A year ago today, the volcano on Whakaari/White Island erupted, leading to the death of 22 people and the injury of 25 more, many of whom suffered severe burns. Dr David Galler, a member of the team of intensive care and burns specialists at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, writes about that day and its aftermath. As … Read more
What does it mean to find courage in the face of a global pandemic, race protests, border strife and climate anxiety? Books editor Catherine Woulfe writes: Christchurch’s Word spring festival opens tomorrow. In real life! A highlight will be the Brave Worlds gala on Friday night, at which luminaries (Becky Manawatu, Witi Ihimaera, Elizabeth Knox, … Read more
‘On one scale the coronavirus that plagues us is microscopic. On another we ourselves are made small.’ An essay by Alex Kazemi. Make a Moebius strip. Take a long rectangular piece of paper, loop it, then join the two ends after putting one end through a half twist. The resultant shape is three dimensional but … Read more
The Marae TV journalist tells the origin story of her debut novel, a young adult book releasing this week. Patricia Grace wrote a story called “It used to be green once” and every year my Pākehā teacher would pull it out in English class and everyone would laugh at the poor Mowri family with 10 … Read more
Bernard Beckett is a brainy, elegant writer, best known for his young adult novels Genesis, August and Lullaby. Here, with a new book in the offing, he shares his rule for stacking up stories that work. Like most who dabble in writing, I’ve tried my hand at a few different formats: play scripts, screenplays, novels … Read more
Every story in Bug Week clacks and hums with the anger of women. Here, the author explains why. Content warning: this article references sexual assault and family violence. It seems like a bit of a self-indulgent exercise writing about the genesis of a book. Books are texts, separable from their authors and the biographical circumstances … Read more
An essay about leaving New Zealand, and finding it again via Janet Frame. A quick note from our books editor, Catherine Woulfe: Meg Mason grew up in Foxton and Palmerston North. She’s a journalist – she lives in Sydney, and writes for places like The New Yorker, Vogue and GQ – and she’s just released … Read more
One of our finest speculative fiction writers on how the Lord of the Rings fandom is damaging mana whenua. There are kākā on my porch. They are circling each other, fanning their beautiful green and red feathers. They’ve found the pāua shell my flatmate picked up on the beach last week. It is shiny, so … Read more
Christchurch writer Chris Stuart spent decades toggling between high-stakes overseas aid work and the strange safety of home. Out of that has emerged a crime novel: For Reasons of Their Own. I used to always tell people that when you work in war zones and disasters, you are only ever a brick in the wall … Read more
The scamp of New Zealand publishing is laid to rest, for now. In 2005 I wrote and released a book called On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her Young Lover. I gave myself the name Richard Meros. My real name is Murdoch. Some people think that sounds like a pseudonym, … Read more
Combatting climate change as a healthcare organisation involves more than simply reducing its carbon footprint, writes David Galler. It means seeing climate change and wellbeing as intertwined – and that what’s good for the environment is always good for health. This pandemic, as overwhelming as it is, will eventually pass. But before too long there … Read more
Tomorrow, Auckland writer Lil O’Brien releases one hell of a memoir: Not That I’d Kiss A Girl, the story of her coming out. People tell me that I can make anything gay. Sometimes they’re talking about physical things, like when I put on a plain white T-shirt then roll the sleeves over twice. But I … Read more
Chloe Lane’s novel The Swimmers is about euthanasia. On the cover is Nicola Farquhar’s painting Peachthief, part of a West Auckland exhibition winding up this week. “Do you want to keep this?” I asked. “No,” P said. “But it’s your special denim jacket,” I said, holding it up. I could see P through a long … Read more
Even in normal times, loneliness takes a terrible toll on society’s most vulnerable. Now with New Zealand under lockdown, we need to be even more mindful of the risks. These are disorienting times. The benchmark for what’s “normal” is shifting so rapidly it’s dizzying to remember what we were all doing just a few weeks … Read more
A new essay by Linda Burgess, author of the collection Somebody’s Wife and a stack of other sublime writing which you can read here. The handbag My mother often said that when Labour was in power there was never anything in the shops. Which goes part way to explaining why, whatever your Dad did for … Read more
