Vanessa Crofskey on compulsive grooming, beauty and survival.

I watch my mum from the upstairs window as she bends over a patch of dirt and upturns the earth. She works late nights as a software developer, so these hours in the garden are hers. Determinedly, she pushes her knees into the concrete and pulls a weed out from the soil bed. An hour later, she is still scouring the earth, bundles of...

Roger Hall is the most successful playwright in New Zealand, but it looks like he's scared of everyone below retirement age. What's worse is that it might just be our fault... and not in the ways you think. Adam Goodall digs into the mistakes that Aotearoa playwrights – especially the young ones – keep making when they write stories about old age for the stage, and what needs to change to get them right....

Literature editor Hannah Newport-Watson does a reccie of new books appearing on the horizon this year in Aotearoa. Here’s a selection of forthcoming poetry, fiction and non-fiction we’re excited about.

Poetry

Under Glass by Gregory Kan (Auckland University Press, March 2019)

Gregory Kan’s first collection of poetry, This Paper Boat (2016), was restrained and quietly haunting. I loved the...