The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, $50) Toby Manhire: If someone’s self-isolating, what’s your recommendation, as … Read more
Summer reissue: Madeleine Chapman wrote a book and was asked to speak about it at a writers festival. The problem was, nobody wanted to listen. First published 17 May, 2019 No one came. Seriously, no one came. The first sign, a red flag drifting through my subconscious, was the modest attendance at the three person … Read more
In this bonus edition of Gone By Lunchtime, the prime minister talks to Toby Manhire at the Auckland Writers Festival Last weekend at the Auckland Writers Festival, Jacinda Ardern spoke with Spinoff editor Toby Manhire about the extraordinary election campaign of 2017, and the book it inspired, Stardust and Substance, edited by Stephen Levine for … Read more
Welcome back to Papercuts, our monthly books podcast hosted by Louisa Kasza, Jenna Todd and Kiran Dass. As always, you can email us at papercutspod@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @papercutspod and a big thanks to The Spinoff and the Mātātuhi Foundation for their support. To listen use the player below or download this … Read more
Right about now, Vincent O’Malley is delivering a mighty Michael King Memorial Lecture at the Auckland Writers Festival. In this startling extract from his new book, The New Zealand Wars Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, O’Malley explains how the decimation of Māori in Tūranga (Gisborne) “completely eclipsed” the country’s losses in Gallipoli. Actual fighting may have … Read more
Madeleine Chapman wrote a book and was asked to speak about it at a writers festival. The problem was, nobody wanted to listen. No one came. Seriously, no one came. The first sign, a red flag drifting through my subconscious, was the modest attendance at the three person 2pm panel. Three writers, all known, one … Read more
Sam Brooks has a transcendent experience at the part of the Auckland Writers Festival grown-ups never hear about: the school sessions. A few years ago I could’ve been mistaken for a teenager, especially given that I dress like a toddler recently given autonomy over their fashion. As I walked around the Aotea Centre, a space … Read more
Tatau: A History of Sāmoan Tattooing won the Illustrated Non-Fiction category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards last night. Convenor Douglas Lloyd Jenkins called it “a visual feast… a milestone in contemporary publishing… a book that will expand and enrich the knowledge of readers throughout Aotearoa, the Pacific and beyond”. Here, authors Sean Mallon … Read more
A saddle sore, a teal bridesmaid’s dress and the Ngāruawāhia High School hall: how Marilyn Waring became the National candidate for Raglan. An extract from her new memoir The Political Years. In 1974, it was my habit to go to the library at Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand’s capital, to read each morning’s newspaper. On … Read more
Ecologist Robert Vennell is a man mad on plants. His book The Meaning of Trees: The history and use of New Zealand’s native trees tells the stories of the forest giants – kauri, tōtara et al – and the kelp that throngs our beaches. He writes about the oddballs, the plants that are revered, and those used … Read more
All of the books up for the country’s shiniest literary gongs at the Auckland Writers Festival are boxed up in some publicist’s back room, just waiting to be shipped to YOU!! Every year the Auckland Writers Festival unfolds at the Aotea Centre, a glorious parallel universe where you get to sit in a comfy chair … Read more
As Wellington and Waikanae face a winter without two beloved libraries, Marion McLeod reviews The Library Book, a hymn to a library that burned. This is a book for Wellingtonians. I don’t usually adhere to the geographical school of reviewing but this book, sadly, is published at a perfect time for Wellington, for its librarians, … Read more
Playwright and The Spinoff’s culture editor Sam Brooks interviews Val Emmich, author of Dear Evan Hansen, about the life-changing process of adapting a smash Broadway musical into a book. Musicals and young adult novels have a few things in common, earnestness and accessibility being two of them, but the most prominent thing they share is … Read more
Lily Woodhouse is a pseudonym for Stephanie Johnson, who has won the Montana Book Award, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship and the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award; hell, she co-founded the Auckland Writers Festival. But could she get her latest novel published? Yeah, nah. So-called ‘women’s fiction’ is rife with stories of women who left, who … Read more
Welcome back to Papercuts, our monthly books podcast hosted by Louisa Kasza, Jenna Todd and Kiran Dass. In this episode we have a special guest! Anne O’Brien, director of the Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi O Tāmaki joins us to discuss what punters can expect at New Zealand’s largest annual festival of ideas and literature. We … Read more