Two scholars respond to our recent series on James K Baxter, and his wife, Jacquie Sturm. Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, senior adjunct fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Canterbury, writes: Jacquie Sturm: Te Whakatōhea, Taranaki (1927-2009). Te Tau Ihu o Te Waka Māori Tuhinga Pakimaero. He Reta ki te Maunga – a … Read more
John Summers is inspired by a dreamer who ended up living as a kind of Robinson Crusoe on a Cook Islands atoll ‘where there truly was no sound beyond the waves, the birds and whatever noise you made yourself’. Some of the happiest hours of my primary school education were those spent sitting on the mat, listening to … Read more
A new book by Tony McCaffrey deals with stage performances by people who have intellectual disabilities. John Lambie was an actor with Down Syndrome. He had had been part of the initial intake of children in 1965 into Hohepa Canterbury, a residential community in Christchurch for people with intellectual disabilities, run on the principles of Rudolf Steiner. In 2015, John … Read more
We conclude our week-long examination of the poet James K Baxter, and a new book of his letters, with an essay by the poet’s great-grandson Jack McDonald about his Nana, Baxter’s wife, the author and Māori leader Jacquie Sturm. “I was minding a four-year-old great-grandson, and we went down to the beach. We made a … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books revisits the great poet James K Baxter, on the occasion of a new book of letters. Today: CK Stead remembers Baxter, in this extract taken from his memoir in progress, South-East of Everywhere. Early in 1966 the Otago University Students’ Association invited me to Dunedin. I was to be there for … Read more
All week this week we revisit the great poet James K Baxter on the occasion of a new book of his letters. Today: a selection of the letters written in 1969, dealing with his experiences at the Jerusalem commune in Whanganui, and a crash-pad in Grafton in Auckland. To Robin Dudding, Christchurch Dear Bob, After the middle … Read more
All week this week we feature tangata whenua writing to mark Waitangi Day on Wednesday. Today: in this extract from a book of essays, Morgan Godfery wonders exactly what the point is of New Zealand bowing to a monarch “of a rain-soaked island off the north-western coast of the European mainland”. One of my earliest memories is, for … Read more
The full list, with mild critique, of the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist. O’Sullivan is a tough sonofabitch and the favourite to take the crown but he’s up against big hitters. Kidman has experience, stealth, and the popular vote. Jones goes in hard and doesn’t let up. Makereti has to be taken seriously and you can never … Read more
Cat Connor of the Writers Plot Bookshop in Upper Hutt backgrounds the birth and development of New Zealand’s only bookstore devoted exclusively to Kiwi authors. One day three years ago I grumbled about the lack of support for Kiwi authors and voiced this discontent at my writing group. We talked about how we’d never see our … Read more
An essay in praise of Amazon by Kirsty Wright, a Southland erotic romance author who is ‘killing it’ thanks to sales generated by the online empire. Sarah Forster’s story in The Spinoff, headlined “In Which Amazon Goes to War with NZ Bookstores”, suggested Amazon is the enemy, taking money away from local brick and mortar … Read more
Catherine Robertson’s latest novel What You Wish For has raced to the top of the best-seller charts – but what she really, really wants is to win a prize for being funny. There’s a writing prize I really want to win. When I say really, I mean reallyreallyreallyreally ad infinitum. It’s the Comedy Women in … Read more
Ashleigh Young talks about her feelings as she steps into her new role as poetry editor at The Spinoff Review of Books. Last week I read some poems from Gregory Kan’s poetry collection Under Glass (forthcoming in March with Auckland University Press). I tried to describe them to a friend, and said, “They’re amazing” in about … Read more
Spinoff writer Madeleine Chapman co-wrote basketball star Steven Adams’ autobiography. She tells how she wrote the book alongside an athlete she’s known since they were both teenagers. Warning: contains a lot of food. This post was originally published 24 July 2018. I knew of Steven Adams before I met him. A common situation now but … Read more
We asked former All Black great Bob Burgess to review a new book on his team-mate Keith Murdoch. But then we changed our mind, and asked his wife Linda Burgess to write whatever she wanted about rugby. This was originally published 8 August 2018. A rugby game lasts a whole day. Your father wears a … Read more