Steve Braunias recommends the best of the 2016 Pulitzers. The 2016 Pulitzer Prizes – recognising the best journalism in America, and nominating some of the best books in the the world – were announced earlier today. You ought to have a read of some of these things. They are, as judges didn’t say, fucking fantastic. … Read more
As a kind of prequel to Tim Murphy’s excellent court transcript story on the Spinoff yesterday, Steve Braunias exhumes a previously unpublished 2011 column on his own c***-related tribulations. It was originally written for Metro magazine, but editor Simon Wilson refused to publish it. Last Christmas [2010] I landed myself in another fine mess when I pressed SEND. Claire … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews Some Rain Must Fall: My Struggle, Volume 5 by Karl Ove Knausgaard There was no plot, I wanted to entwine the internal with the external, the neural pathways in the brain with the fishing smacks in the harbour… – Karl Ove Knausgaard If you’ve ploughed through Volumes One to Four of Karl Ove … Read more
One of New Zealand’s best and most illustrious book editors, Stephen Stratford (“I am a polite person, mostly”), vents about having to deal with writers and publishers. What I dread #1 When meeting someone new, the question I most dread is, “What do you do?” It is really hard to answer. As a freelancer, I do … Read more
As editor of the superb new collection of essays in Dispatches from Continent Seven: An anthology of Antarctic science, Rebecca Priestley has chosen wisely and wittily. Her book includes a frightening vision of natural disaster by Kathryn Smith, who examines how a rapidly warming ocean has encouraged the invasion of the complete bastards of the … Read more
Marion McLeod reviews Before the War by Fay Weldon. I threw away all my Fay Weldons last year. Well, I didn’t actually throw them. I piled them into a rusting supermarket trolley and pushed them across the road to Arty Bees. All of them – about two dozen novels (mostly hardback), a few collections of … Read more
An excerpt from Colin Hogg’s sweet, elegiac book Going South, about going on a roadtrip with his friend, the journalist Gordon (“Gordie”) McBride. The two first met at the Southland Times in Invercargill. Hogg takes up the story in chapter one… Shortly after turning 21, I packed all my records in my car and moved … Read more
A top-level inquiry by an anthropologist (a bookseller, actually) into gender buying habits. The book world, like the world-world, shows sad signs of gender bias. To work in a bookshop is to become an anthropologist of sorts, specialising in the genus Biblio Lector (or book reader/buyer, for those who are not fluent in the anthropologists’ … Read more
A personal essay by Maria McMillan on the monopoly of Phantom Billstickers. “…if they were all putting up their own posters it would be mayhem.” RNZ, November 30, 2015. “We’ve been putting the New Zealand voice out there for some time.” NZ Book Awards website, March 21, 2016. Quotes from Jim Wilson, founder of Phantom … Read more
An essay by long-time bad dude Iain Sharp on the state of book reviewing in New Zealand – and the preponderance of witless fucking “round-ups.” When I met the poet Lauris Edmond for the first time in 1990, she peered hard at me and announced with her trademark directness, “In person you seem quite gentlemanly, … Read more
As the Black Caps make a winning start to the T20 World Cup, Julia Hollingsworth remembers the time she lost big in a meeting with Dan Vettori. A year ago, I met cricketing legend and part-time heartthrob Daniel Vettori. It was the height of Cricket World Cup fever. The weather was unseasonably hot, and everyone was suddenly a … Read more
An extract from From the Podium, a collection of tales from orchestras around the world by former Auckland Symphony Orchestra conductor, Gary Daverne. I hate outdoor concerts and avoid them if possible. Lighting can be hopelessly inadequate. Engineers seem to always want to light from the front, so the audience can see the players, but … Read more
Sean Plunket’s “hua” diatribe was symptomatic of widespread silencing of dissent. But the Booker-winning novelist’s exhortation to “eloquence, imagination, and reasoned debate” shows the debate isn’t over yet, writes Andrew Dean in this extract from The Interregnum: Rethinking New Zealand Giveaway: The Spinoff has two copies of The Interregnum to give away, courtesey of Bridget … Read more
Steve Braunias shares a divan with British writer Andrew O’Hagan at the Wellington writers festival. London novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan was in Wellington last week as a guest at the New Zealand Writers Week, and people constantly mistook him for another guy. “Look,” said the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, as O’Hagan walked into the … Read more
