In her second column for The Spinoff, activist Anjum Rahman recounts her experience at a recent media event as a way of examining what’s at stake in the free speech debate. To receive an invitation to the renowned Hamilton Press Club lunch is quite a thing, given that many media personalities and prominent community members … Read more
Steve Braunias farewells Peter Wells. But really I hardly knew him. “He was a noble man,” said Suzanne Blumhardt, his eldest surviving cousin, at the funeral for author Peter Northe Wells, 1950-2019, at St Matthew-in-the-City in downtown Auckland yesterday morning; one of his closest friends, novelist Stephanie Johnson, said: “He was a born writer and … Read more
An excerpt from David Cohen’s Book of Cohen, featuring Steve Braunias and musings on erotic salvation. “Just listen to that,” Steve Braunias says to me. It’s 1987 and we’re having lunch at the Cricketer’s Arms, a Wellington pub. Steve, a fellow music writer, rarely looks so good at this time in the day — or … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews the new autobiography by Roger Daltrey, singer with one of the best and worst groups of all times, The Who. The Who! Godawful mostly, although not always. All those unlistenable rock operas and what-not. Tommy. Jesus. But even that fruity melodrama about a deaf, dumb and blind kid who sure did well … Read more
Steve Braunias heads out to New Lynn to ponder two new books on His Holiness of the Church of Enduring Beatlemania, John Lennon. There is a new, beautifully produced and monumentally pompous book about John Lennon, Imagine John Yoko, and the best and most impressive place to inspect this holy relic in Auckland, in New … Read more
Three writers pocketed $60,000 last night at the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement. Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias was there, apparently. O 60 large! O three prizes of 60 large, handed out last night to the three esteemed winners of the 2018 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement, at the prime … Read more
Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias reports from the weekend’s Going West literary festival in Titirangi. With bonus podcast! Dear old Going West! It’s the neighbourly writers festival. It’s the one in the gentle wops of Titirangi, in a memorial hall, rows of hard seats just like at school assembly, miles from anywhere – well, a … Read more
Hamilton Press Club life president Steve Braunias reveals the next guest speaker at the most glamorous social event in New Zealand journalism held in Hamilton. Dr Vincent O’Malley is campaigning to get the New Zealand Wars taught in New Zealand schools. The Hamilton Press Club stands with O’Malley. He will address the subject as our … Read more
Apply now for the 2018 writers residency award at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland. Applications are open RIGHT NOW BRO for the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency In Association With The Spinoff Award. New Zealand literature’s coolest writing residency offers cash, accommodation, and pizza. The singularly appealing Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn … 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
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
Calling all New Zealand writers! Apply now for the writers residency at the Surrey Hotel in Auckland. New Zealand literature’s coolest writing residency is up and running again. The fabulous Surrey Hotel – named the Best Hotel in Auckland by a well-known writer in the New Zealand Herald – has once again agreed to offer a writers … Read more
Millie Lovelock, who wrote her MA thesis on One Direction, answers Harry Styles’ critics. When Steve Braunias wrote that ‘Sign of the Times’ would be the end of Harry Styles’ career he had no idea what he was talking about. When he wrote that Styles had fallen into the trap of wanting to be taken … 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
The latest book by Steve Braunias is based on his Herald series about eating everything on sight on Lincoln Rd. In this excerpt from the prologue, he goes behind the scenes to reveal his desperate campaign to get it published. One day destiny came calling, and I picked up. For years I had been travelling along Lincoln Rd and wondering … Read more
All week this week we look at the life and writing of Greymouth novelist and poet Peter Hooper (1919-91). Today: a West Coast memoir by Steve Braunias. I was only passing through the West Coast, lived in Greymouth for not much more than a year, packed a picnic lunch and a copy of the newly … Read more
All week this week we look at the life and writing of Peter Hooper (1919-91), a Greymouth author who won the national book award in 1986 for a profound, exciting novel set on the West Coast after an apocalypse. He’s now a largely forgotten name in New Zealand letters, but a new biography provides a vivid reminder … Read more
Don Henley from the Eagles played a gig at the Vector Arena in Auckland on Thursday night. Steve Braunias was there, and he reviewed it in a single paragraph tapped out on a bus trip today. As soon as Don Henley started playing Hotel California in the encore of his show on Thursday night at … Read more
Elizabeth Heritage drags her feet through Zadie Smith’s latest novel, with its constant moralising about racism, sexism, class divides, feminism, religious fundamentalism, poverty etc etc etc. A cartoon in The Guardian last year suggested promotional stickers to put on novels. One of them read “By the author of a much better, more famous novel” and another “A bit like … Read more
In late August we ran a piece by Joan Druett on her new biography of 19th century sea captain William “Bully” Hayes, who roamed the Pacific and New Zealand. Michael Field was among those who were concerned that it failed to properly address Hayes’s involvement in “blackbirding”; we asked him to write an essay in response to the … Read more
Ahead of the Ockham national book awards in May, Graeme Lay shuddered to recall the time the award for best novel went to a bogan – and Steve Braunias barges his way in at the end of the story, and adds a highly unusual postscript. Originally posted May 9, 2016 Book awards are wonderful. They’re … 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
Who are the most powerful figures in the new generation of New Zealand literature? The most innovative, the most awarded, the most industrious? A panel of young experts exchanged their views over Snapchat and things like that until they agreed on the top 10. Originally posted October 31, 2016 1 Hera Lindsay Bird But not … Read more
Steve Braunias writes about Lucky, the unlucky dog of Mercer, in a new anthology of writing about dogs – dogs as pets, dogs as farm animals, dogs as meals, and other kinds of mutts. The graveyard was across the road from the school, and over the fence from a three-bedroom house on the edge of … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: September 30 AUCKLAND STORE 1 The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (Viking, $38) by John le Carré By all means take note of a curious tale in the Guardian by Le Carre’s biographer, who was greatly puzzled at his subject bringing out a … Read more
To mark the publication of a stunning collection of black and white photographs taken of a West Coast ghost town, Steve Braunias posts a Sunday Star-Times column he wrote about the place in June 2006. The old always seem to be up and about early, so I phoned Bill Gidley, 88, at his home in … Read more
Sunday Star-Times sleuth Kelly Dennett writes about the true crime book she’s very nearly completed as winner of the 2016 The Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with the Spinoff Award. Her prize was $500, pizza vouchers, a free roast meal – and a week’s accommodation at the luxurious and intellectually stimulating Surrey Hotel. In … Read more
Steve Braunias leads a special Spinoff investigation into fresh claims that 1971 was the greatest year in music ever. David Hepworth makes the fairly audacious but sustained and kind of also really persuasive argument in his new book 1971: Never A Dull Moment that 1971 was the greatest year in the history of popular music. … Read more
The use of the word “outlier” has been condemned, and continued use will result in stiff penalties. When did the word “outlier” become a thing, and why? It’s such a lame word. But it’s enjoying a tremendous vogue, and it must be stopped. It’s one of those words that make writers look smart. It looks … Read more