David HillDavid Hill

David Hill is one of New Zealand’s most distinguished writers of novels for teenagers and younger kids. He has been published in 10 languages and 15 countries. He is a former high school teacher, and was born in Napier in 1942.

When we caned children

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Headmaster with cane

Corporal punishment, say some, is clear, quick, ‘effective’. It’s also abusive and grotesque, writes former high school teacher David Hill, who knows from experience. Two narratives to begin. The first: a whole lot of years back, when I was a teachers’ college student observing for three weeks at a boys’ high, a teacher ordered me … Read more

Love’s labour: My mother, the servant

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David Hill reflects on his mother’s life of servitude, and that of many others like her.  My mother spent most of her adult life being a servant. We don’t have servants now. We have service industries (I actually thought all industries provided services), but we don’t call their employees “servants”. They’re enveloped in euphemisms: “personal … Read more

The virus that stalked children: Remembering New Zealand’s polio years

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David Hill remembers his childhood friend Doug, who contracted polio a decade before the vaccine became available. As summer approached, New Zealand braced itself for a return of the virus. Nearly 1,000 people had fallen ill in the previous wave. Fifty-seven had died. There was no vaccine; no cure. Now hospitals and families waited for … Read more

David Hill on the story that started it all

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various covers of children's book See Ya, Simon, by David Hill

David Hill’s beloved junior fiction book See Ya, Simon is 28 years old. The boy who inspired it died in his first year of high school. That backstory is well known but now, Hill fills in the detail, including the obligation he felt to his daughter, and the grief that kept him company as he … Read more

David Hill reviews Ian Wedde’s new novel, The Reed Warbler

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An independent, sensuous life unfolds in hundreds of brightly-lit scenes. I first heard of Ian Wedde in the 1960s, through his poetry. It was a jolt. Wasn’t verse supposed to be runic and remote? This guy was chatting to you! OK, chatting in a voice that was colloquial yet innovative; expansive and technically virtuosic, but … Read more

Is there any such thing as literature in Taranaki?

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We continue our occasional series which investigates whether any literary activity exists in the provinces. David Hill reports from his “entombment” in Taranaki. A lot of authors born in Taranaki have left the province on a permanent basis, to become successful or dead. The successful ones are Anthony McCarten and Stuart Hoar from New Plymouth; Dinah Hawken, Gaelyn … Read more