Show Notes
In February this year at The Open Book in Tāmaki Makaurau, i got to speak with Jordy Rosenberg about his new book Night Night Fawn. It was a really hot, sunny day and the event was held outside in the bookshop's garden. You might be able to hear some of summer noises in the background of this recording.
Anyone who has come into my orbit over the last few years has probably had a copy of Jordy's first novel Confessions of the Fox thrust into there arms. This book is a marvel. The opportunities it opens for changing the way we think about historical fiction are immense. It remains one of my favourite novels.
To say i was anticipating Night Night Fawn would be a massive understatement. i was thrilled to be able to read it over summer before this event. There is something incredibly vigorous and dynamic about this book. Yet again Jordy's work opens up the space queer and trans writing can take up with the force of craft itself. This book pushes the boundaries of politeness and the fictional performance as we know it. It's an astoundingly good book whose narrator's spite and venom in Jordy's hands is transformed into a uncomfortable but real joy and a strange liberation.
Action: The Sameer Project
The Sameer Project on Instagram
Food & Water Project on Chuffed
Summary of Campaigns (PDF)
The Sameer Project is a rapid-response initiative that is facilitating the sourcing and distribution of aid to displaced families all over the Gaza Strip. Started by 3 Palestinians living in diaspora and supported by ground teams in Gaza. We provide support in the form of shelter, medication and treatment, food, water, diapers, formula, and more. Our ethos is to promote resilience, maintain dignity, and providing agency for the families we serve. We are proactive and adaptable based on priority needs at any given time, implementing urgent and emergency response as needed.
What's the need?There are 1.9 million internally displaced people inside of Gaza. Destroyed homes, no income, facing forced evacuations, these families have no means to support themselves. With limited aid trucks entering the strip, prices for individual items needed for survival are out of reach for most people. Nearly all infrastructure and buildings are destroyed, and families cram into a small designated “humanitarian zone” in makeshift tents as they continue to get bombed, as no where is truly safe.
How do we help?We facilitate, our ground team executes, and we always defer to the needs of the people. Through our extensive network, we get the the most competitive deals on bulk purchase of goods to distribute to families in need. We believe in creating an equitable chance at receiving aid so we provide assistance based on areas and encampments in most need. From the most destroyed neighborhoods in the North, to the overcrowded beach cities in the South, we respond where and how we are needed.
Long-term objectivesBy supplying necessities, responding to emergencies, and providing nuanced care, we are encouraging families to continue to fight for their own survival. It is important for us to return agency and self reliance back to families by giving them the independence to make decisions for themselves. We asked them “how can we help you” instead of registering them as a number on a list. We are also not waiting for current situation to end before we supply the tools for betterment. Our project includes educational, medical, and psychological initiatives that allow forward thinking into the future.
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Music in Better off Read was made by Brent McIntyre.
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On the 5th of September this year, i was lucky enough to be in an event at Word Festival called I Wish I Wrote That with an incredibly talented line-up of writers including Jon Toogood. Jon had an event before ours and i watched him perform 'Home Again' on acoustic guitar from the Green Room. Even backstage and through a screen i found myself moved to tears - it's an incredible piece of songwriting that just seems to hit me more and more profoundly. About five minutes into Jon's book signing i needed to go to the foyer and it was wild. One thing became really clear - people love Jon and Jon's book and Shihad. During our event, Jon read a really beautiful piece about Aldous Harding's song 'Treasure'. One of the really great things about Jon's memoir Home Again is the way he writes about music, not just the music he makes but the music he loves.
Helen and i have been friends for a long time. Over the years her work has been incredibly inspiring to me. When i say 'Helen's work' i mean her writing, her activism, her visual art, her journaling, her essays, her thinking, her teaching, her friendship, her family-ship, her gardening and all the other amazing things she does. i also admire the way it is quite hard to separate these 'works' out from each other. If there is such a thing as an artist's life i think Helen is a really great example of that. When we met a few weeks ago, Helen brought along her journal as the object to act as a starting place for this conversation.
September is such an exciting month because it sees the launch of The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances an amazing novel written by Terri Te Tau and published by Spoor Books
i loved talking to Molly Crighton over Zoom earlier this month about her new novel The Body and the Blood out with Hachette New Zealand
i'm really grateful to Tīhema Baker for speaking with me about his new novel One Day a Taniwha (Hachette) i was a massive fan of Tīhema's last novel Turncoat and i've enjoyed hearing Tīhema talk over the last few years. i was lucky enough to read Tīhema's book last year and i loved it. i reread it for this podcast and i still love it. Maybe even more. It's an incredibly compelling story set in several planes of experience - centrally the waking and sleeping lives. It's an incredibly intelligent and beautiful novel. Through this deft craft i think it makes possible new ways of thinking about fatherhood, work, mental health and how these are effected by colonisation and colonialism. In our discussion i touch on how fresh and cutting edge Tīhema's depiction of fatherhood is. i just can't recommend it enough. This podcast was recorded over Zoom.