The fifth – and final – instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here, part two here, part three here and part four here. April 12, 2:39am I’m back from the dead. The thought struck me today with almost a physical force when I … Read more
“Good sex is feminist sex,” claims Laura Borrowdale, editor of the Aotearotica journal of erotic writing. Reading erotica is one of the fastest ways to see the breadth of humanity and the Aotearotica slush pile holds it all. I can say that with authority, because, as editor, I sit at my kitchen table and read every piece … Read more
An excerpt from Pip Desmond’s best-selling memoir about her mother’s descent into dementia. I read about a hairdresser who had three customers pass away under the hairdryer; she took it as a compliment that they’d felt relaxed enough to do so. That could have been Mum. She had been going to David’s hair salon in Wadestown once … Read more
Jacinda Ardern’s care package for the new royal baby includes 15 kids books chosen by author Kate De Goldi. She writes about her selection. I have a bunch of go-to titles for new babies – black and white board books for first reads, nursery rhyme collections for ever, favourites by New Zealand writers and artists for … Read more
Adi Leason tells the full, unlikely story of the Catholic activists who invaded the government’s surveillance station at Waihopi, and deflated its famous dome. It was after 5pm when Manu and I finally arrived in Picton. Sam and Father Peter were waiting for us in a rental car. We joked around about a last supper and … Read more
Veteran Herald sports reporter Wynne Gray has written a new book about what happens to rugby players when they hang up their boots. In this excerpt, Mark “Bull” Allen – the All Blacks prop who led the Hurricanes in the Super 12 in 1996, and played 110 games for Taranaki – tells his story. The end came … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books celebrates the rich, fascinating history of New Zealand literature. Today: a photo essay on the graves of famous New Zealand writers. Hone Tuwhare immortalised the tangi of James K Baxter at Jerusalem on October 25, 1972, in his famous poem “Heemi”. It’s a narrative of driving overnight from his … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books celebrates the rich, fascinating history of New Zealand literature. Today: Paula Green remembers Gloria Rawlinson, Auckland’s ‘famous young poet’ of the 1930s. Postscript by Steve Braunias. Gloria Rawlinson seemed old and frail in her wheelchair when I met her in the early 1990s. I was working at Auckland’s Art Gallery Bookshop, and … Read more
An essay by Philip Matthews in response to the publication of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize lecture. I keep hearing about allegedly weird Joaquin Phoenix interviews that don’t really seem that weird at all. Internet news alerts say we need to talk about that Joaquin Phoenix interview or they might put out some quick Buzzfeed summary … Read more
The fourth instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here, part two here and part three here. February 20 I’m the luckiest person on earth. I always feel this when I walk into our Napier house. It’s really where Douglas and I are truly … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw writes about the forces behind her new novel: “Trump, Putin, Kim Jong-un. The posturing. The bizarre hairstyles, the violence and cruelty. The narcissism…” May 2016, London We were staying in a small flat with a roof terrace. I typed sitting outside at a picnic table. I’d written pieces about Karl Ove Knausgaard … Read more
Anthony McCarten is nominated for Oscars and wins Baftas for the films he writes, such as The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour. The New Plymouth-raised writer is also a novelist with a devoted following in Germany. He reports from his latest tour. My book tour is nearing its end. The book I am touring has lost … Read more
We continue our occasional – and occasionally insanely depressing – series which investigates whether literature exists in the provinces. Becky Manawatu looks for signs of bookish life in Westport. The Buller Rural Education Activities Programme Hall on Henley Street in Westport smells like a church and is decked out with those wooden school chairs that force you … Read more
An extract from a fascinating new book by ex-Hokitika Guardian journalist Cheryl Riley, who tells the stories of remarkable men and women of Westland. Dorothy Fletcher was born in 1927, the youngest of four children to Alec and Isabella Graham, part-owners of the Franz Josef Hotel. Her mother did not keep good health after Dorothy … Read more
We continue our occasional series which investigates whether any literary activity exists in the provinces. David Hill reports from his “entombment” in Taranaki. A lot of authors born in Taranaki have left the province on a permanent basis, to become successful or dead. The successful ones are Anthony McCarten and Stuart Hoar from New Plymouth; Dinah Hawken, Gaelyn … Read more
