John Cranna is a former Chair of the Auckland Society of Authors. John has published two books of fiction, Visitors and Arena, one of non-fiction and has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, and the NZ Book Award for Fiction. He grew up in NZ but lived for ten years in Kings Cross, London where he worked as a community organiser and editor. His books have been published in Australia, UK and France. His screenplay for the short film Accidents was shown at the Venice Film Festival and other festivals around the world. From 2000 to 2005 he was managing editor of AA Directions, which then rose from fifth to most-read magazine in NZ. He founded the AUT University Centre for Modern Writing in 2007, where he designed the Master of Creative Writing course, and was voted Best Post-Graduate Teacher by students at the University in 2008. In 2010 he founded the Creative Hub, a waterfront writing centre on Princes Wharf in Auckland which teaches a variety of creative writing courses, including Fiction, Introduction to Creative Writing, Writing for Children, Memoir Writing, Screen Writing, and Travel Writing.
