Show Notes
It was so great to catch up with Isabelle before Christmas and talk about her work.
Isabelle writes writes LGBT Romance, Paranormal and Horror Young Adult books.
The best place to find out about Isabelle's work is on her website
A Horse Walks into a Bar - Free Workshop
Thanks so much to everyone who attended and has watched the video of this workshop.
If you haven't watched the workshop yet you can learn more about it and get a link to it at my website
Action: Submission to evidence brief and position statement into the use of puberty blockers
At the end of November, Manatū Hauora the Ministry of Health released their long-awaited evidence brief and position statement into the use of puberty blockers for trans children. Along with this, the Government has asked them to open up public consultation on whether additional restrictions need to be put in place for trans children accessing puberty blockers. Which is odd. It’s highly unusual and totally inappropriate to open up public consultation for a medical matter that – by the Ministry’s own press release – affects a little over 100 children per year.
InsideOUT have put together a very useful guide to putting a submission to this consultation
Submissions close on 20 January 2025.
While your on the InsideOUT website you might like to read about the things they do and consider donating to their amazing work.
You can support Better off Read financially at Buy Better off Read a Coffee
More from Better off Read
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.