Issue #20, 30th September 2026
|
Kia ora friends, I'm back, and not regretting the break. Lots to catch you up on in this issue! SnippetThe article I wrote for the Playmarket Annual, The New Tech Merry-Go-Round, is now up and available to read HERE, starting on page 30 of the PDF. Here's a snippet from it: But we do have a unique position out of most, if not all, art forms. This is theatre, darling. The money was never good. The effort it takes to make theatre is too great to waste on dreck. It’s hard enough to get producers interested in dazzling new works when the classics are still there and, more importantly, free. Out of all the many struggles we playwrights face, our greatest rival in getting our works staged will continue to be the dude from four hundred years ago – not the dumb regurgitation machine trained through endless iterations of grocery lists and cybersex. Poems I LoveThis time I want to share my girlfriend’s poems. We went to one of Blackout Aotearoa’s workshops back in April, and here’s what she came up with. I love how to the point they all are, each saying something powerful, so economically. The writing in August and September:
Book Launch: Dido on the Edge by Bianca ParkerI'm so stoked to be able to let you know about this: on Saturday 24th October, my friend Bianca Parker releases her book Dido on the Edge. I got to read a proofreading copy and give an advance review. Here's what I wrote:
Expect to get lost in the best possible way in this lost girl story. Bianca Parker's debut novel Dido on the Edge serves a rollicking good adventure tale filled with humour, gore, layer upon layer of queer metaphor and blatently-not-metaphor, and liberal drenchings of existential questioning. Our heroine Dido is pulled into another world and is faced with the lost girl story to end all lost girl stories. I hesitate to say too much more for fear of giving away so much of the journey, so let me put it like this... If you can see yourself falling for a pansexual hot mess; or if you can't get enough of meta-fiction like Everything Everywhere All At Once; orif you too were once an edgelord and are now a sophisticated edgelady with elevated sensibilities (gore, but like, *refined* gore, thank you very much): then you have to check out Dido on the Edge.
I'll be at the launch with her at Time Out Bookshop Mt Eden, where I'll get to interview her and ask all sorts of questions about how this wild ride of a tale was forged. If you're in the area, please do come and celebrate with us, and whereever you are in the world, grab a copy of the book! Speaking of book launches…I want to congratulate my friend Atakohu Middleton on the release of her book Waka Aroha. Read more about the book, the author, and her journey HERE. This is such a treasure for indigenous publishing and reo Māori publishing specifically, because it's designed to fill a huge language learning gap, so that adult language learners don't just have to read children's books as they learn. Now I just need to learn more of my reo so I can actually read it! (But I read in the article I linked above that Ata was the same age I am now when she started properly learning, so there's hope for me yet 😁) Ka rawe, Atakohu! And in the meantime I'll keep on enjoying your reporting work every week over on E-Tangata. Meanwhile, what's been occupying me…If you have a good memory, you might recall that I handed in my final submission version of my middle-grade novel Peregrine Pax to Huia Publishers at the end of June last year. So, finally, the next part of that process came back to me last month, in the form of a structural edit by their brilliant gem of a semi-retired editor, Simon Minto (former mentor of my fellow Te Papa Tupu friend Steph Julian). But I was quite surprised by my reaction to receiving it. Read on below, because I actually ended up doing a big blog post dissecting my feelings on this whole thing… Two blog postsOver on the blog we have two posts. The first, from August, talks about my name change. I've officially dropped all patriarchal surnames from this pen name and am moving forward with the feminine names chosen for me, my first and middle names. You can read more about why HERE. (Still working on changing the email address and newsletter profile too) The post from this month talks about the huge negative feelings that bubbled up for me in the last month and a bit around revising and changing my plans. Growth is hard! Especially when you have to do the work of unpacking what's going on underneath the loudest surface feelings. Read more about how critique really knocked me for six recently HERE. What's coming up in the next month or two for me:
Will I write to you again next month, or at the end of November? Honestly, I don't know. It felt really good to wait for two months this time, until I had more news to actually write to you about. So I'm going to play it by ear. You'll see me when you see me :) Arohanui, Claire Hiria READ MORE |
Hiria Dunning
Kia ora friends, A snippet In lieu of snippets from me this issue, I want to send you instead to some of my favourite poetry from Aotearoa's own Tarot Journal. I read a poem a day when at my work desk. Here are four works which have really moved me enough that I needed to share them: https://tarotpoetry.nz/yael-thomas-cameron/beeswax/ https://tarotpoetry.nz/megan-clayton/across-the-reserve/ https://tarotpoetry.nz/jessica-arcus/tiny-circles/ https://tarotpoetry.nz/amelia-kirkness/danny/ The...
Kia ora team, How was your June? Mine has gone by in a crazy daze. Here's some of the reasons why... A snippet I am opposed to the Legislation (Definition of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill. Defining what a woman is does nothing further to protect the people who would be under the unnuanced blanket term 'woman' according to this bill; in fact, it will only put them at further risk of harm, and it introduces further complications for groups of people who are already marginalized by society. It...
Kia ora, I thought I knew what busy was last month. I had no idea T_T A Snippet "Tell me, which of these forms is most pleasing to your eye?" What follows has me unable to look away from her, after so long avoiding doing so. She takes a scarf of grey silk, and runs it past her face. When it comes away, she is a younger woman with silvery tresses and large red lips. She does it again, and when it passes she has the dark eyes of a woman from far away, with mystery and knowledge in their depths....