Show Notes
This is a recording of an event that took place on a very rainy and cold Sunday afternoon at one of my favourite places, Book Hound book shop, with one of my favourite people, Annaleese Jochems It was such a wonderful afternoon with excellent people. It was really nice to meet some folk from People Against Prisons Aotearoa who I hadn’t meet before. Thanks again for everyone who came and thanks to Annaleese for such a great chat and such great snacks and for letting us meet in the wonderful Book Hound. I’m giving away a copy of Audition so if you’d like a copy just leave a comment here or DM me on Instagram Also, just wanted to announce that Tara Black is the winner of the Murdoch Stephens books. Woohoo. Thanks Tara and everyone else who entered. Stuff and Things The second season of Below Deck Down Under has started and the SpinOff have published this amazing interview with my work hero and life-coach Aesha Scott I’m very excited to be speaking with Dougal O’Neill and Tīhema Baker on the 7th August. Tīhema’s book is amazing. Other Worlds Pip Adam's Audition features three giants: Alba, Stanley and Drew, who are squashed into a spaceship hurtling through space, and must talk to keep the spaceship moving. Tīhema Baker's Turncoat is set on a distant future Earth, colonised by aliens, where Daniel –a young, idealistic Human–is determined to make a difference for his people. These works of speculative fiction are exciting, inventive and compassionate in their exploration of systems of power. Dougal McNeill will talk to Pip and Tīhema about these other worlds in fiction, and the mirror they hold up to our world today. Also, if you are in Ōtautahi in August, the WORD Festival has lots of very cool events. I’ll be there facilitating a workshop and having a chat.
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.