Brendaniel Weir backgrounds his novel of a gay affair between Pākehā and Māori lovers. My first love was a Māori man. Let’s call him Wiremu. I was 16. He was several years older than me and a whole world more experienced. I can hear the knee-jerk reaction of people reaching for the paedophile/abuser label but … Read more
In 1879, the Whakatane meeting house Mataatua was taken apart and put on a ship bound for Australia, then England: “And so began the wanderings of New Zealand’s most-travelled wharenui…” Seeing Mataatua today, one is struck by its beauty. It is easy to imagine a government official being similarly struck in times past, and thinking … Read more
The Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias reports from the weekend’s events at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Wellington! O city of the institutionalised Māori greeting and the office training day, its steep, high banks pinned with yellow gorse flowers, the sign in Eastbourne that reads in a sing-song rhythm LITTLE BLUE … Read more
Essayist Nadine Anne Hura goes looking for one ancestor’s story, and asks what really lies underneath our monuments to war. Small towns have big stories. I go around reading the plaques on top of rocks and plinths, memorials to the chosen, trying to decipher the story beneath the story. As I read, I almost feel … Read more
We reveal the shortlist of this year’s national book awards. Magazine writer Diana Wichtel, Wellington novelist Brannavan Gnanalingam and some other authors have made it onto the shortlist of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Spinoff Review of Books names these two authors straight off the bat and ahead of everyone else because we rate their … Read more
Spinoff literary editor Steve Braunias previews two big events – tomorrow’s announcement of the Ockham national book awards shortlist, and this weekend’s Writers and Readers programme at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Most weeks go by in the New Zealand literary scene without comment, without incident, without joy and triumph and alcoholic depravity. But … Read more
Craig Marriner was a nobody who won the 2002 book of the year award with his first novel Stonedogs, a raw, rough, street-wise tale of bogan life. His second novel sank without trace – and so did Marriner, who disappeared. He returns after a long absence with an evocation of life and literature in his … Read more
For 20 years, the second Māori King, Tāwhiao, governed Rohe Pōtae (the King Country) as an independent state. Tāwhiao also sailed to London in an attempt to see the Queen; the mission is described in this extract from a new study of that 20-year reign. Going to London to see the Queen was a rare … Read more
Legendary playwright Roger Hall pays tribute to the great satirist John Clarke, whose posthumous book Tinkering has been a runaway best-seller this summer. When my 1998 memoir Bums on Seats was due to published, I had the nerve to ask John Clarke if he would write an introduction. He did so, offering a lengthy, elaborate … Read more
The third instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here and part two here. January 16, 3:27am I set off on my pilgrimage to the oncology clinic in the spirit of my first day at school, with associated nerves and too much baggage … Read more
Spinoff literary editor Steve Braunias surveys the current state of payments for book reviewing in New Zealand. As literary editor of the Spinoff Review of Books, I think about important new books, and about brilliant, thoughtful reviewers, but mostly I think about money. The budget is tight. I crouch over the pennies like a miser, … Read more
A dramatic excerpt from a new memoir by Dave Greenberg from the Westpac rescue helicopter service. Includes kicker. I was off flying duty but at work catching up on paperwork when around lunchtime the helicopter was called out for an urgent transfer of a patient. About 35 minutes later, ambulance control called asking if our backup … Read more
Dunedin journalist Helen Speirs investigates a controversy swirling around Robbie Burns. Robert “Robbie” Burns, Scotland’s national poet, feted worldwide, author of “Auld Lang Syne”, commemorated in Dunedin with a handsome statue overlooking the Octagon, one of the immortals of literature – and, now, accused as a “sex pest”, a rapist, “Weinsteinian”. Scottish poet Liz Lochhead has unleashed a storm … Read more
The high priest of New Zealand non-fiction, Martin Edmond, reveals the curious genesis of his latest book. One day in the summer of 2013 I received a letter from James McNeish. He said he had a proposition to put to me – but that I would have to go to Wellington to find out what … Read more