Kiran Dass interviews Mark O’Connell, whose new book sprang from terror about what climate change meant for his kids. Dublin writer Mark O’Connell reckons we’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios, and that we can only really survive in a meaningful sense as part of a community. Following his first book, 2017’s To Be … Read more
Palmerston North born, Brent Harris’ work is suffused with a murky darkness, unease and melancholia long associated with New Zealand art, cinema and music, but he considers himself an Australian artist. With his first solo exhibition on in Christchurch at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Towards the Swamp, he has returned. Kiran Dass … Read more
The Single Object is a series exploring our material culture, examining the meaning and influence of the objects that surround us in everyday life. In a shed at the foothills of the Southern Alps, Peter King has made special lathe cuts of recordings by an eclectic array of musicians. Kiran Dass writes here about her … Read more
Kiran Dass remembers Pete Shelley, co-founder and co-songwriter of the Buzzcocks, who died this week. After we’d heard that co-founder of punk group the Buzzcocks Pete Shelley had died of a heart attack aged 63 at home in Estonia, one of my friends pointed out that one of the great things about the Buzzcocks, whose … Read more
All week this Christmas week we countdown the best six books of 2017. Number four: Art Sex Music, the memoir by musician Cosey Fanni Tutti, whom reviewer Kiran Dass describes as ‘a staunch, fearless woman with backbone’. “I don’t like acceptance. It makes me think I’ve done something wrong.” – Cosey Fanni Tutti. In the last … Read more
Thirteen years after she would walk past him every morning on the way to work, Kiran Dass talks to Matthew Bannister of Sneaky Feelings about the band’s return and its place in Flying Nun folk lore. With their bright ringing guitars, melodies, and soul-kissed pop songs, Dunedin’s Sneaky Feelings seemed to be outsiders among the diverse Flying … Read more
Kiran Dass shares tea, biscuits and literary talk with Hanya Yanagihara. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize for her incendiary novel A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara appeared at the Auckland Writers Festival last week. While she was here, I sat down with her at the Langham Hotel, and we were served lemon and ginger iced tea and … Read more
Kiran Dass interviews Dutch novelist Herman Koch, a guest at the Auckland Writers Festival. Dutch author Herman Koch writes cracking good thrilling page-turners filled with repellent and flawed characters who despise each other, are driven by sex and power and who will make you wince and laugh. In The Dinner, he examines how far two … Read more
In this exclusive excerpt from Uniform magazine issue two (launching tonight), Kiran Dass interviews English post-punk legend Martin Bramah, on the eve of his former band The Fall’s New Zealand tour, about his life in drugs and music. “The only way out is up,” bellows Martin Bramah on the psyched-out 1982 Blue Orchids song ‘Dumb … Read more
Now and again, not often, a novel and a novelist comes along and knocks everyone on their ass. It’s happening with Elena Ferrante and it’s happening with Hanya Yanagihara, the New York writer whose novel A Little Life has mesmerized readers with its story telling and its ability to harrow. It’s shortlisted for the Man … Read more