Two or More Islands
Diana Bridge
Stewart Island
Rakiura National Park
Neville Peat
Stewart Island is an increasingly popular holiday destination for eco-tourism and outdoor recreation, with many bush walks and a wealth of natural features to enjoy. Neville Peat introduces the attractions of the island – what to see and do, its walks and tramps, its national park, wildlife, history and magnificent scenery.
West Island
Five twentieth-century New Zealanders in Australia
Stephanie Johnson
Five notable twentieth-century New Zealanders who made their lives in Australia are the subject of this fascinating biographical investigation by award-winning author Stephanie Johnson.
Roland Wakelin, Dulcie Deamer, Jean Devanny, Douglas Stewart and Eric Baume had little in common in personality, proclivities and politics. Yet they all experienced fame and/or notoriety in the ‘West Island’ while being largely forgotten in their country of origin. They also occasionally crossed paths in the course of eventful lives.
As a writer with strong connections to both countries, Johnson draws on her own experiences of life on both sides of ‘the ditch’ in her reflections on the trans-Tasman diaspora and the subtle differences and cultural divide that set apart the two countries.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive
A memoir
Wendy Parkins
Every morning, so far, I’m alive is about what it’s like to live in a world where shaking a stranger’s hand, catching a taxi or touching a door handle are fraught with fear and dread.
This memoir charts the author’s breakdown after migrating from New Zealand to England: what begins as homesickness and career burn-out develops into depression, contamination phobia and OCD.
Increasingly alienated from all the things that previously gave her life meaning and purpose – family, work, nature, literature – the author is forced to confront a question once posed by the young Virginia Woolf: ‘How is one to live in such a world?’
Landfall 237 Autumn 2019
Edited by Emma Neale
Landfall is New Zealand's foremost and longest-running arts and literary journal. It showcases new fiction and poetry, as well as biographical and critical essays, and cultural commentary.
Landfall 237 features results and winning essay from the Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition 2019 along with featured artists Sharon Singer, Ngahuia Harrison, Peter Trevelyan, and many New Zealand writers and poets.
To the Occupant
Emma Neale
To the Occupant takes the everyday and transforms it into something fine and precious and enduring. With an unsparing attention, Emma Neale creates shape-shifting poems that confound prejudices and subvert expectations. Displaying verve and confidence, her poetry is filled with musicality and dynamic language, always observant to the world and its details.
This is an innovative and astounding collection from one of New Zealand’s leading writers of her generation.
The Braided River: Migration and the personal essay
Diane Comer
A migrant lives in the space between self and other. The personal essay expresses this sense of location – and dislocation – the way no other genre does.
The first book to examine migration through the lens of the personal essay, The Braided River presents migration as a lifelong experience that affects everything from language, home, work, family and friendship to finances, citizenship and social benefits. The Braided River explores contemporary migration to New Zealand through an examination of 200 personal essays written by 37 migrants from 20 different countries, spanning all ages and life stages.
Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920
Jared Davidson
Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920 reveals the remarkable stories of people caught in the web of wartime surveillance. Intimate and engaging, this dramatic narrative weaves together the personal and political, bringing to light the reality of wartime censorship.
In an age of growing state power, new forms of surveillance and control, and fragility of the right to privacy and freedom of opinion, Dead Letters is a startling reminder that we have been here before.
Past Caring? Women, work and emotion
Edited by Barbara Brookes, Jane McCabe and Angela Wanhalla
Are women past caring? Care is essential to social relationships and individual well-being. It is woven into New Zealand’s key social institutions, such as the family, and is also embedded in societal expectations around state provision of health and welfare. Care is so vital, in fact, that it is often taken for granted and goes unnoticed and unrewarded.
Historical and philosophical enquiry have largely ignored the issue of care, yet it raises profound questions about gender, justice and morality. The essays in this volume raise those questions directly – at the level of abstraction where prominent New Zealand women philosophers grappled with the political implications, and on the ground at the level of family relationships.
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The Moon in a Bowl of Water
Michael Harlow
Bound together by myth and music, Michael Harlow’s The Moon in a Bowl of Water is a stunning new collection from a poet in complete control of his craft. Harlow is the maestro of the prose poem. Here he presents a collection of small human journeys, with a strong emphasis on narrative. The work is consciously rooted in Greek mythology and in the idea of storytelling as a continuous river, flowing from the ancients to the present, telling one story on the surface, but carrying in its depths the glints of ancient archetypes, symbols and myths. Each poem is studded with associations that hark back millennia.
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Otago
150 years of New Zealand's First University
Alison Clarke
The University of Otago has always taken pride in its status as New Zealand’s first university. Alison Clarke has consulted and researched widely to produce a forthright and fascinating account.
This history is arranged thematically, looking at the university’s foundation and administration; the evolving student body; the staff; the changing academic structure and the development of research; the Christchurch and Wellington campuses and the university’s presence in Auckland and Invercargill; key support services – libraries, press, student health and counselling, disability services, Māori Centre and Pacific Islands Centre; the changing styles of teaching; the university’s built environment; and finally, the university’s place in the world – its relationship with the city of Dunedin, its interaction with mana whenua and its importance to New Zealand and to the Pacific.
Wanaka
Lake, Mountain, Adventure
Neville Peat
Neville Peat describes the scenic splendour of Wanaka and the myriad activities and attractions for visitors in this updated edition of a book that serves as both a guide to one of New Zealand’s tourism hotspots, and as a souvenir.
The book covers the history of the Wanaka area and its progress into a contemporary centre renowned for an exciting range of outdoor activities and regular events, including the internationally recognised Warbirds Over Wanaka air show. Further material offers a guide to local walking and cycling tracks, local flora and fauna, and Mt Aspiring National Park.
