back the ‘wild music’ produced by tui and bellbirds that Joseph Banks recorded at Ship Cove on Cook’s first Voyage.
I live in a 1905 villa overlooking Picton Harbour. I love sitting on the verandah, drinking coffee and writing, meditating, reading books and the newspaper and doing crosswords with Chopin playing in the background. I love my garden: heritage roses, native plants, a herb wheel, a potager garden – productive though unkempt by magazine standards, and seeing snowdrops everywhere in July, our winter.
I live in a 1905 villa overlooking Picton Harbour. I love sitting on the verandah, drinking coffee and writing, meditating, reading books and the newspaper and doing crosswords with Chopin playing in the background. I love my garden: heritage roses, native plants, a herb wheel, a potager garden – productive though unkempt by magazine standards, and seeing snowdrops everywhere in July, our winter.
Sometimes I think I would like to go back to being the child who sat in an apple tree reading and ignoring the world but I love the arts and theatre, concerts, movies, my writing groups, socialising and helping in the community too much.
Future writing plans include publishing a selection of my poetry and a non-fiction book based on Journals kept by Captain James Cook in the 1770s in Queen Charlotte Sound. |
What's Next? |
A book on Captain Cook that I have been working on for some years. It's based on the Journals that Cook kept while based at Ship Cove in Outer Queen Charlotte Sound. He visited five times in total on his three Pacific voyages. The book is written using Cook's voice rather than an author's interpretation of his observations.
Also I have recently edited a second Picton Poets' anthology, Impressions.This will be launched on 16 October 2016 to celebrate 21 years since the group began and contains five of my poems. It will be available from the Picton Museum and Take Note Picton, and from the Writers of Marlborough website: www.writersofmarlborough.co.nz |
"From the world to the village Katherine Mansfield in Picton is a piece of local piety.
….Starting from the young Mansfield’s holiday visits to Beauchamp relatives in Picton and the Sounds, the book tracks reference to Picton through her stories, letters and notebooks, and reprints one complete story, The Voyage. It describes the Picton she saw and outlines the histories of the
various branches of the Beauchamp family. References to Mansfield as talented entertainer at family parties have been found in hitherto unmined Beauchamp papers. Mansfield industry or not, Julie Kennedy has been nothing if not industrious."
26 May 2001 New Zealand Listener
….Starting from the young Mansfield’s holiday visits to Beauchamp relatives in Picton and the Sounds, the book tracks reference to Picton through her stories, letters and notebooks, and reprints one complete story, The Voyage. It describes the Picton she saw and outlines the histories of the
various branches of the Beauchamp family. References to Mansfield as talented entertainer at family parties have been found in hitherto unmined Beauchamp papers. Mansfield industry or not, Julie Kennedy has been nothing if not industrious."
26 May 2001 New Zealand Listener