Crime reporter Kelly Dennett is the winner of the inaugural Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with The Spinoff Award. There are two runners-up, both who have also won residencies at the Surrey Hotel in Auckland – in second place, Antony Millen of Taumaranui, who writes novels for young adults, with third place … Read more
In which Wellington writer Danyl McLauchlan approaches his latest novel Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley from five directions. He took the photos, too. Thing one: Tone I was about halfway through writing this book when a friend asked me what it was about. I thought for a while, then answered, “Sorry, but I can’t really put it into words.” He … Read more
In which we name the ten finalists of our amazing new writers residency award – and also announce a second and third-place prize of free accommodation with pizza. Ten finalists have been chosen in the inaugural Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with The Spinoff Award. Applications for the new and extremely groovesome … Read more
Marion McLeod reviews In Gratitude by Jenny Diski, which she began writing when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her given name was Jennifer Simmonds, which always makes me laugh. A name from Tunbridge Wells or Teddington. That’s what her mother wanted – a nice, well-behaved, middle-class daughter. The daughter didn’t oblige, though she did … Read more
The embargo for the shortlist of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children was lifted at 5am – and this story went live at 5.01am. Sarah Forster reveals the shortlisted authors and books, and makes her picks for who will win at the awards ceremony on August 8. Those who write children’s books do it, most … Read more
In which Dan Kelly – our man in New York – heads into Soho to see the world’s greatest writer speak at a bar. Meeting your heroes can be risky: expectation loves disappointment. But like everyone before me, I didn’t care. This was Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norwegian literary sensation and author of the critically acclaimed … Read more
A weekly feature at the Spinoff Review of Books: the best-selling books at the Auckland and Wellington stores of Unity Books. THE BEST–SELLER CHART FOR THE WEEK JUST ENDED: June 3 UNITY BOOKS AUCKLAND 1. A Little Life (Picador, $25) by Hanya Yanagihara Still at number one in its umpteenth week! It’s big, it’s harrowing, it’s good. … Read more
Wyoming Paul reviews The Vegetarian, the slim, erotic novel which has become the literary sensation of 2016 after it won this year’s Man Booker international prize for fiction. After a violent and disturbing nightmare, an ordinary Korean woman decides to stop eating meat. She empties the kitchen of fish, eggs, pork, and for the first … Read more
Sue Orr admires the latest work of the master: Owen Marshall’s new novel, Love As a Stranger. I’ve always been wary of thrillers. I don’t like the way they so brashly presume they’re going to thrill me. That gets my goat, as my mum would say. Their ardent determination to surprise feels fated to self-sabotage. … Read more
Philip Matthews reviews Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971 by Jonas Mekas Here is an eyewitness account of something almost happening. The year is 1965. “Nothing much really happens in the film, if we want action. Miss Sedgwick goes about her make-up business, she listens to rock ‘n’ roll music; she … Read more
In this excerpt from Migrant Journeys: New Zealand taxi drivers tell their stories, Cambodian taxi driver Vanna Seng tells his story – how he came to New Zealand as a refugee when he was 15, after growing up in the terror of the Khmer Rouge. I was seven or eight years old [when Pol Plot … Read more
A weekly feature at the Spinoff Review of Books: the best-selling books at the Auckland and Wellington stores of Unity Books. THE BEST–SELLER CHART FOR THE WEEK JUST ENDED: May 27 UNITY BOOKS AUCKLAND 1. A Little Life ($25) by Hanya Yanagihara The novel you have to read, apparently; it’s been the number one best-seller … Read more
Finlay Macdonald reviews The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Seymour Hersh About the worst thing anyone will say of Seymour Hersh’s journalism is that he’s only “one of America’s greatest investigative reporters”. But that’s the New York Times for you, always hedging. Others don’t hold back so much: “The most feared investigative reporter in … Read more
The Surrey Hotel and The Spinoff join forces to establish a new writer in residence award. Enter now! Auckland’s Surrey Hotel – named the Best Hotel in Auckland in the New Zealand Herald – is pleased to support a new writers residency award in association with The Spinoff. The winner of the Surrey Hotel Steve … Read more
Kiran Dass shares tea, biscuits and literary talk with Hanya Yanagihara. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize for her incendiary novel A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara appeared at the Auckland Writers Festival last week. While she was here, I sat down with her at the Langham Hotel, and we were served lemon and ginger iced tea and … Read more
The Spinoff got given $20,000 by Creative New Zealand. Whee! Creative New Zealand announced the recipients of its latest arts grant funding last Thursday. All up, 84 grants totaling $1,811,509 were shelled out. The full list is online; here’s an edited version, because it’s the Monday Extract. The happy pigs with their snout in the … Read more
Holly Walker reviews the working-class white New Zealand fuck-ups, suicides and predators in Tracey Slaughter’s amazing new story collection deleted scenes for lovers. “It is possible to say it,” says one of Tracey Slaughter’s narrators in deleted scenes for lovers, steeling herself to name the cancer that is eating her body from the inside. She … Read more
Elspeth Sandys reviews Barkskin, the enormously long and also deeply profound novel by Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx. Before Eleanor Catton wrote The Luminaries I would have said that the Americans were to blame for the new vogue for long – very long! – books. Three of Jonathan Franzen’s novels are all over 500 pages long. … Read more
Whena Owen reports on the slow gutting of Te Papa Press. Farewell afternoon teas are a very Wellington ritual where public servants gather around the nearly departed, politely chatting and nibbling at gluten-free cake. The team leader’s speech will first attempt a joke then list the many virtues of their subordinate who is finally handed vouchers and … Read more
Opinion: Andrew Paul Wood wishes a pox upon slam poetry, that “horrid practice” which is currently in vogue and features in the upcoming Auckland Writers Festival. (Read performance poet Penny Ashton disagreeing with him here.) “I can’t bear these accounts I read in The Times and elsewhere of these poetry slams, in which various young men and … Read more
A kind of Barry Crump of the sea, AJ Peach has written a ripping memoir of his fishing life in his self-published book Roughy: Fishing the Mid-Ocean Ridges. The following excerpt sees our hero hook up with his old mate Stu, stop off at a stripclub in Wellington, and sign onto a Ukrainian fishing vessel. … Read more
Guy Somerset reviews Goodnight and Good Riddance: How 35 Years of John Peel Helped Shape Modern Britain by David Cavanagh When I was a boy, culture was delivered on a Thursday by Mr Pavitt. Or was it Pavett? Perhaps even Pavit or Pavet? If you had a name like Pavitt/Pavett/Pavit/Pavet, you’d be used to people … Read more
One of New Zealand’s best and most illustrious book editors, Stephen Stratford (“I am a polite person, mostly”), vents about having to deal with writers and publishers. What I dread #1 When meeting someone new, the question I most dread is, “What do you do?” It is really hard to answer. As a freelancer, I do … Read more
Giovanni Tiso reviews Broken Vows, a biography of Tony Blair by Tom Bowers. There was that time Tony Blair dropped a jar full of honey in the kitchen, and got down on his knees to clean up the mess with a brush and pan. Or that other time when the bath was overflowing upstairs and … Read more
Margo White reviews Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill There is a scene in Alive, Alive Oh! in which Diana Athill recounts how she, aged 97 and with the help of two 94-year-old ladies, managed to plant the six rose bushes Athill had bought to brighten up the garden of … Read more
Steve Braunias shares a divan with British writer Andrew O’Hagan at the Wellington writers festival. London novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan was in Wellington last week as a guest at the New Zealand Writers Week, and people constantly mistook him for another guy. “Look,” said the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, as O’Hagan walked into the … Read more