James George

James George (born 1962) is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer and creative writing lecturer. George has published three novels and several short stories, and lectures on creative writing at Auckland University of Technology. Life and career George was born in Wellington in 1962, and has lived most of his life in Auckland. He attended Remuera Intermediate School and Penrose High School. He is of Ngāpuhi, English and Irish descent. In addition to his writing he has worked in the purchasing office of an Auckland machinery company. George's first novel was Wooden Horses (2000), described by scholar Patrick Evans as "strongly romantic and lyrical". It was followed by his short story "Zeta Orionis", extracted from his then-unpublished second novel, which won the top award at the 2001 Māori Literature Awards (now the Pikihuia Awards), judged by Keri Hulme. His second novel Hummingbird was published in 2003, and is about strangers who meet at a Ninety Mile Beach camping ground. It was shortlisted for the fiction prize at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2004, and was a finalist for the 2005 Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize. It was the May 2003 Book of the Month for Whitcoulls booksellers. Reviewer Margie Thomson in The New Zealand Herald called it "extraordinarily beautiful, thoughtful and moving", with a "slow, deliberate pace". The Dominion Post, by contrast, called it "an easy read but derivative", in a review which Fiona Kidman called "half-baked ramblings".