An excerpt from the new book of selected writing by Wellington journalist David Cohen. To the best of my knowledge I am the only journalist in New Zealand to have had his own printed words performed by Bono. It happened in front of 40,000 fans at the U2 concert at Wellington’s Athletic Park, on November … Read more
Patched author Jarrod Gilbert reports from the Whanganui Literary Festival held on the weekend. Rachael King and I had a drink at Christchurch airport and had another when we arrived at the Whanganui Writers Festival. In 2013, Whiti Ihimaera called it the best regional writers festival around. I drank to that too. Nicky Hager kicked things off … Read more
An essay by author Graeme Lay on how he came to write his best-selling trilogy of novels about Captain James Cook. I grew up beside the Taranaki coast, first in Oakura, where I started school, then Opunake, so the Tasman Sea with its moody beauty and power was always in sight. It enthralled me. Unsurprisingly, … Read more
Alongside David Slack, who always has a cackle on his lips, I appeared as guest speaker at a session on satirical writing at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in May, and it’s possible that I came across as bored, hostile, and baffled, but only at the beginning and the end. It was chaired by … Read more
Today we turn one, and debut a new iteration of The Spinoff, a little TV website which has lately been nursing big dreams. We relaunch today with five new categories and eight new staff to help run them. It’s been a wild few months: first figuring out what exactly to do, then how we’d fund … Read more
An essay by New Zealand’s best social realist novelist in response to the incredible My Struggle series. This really happened. One evening, when I was standing with my siblings at a party, a woman approached who was familiar and yet unknown. We all had the same split-second reaction: who is this stranger we know so well? … Read more