The country’s biggest literary festival, Waituhi O Tāmaki, has just launched its programme, and it’s another ripsnorting lineup. Check out the whole thing here. Below, some of the events that are high on our list. Shayne Carter chatting with John Campbell The drool will be dripping from the rafters at the very idea of the snarling … Read more
An essay by Sarah Forster from Booksellers New Zealand about the threat that the Amazon-owned Book Depository poses to bookstores – and, ultimately, readers. Every time I tell somebody that Amazon owns Book Depository, they’re surprised, astonished, aghast. So let’s put that on the record. Amazon purchased Book Depository in 2011. And they’re here to … Read more
Kiran, Jenna and Louisa bunker down on level 5 of the Aotea Centre to record on-the-ground reactions from three days at the Auckland Writers Festival. In this episode, we talk about the Ockhams, the Festival Gala, Jenny Zhang, Ella Yelich O’Connor & Durga Chew-Bowse, Karl Ove Knausgård and more. Featuring special guests Toby Manhire and … Read more
Madeleine Chapman asks, “Has there ever been a good question asked by an audience member at a literary festival?” Her experience at the Auckland Writers Festival suggests the answer is no, uh-uh, never. The first question I heard at the Auckland Writers Festival was a woman asking Washington Post journalist Amy Goldstein why, in her … Read more
Amy Goldstein wanted to know what happened to the ordinary people impacted by the GFC. Ahead of her Auckland Writers Festival appearance, chaired by Toby Manhire, she tells Duncan Greive about the extraordinary book she wrote about the fallout after GM shut its oldest manufacturing plant. By June of 2008 the global financial crisis had been … Read more
Welcome back to Papercuts, our new books podcast hosted by Louisa Kasza, Jenna Todd and Kiran Dass. In this episode, we talk about why the new offshore GST changes are good for local bookstores, Louisa breaks down her latest Spinoff Books review, we celebrate 50 years of the NZ Book Awards with our recommendations of past … Read more
Exclusive: announcing the imminent arrival of hirsute herring-eating huge Norwegian literary superstar Karl Ove Knausgård. Karl Ove Knausgård – widely regarded as the world’s greatest living writer – will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival in May. The announcement is a major coup for the AWF, and the event will surely sell out, pretty fucking quickly. Knausgård, … Read more
An essay by Sam Gaskin – with GIFs! – about his old friend and now superstar author Jenny Zhang. In the summer of 2016 Jenny Zhang and I went to Coney Island for a swim. It was overcast, too windy to even face the ocean, but we stripped down to our swimsuits anyway. She tried … Read more
We conclude our week-long series of encounters with guests due to appear at the Auckland Writers Festival as Rachael King interviews the fairly fucken fantastic Ivan Coyote. Last year, Ivan Coyote stood on stage in front of a sell-out crowd at the WORD Christchurch festival and delivered gut-punching stories of love, gender, body scars, family quirks … Read more
The best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival continues right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to long, intelligent encounters with guest writers. Today: Charlotte Graham talks with Susan Faludi, author of the classic 1991 book Backlash. Read more Auckland Writers Festival coverage from the Spinoff here The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan … Read more
The very best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival – the most expansive, the most intelligent – is right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to encounters with guest writers. Today: Simon Wilson talks with Jay Rayner, a man who can demolish the reputation of the poshest restaurant with a single … Read more
The best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival continues right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to long, intelligent encounters with guest writers. Today: Holly Walker talks with Chris Kraus, an American writer who worked for newspapers in Wellington before creating the belated smash-hit feminist novel, I Love Dick. Read more Auckland Writers … Read more
The very best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival – the most expansive, the most intelligent – is right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to encounters with guest writers. Today: Hera Lindsay Bird talks with George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo, the stand-out novel of 2017. Read more … Read more
The good and the great of world literature are about to descend as guest speakers at the 2017 Auckland Writers Festival. Will anyone go off the rails? CK Stead (followed by Steve Braunias, in a postscript) recall writers behaving badly onstage. In my experience problems at readings usually involve booze. I remember Jim Baxter being carried to … Read more