Michael Botur
Michael Stephen Botur (born 8 March 1984) is an author from New Zealand described as being "a writer considered one of the most original story writers of his generation in New Zealand." Life and career. Born in Christchurch, Botur first began publishing poetry and experimental fiction as an English major at the University of Otago. He was part of a group publishing the creative writing zine "Blindswimmer". Botur's earliest creative writing publication credits, between 2004 and 2009, were in New Zealand and international literary magazines, zines and websites including "Takahe", JAAM, Bravado, The Lumiere Reader, Prima Storia , "Deep South", "Catalyst", "Sidestream", "Insight", "Subject", "Blindswimmer", "A3", "Critic", "Potroast", "Debate and F*nk", Canada's "The Med" and "NiL". He won the "Her" magazine short story competition in 2008. Botur completed a Master of Creative Writing degree in 2009, publishing a collection of short stories as his thesis including a dissertation on subcultures, then trained as a journalist with Massey University, graduating at the beginning of 2015. Botur essayed in "The Spinoff" on 26 July 2017 about moving to Northland in 2015 and "finding income and inspiration in its very small economy", working at The Warehouse and other labour-intensive  jobs, and finding story ideas. In 2019, Botur was featured at the Rotorua Noir Crime Writing Festival. In mid-2019, Botur launched a programme of publishing short stories every day for 100 days on social media and encouraged other New Zealand writers to do the same. The #100NZStories100days campaign encouraged Kiwi writers to post links to flash fiction and short prose already published in literary magazines and blogs. Botur said in an NZ Book Council news story: "I have a philosophy of ‘There’s no time like the present’ with a lot of my publishing. Fiction writers endure many forces which  delay the publication of our work when we're keen to share it with the world. Life is short and I don't think it's right that publishers and competitions will keep an author waiting up to 12 months to share their work with the world." Botur published Loudmouth: Page and Pub Poems under the Wild West Writing imprint in December 2019 and began touring the book. Launched in Whangarei 6 December 2019, Loudmouth has been performed in Auckland, Rotorua, Tauranga and Christchurch. "Loudmouth: Page and Pub Poems" has been or is scheduled to be performed at festivals including : Rotorua Noir - 26 January 2019 Whangarei Fringe Festival - 19 October 2020. Earth Beat Festival - 20 March 2021 In January 2021 Botur received a grant to perform Loudmouth: Page and Pub Poems and deliver creative writing workshops in Tauranga. Botur recorded Loudmouth as an album and launched on Spotify, iTunes, Bandcamp and Amazon Music in March 2021 and an official launch in Whangarei on 1 April 2021. Published works. Botur's published works include: His latest novel "The Devil Took Her" will be released by The Sager Group in 2022. Awards. Botur's awards and nominations include: