Kirsten WarnerKirsten Warner

Kirsten Warner is the author of her debut novel The Sound of Breaking Glass, published in September 2018 by Makāro Press. She lives in West Auckland and works as a journalist, writes poetry and plays in the swamp-folk-blues band Bernie Griffen and The Thin Men. Kirsten was born in Hastings in 1956.

‘Your grandparents were loaded onto cattle trucks and sent to the gas chambers’

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Auckland writer Kirsten Warner on the continuing horror of the Holocaust for second generation survivors. A Facebook friend recently made contact to say he’d heard me talking on National Radio about my newly published novel The Sound of Breaking Glass. His wife was, like me, the child of a survivor of the Holocaust. He said he’d … Read more

Teachers celebrate the end of National Standards

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Children are the real winners now that National Standards have gone, according to primary principals and teachers. So what will schools be getting up to in the brave new world of 2018? Kirsten Warner looks for answers. “It’s been six years and we’ve just been so unhappy this whole time,” reads the celebratory email from … Read more

Bring An Adult To Vote: How kids are helping turn around low voter turnout

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In low income areas of New Zealand, where there is very low voter turnout, children and highly engaged principals are making a big difference. Kirsten Warner shares the Bring An Adult to Vote initiative. At Holy Family School in Porirua, the $40 cost of the school three-photo pack was beyond the reach of many families. … Read more

Let us now praise Phantom Billstickers for sticking up really fucking big posters of New Zealand poetry

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All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books devotes itself to poetry in the build-up to Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday. Today: Kirsten Warner explores why it is that New Zealand poetry has such a friend in Phantom. The first time I saw one of Phantom Billstickers’ poster poems I couldn’t believe … Read more