The Women’s Bookshop has been on Ponsonby Road longer than almost any other shop. This year, it turns 30. We talked to owner Carole Beu about the bookshop and its upcoming birthday party. Since 1999, the Women’s Bookshop been in its same, central spot in Ponsonby. Around it, restaurants, art studios and boutiques rise and … Read more
Marian Keyes is a stone-cold legend: terrifically funny and emotionally intelligent, and never afraid of the dark. She deserves all the prizes. In lieu of that, here’s a heartfelt piece by Scarlett Cayford, who grew up steeped in Keyes’ stories and sensibilities. My first encounter with Marian Keyes was in a bedroom in Devonport in … Read more
Women are told that their artistic life ends when motherhood starts. But Anna Knox knows that isn’t the case. I was living in Saudi, trying to finish a novel I had started on the UEA (University of East Anglia) Creative Writing programme when I first learned I was pregnant. My partner and I had been … Read more
Petition for superfreak Scarlett Cayford to judge the Women’s Prize for Fiction next year: she read her way through the entire 2019 longlist, for fun. Here are her reckons on the top six. Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which has been subject to unremitting praise, didn’t make the cut while Anna Burns’ Booker Prize-winning Milkman scored … Read more
The always hilarious and brilliant Leah McFall, who releases her new book of selected columns this week, pays her respects to five of the most hilarious and brilliant women writers of all time – Jane Austen, Nancy Mitford, Sue Townsend, Erma Bombeck, and Nora Ephron. If humour writing is a craft, then I’m apprenticed to five dead women. … Read more
The rise in feminist writing is long overdue and will only grow, writes Claire Murdoch for RNZ. A year ago today I stood around our local school playground watching other New Zealanders going in and out of the hall there, quietly placing their votes in an election that would turn out to have the kind … Read more
An international survey shows book sections publish many more male critics than female – and that they review many more books written by men than women. Spinoff books editor Steve Braunias (a man) looks at the state of play in New Zealand. A landmark survey has revealed that more women than men review books at … Read more