Blog
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Book review: The South Island of New Zealand: From the Road
By Robin Morrison (Massey University Press, 2023) First published in 1981, The South Island of New Zealand: From the Road was the result of a road trip taken by the late photographer Robin Morrison and his family in 1979. While travelling through the South Island, Robin chose to take pictures of places and people, instead…
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Book review: BITER
by Claudia Jardine (Auckland University Press, 2022) Claudia Jardine is a bit of a polymath. She has an MA in classics from Victoria University of Wellington, is the reigning Christchurch Poetry Slam Champion, and is an independent musician. She is also very funny. BITER, her debut poetry collection, reflects all of the above. The book…
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Book review: Not Set in Stone
By Dave Vass (Potton & Burton, 2023) In Not Set in Stone, Dave Vass tells the story of a life spent in the mountains, and now spent without them. One of Aotearoa’s leading mountaineers, Dave broke his neck in 2015 while walking out from a climbing trip in Fiordland, resulting in incomplete tetraplegia. Much of…
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Food review: Timaru Roast, Invercargill
We are in the throes of myriad crises right now, from the cost of living to the climate emergency to the BTS hiatus. These are all important issues. But also, did you know there is a new roast shop in Invercargill!?! For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, a roast shop is a primarily…
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Book review: At the Point of Seeing
by Megan Kitching (Otago University Press, 2023) At the Point of Seeing is the debut collection from Megan Kitching, who was the inaugural recipient of the Elizabeth Brooke-Carr Emerging Writer Residency in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Megan holds a PhD in English Literature from London’s Queens Mary University, where she has said her interest was piqued by…
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Book review – Not Alone: Walking Te Araroa Trail through New Zealand
By Tim Voors (Bateman Books, 2023) Not Alone is Dutch long-distance hiker Tim Voors’ second book about, well, walking a very long way. It serves as a follow up of sorts to The Great Alone: Walking the Pacific Crest Trail, for which he tackled the 4265 kilometres from Mexico to Canada on foot. This time,…
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Book Review: Strong Words 3: The Best of the Landfall Essay Competition
Selected by Emma Neale and Lynley Edmeades (Otago University Press, 2023) Essays are on the up in Aotearoa. This has in part been fuelled by successes like when Wellington’s Ashleigh Young winning the 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize (worth $230,000!) for her essay collection Can You Tolerate This?. The annual Landfall Essay Competition, which has been running…
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All our favorite New Zealand Lord of the Rings filming locations listed
The Lord of the Rings trilogy really put Aotearoa New Zealand on the film-making map. It spawned both a thriving locally-based special effects industry in the form of the Oscar-winning Weta Workshop (in New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington), as a whole new tourism draw: New Zealand Lord of the Rings filming locations. According to…
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Music Review: Change, For a Fiver
Barry G Barry G is an Irish singer, songwriter and impressive strummer of strings who is a familiar figure on the Southern Lakes music scene. His first album, Change, For a Fiver, showcases everything his audiences love in his live performances to great effect. There’s his voice, which has an endlessly listenable Passenger vibe, except…