Taika Waititi’s new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople opens on March 31. It’s a good-natured romp based on a novel by Barry Crump, who created an enduring myth of himself as a good keen Kiwi bushman. The reality was different. London-based poet Fleur Adcock offers a rare memoir about her brief marriage to “Crumpy”. When I’m … Read more
Sarah Forster re-reads a classic not just of children’s literature, but of all writing – the four Faraway books by workaholic and genius Enid Blyton. Even now, nearly 50 years after her death, no other writer can bring the world of everyday magic alive as well as Enid Blyton. I recently read Blyton’s great series The … Read more
Steve Braunias has an amazing idea that just might revolutionise sales of New Zealand books. William Gibson – “author of Neuromancer, etc”, as he languidly describes himself on his Twitter account – added to his collection of over 60,000 tweets yesterday when he wrote Funny! But hang on. Wait. That’s actually genius. The … Read more
In which philosopher Raymond Bradley ponders whether any part of us survives in any meaningful way when we’re dead. What happens to us when we die? Is survival of our bodily deaths a real possibility? Ask yourself, first, how you conceive of survival. What would it be like for you yourself to survive your bodily death? … Read more
Music journalism legend Murray Cammick – Murray the Cam! – served as both publisher and editor of Rip It Up, but few events in his long career were as strange as the time he attended the launch of a Herbs album in Ruatōria, right in the middle of the Rasta uprising…. I was publisher of … Read more
Mark Jennings led 3 News for over a quarter of a century. Today it was announced he is stepping down. David Farrier, one of countless journalists to have worked and learned under him, pays tribute to a New Zealand journalism legend. Oh God, it was just awful. I was sitting in Mark Jennings’ office. It … Read more
A personal essay by Talia Marshall (Rangitane ki Wairau, Ngati Kuia) in response to Ngati Dread by Angus Gillies, a journalist who investigated the killings, arsons, and various assorted apocalyptic madness during the Rasta reign of terror in Ruatoria: “A book about stoners you should never read stoned.” Ruatōria. Ruatōrea, a place or an idea, a Valhalla … Read more
One of the most remarkable books ever written about crime, race, religious voodoo, and the New Zealand way of life and death is the Ngati Dread trilogy by journalist Angus Gillies. He self-published these three very strange and quite epic accounts of a five-year period (1985-1990) when there was a kind of Maori Rasta uprising … Read more
Nelson journalist Charles Anderson reviews 438 Days, by John Franklin, a modern classic of narrative journalism. The forever temptation for a journalist is to make it absolutely explicit in their story that he or she has engaged in actual journalism. These days, some readers might be confused as to what ‘actual journalism’, actually means. To … Read more
An extract from Boundaries, a collection of essays and verse by the holy philosopher king of Central Otago, Brian Turner. What locals call Black’s Hill is a steep climb on the main road which takes you up from Ophir in the Manuherikia Valley and down into Poolburn in the Ida Valley. It’s about four kilometres to … Read more
Days before the five year anniversary of the destructive 6.3 earthquake, Christchurch has been struck by another tremor, wreaking damage far beyond a few broken mugs. Valentine’s Day started so well. I was watching Sunderland’s win over Manchester United*, with lovingly hand-crafted cinnamon brioche that my partner had made for me. Now, I’m sitting on … Read more
Olwyn Stewart pens a farewell to friend, poet and playwright David Lyndon Brown, who passed away late last year. My friendship with David Lyndon Brown began sometime in the very early nineties, at Poetry Live in the Shakespeare Tavern. One night he asked me to read a poem of his to the audience, whether out of … Read more
Peter Wells, the director of Samesame but different, the two-day celebration of NZ’s queer writers, on the profound impact of two classic novels. My brother was older than me by two years. He was also gay. He was ahead of me in this, and his adventures both frightened me and lured me forward. Why frighten? Because … Read more
First Lady tells the story of Liz Roberts, the first New Zealander to undergo full sex-change surgery. Alison writes, ‘This chapter is a big contrast to the glamorous, gossipy parts of Liz’s story that took place in 1960s London, and the Australia theatre scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Liz had been in prison before, albeit a … Read more
Ian Wishart’s new book Elementary went on sale last week, promptly got pulled from bookstores scared off by a threat of legal action, then was put back on the shelves. The following excerpt makes it clear that Wishart believes people have been duped into thinking Scott Watson is innocent of the murders of Ben Smart … Read more