Pavlova Press is an independent publishing company based in Kerikeri, in the Far North of New Zealand. It is run by sisters Kathy Derrick and Jac Jenkins.
We grew up on a dairy farm near Maungatapere, then took rather different routes into writing. Kathy trained and worked as an engineer. Jac started out in veterinary science before becoming a librarian. Eventually we both turned seriously to writing, completing Masters degrees in creative writing within a year of each other.
Pavlova Press came along a little later.
How we got here
The idea had been floating around for a while, helped along by a slightly outrageous plan to make a book about pavlova. In 2019 we finally stopped talking about having a press and started one.
Our first book was Scoria: Short Prose from the Cinder Cone, a collection of short prose written by the two of us. That was followed by Ngā Ripo Wai | Swirling Waters, a multi-genre anthology about Kerikeri, and then, after several years of gathering stories, poems, art and the occasional strong opinion about who invented what, Pav Deconstructed.
Since then our list has grown to include Jac’s poetry collection Moon Too Heavy and Pam Wood’s memoir Five Fat Sausages.
Our books are not much alike. We’re quite happy about that.
What we make
We publish poetry, memoir, short prose and anthologies, and we’re more interested in the particular book in front of us than in making everything fit a house formula.
Some books begin with a writer. Some begin with a place, an idea or a conversation around a dinner table. What matters to us is whether there is something there worth pursuing, and whether we can make a good book from it.
That means paying attention not only to the words, but to the book as a whole. The editing, the artwork, the cover, the typography, the paper and the way all those things work together matter to us.
How we work
There are only two of us, but publishing a book is rarely a two-person job. We work with writers, editors, artists, designers, printers and other people who know things we don’t.
We like collaboration, but we also like judgement. A book sometimes needs encouragement and sometimes needs somebody to say, “No, that’s not working yet.” We’re interested in finding out what a particular book wants to be, then doing the work needed to get it there.
Our list is still small. Every book has taken us somewhere different, which is probably one of the reasons we keep making them.
Refund Policy
When purchasing our books, please choose carefully as we will not refund you if you change your mind. If the product you receive is faulty or damaged in transit, we will meet our obligation to provide a remedy under The Consumer Guarantees Act.
