Edward Cullen became a vampire to survive the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Now a new Twilight novel looms and Laura Surynt, a New Zealander living in the UK, wants to live forever too. As I lay in bed this morning watching Instagram stories, Tayi Tibble told my reluctant little Capricorn heart that Caps are … Read more
Review copies of Tina Shaw’s pandemic novel Ephemera landed in letterboxes just as the country went into lockdown. Here, she reflects on this strange new reality. These new times have the uncanny feeling of fiction – of science fiction, or post-apocalyptic fiction. In other words, the unreal has become real. I keep thinking of Station … Read more
‘It seems like someone else’s dream of my past.’ For Emma Neale, the painting ‘Wanderlust’ by Dunedin artist Sharon Singer stirs memories of her childhood, and new understandings of guilt and forgiveness. There were gifts from my father when he came home from overseas trips. Love offerings; a bit like those a cat might bring … Read more
Wellington writer, illustrator and Katherine Mansfield obsessive Sarah Laing has a new book out tomorrow. Here, she tells its origin story. My first baby was really bad at breastfeeding – or else, as my mother and the Plunket nurse insinuated, I had the wrong shaped nipples. He couldn’t get the suction right and it would … Read more
Ruby Porter’s debut novel, Attraction, is a lucid, layered story of three young women on a road trip across the North Island. It’s one of the best books we’ve read this year. Here, Ruby writes about her grandmother – who is not like the grandmother in her book – and Levin, and how the two … Read more
The Monday Extract: Wellington writer John-Paul Powley pulls together Parihaka, imperialism, capitalism, and catered lunches at education conferences in a searching essay on Māori achievement. “This bird [the ruru] with a hundred eyes was venerated in Taranaki, where Te Whiti had chosen this symbol and the stalking Pakeha cat for an action song depicting events that … Read more