Journal
Articles
Pure brightness
EACH April at Pure Brightness Festival (Ching Ming) Chinese families sweep the graves and perform traditional rites to honour...
School report
LAST WEEKEND, IN a bid to compress a wet Sunday, I drove my two young boys out to the...
Tectonic Z
OF ALL DEVELOPED countries, New Zealand is one of the most dependent on its natural environment for earning its...
We are all Stan Walker
ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH the debut series of The X Factor (New Zealand) I started making some notes about why...
First, build your hut
WHERE IS OUR Marcus Clarke? Henry Handel Richardson? Rolf Boldrewood, Ada Cambridge, Tasma, Henry Kingsley, Joseph Furphy? Why don't...
Simply by sailing in a new direction
IN OCTOBER 2012 several dozen writers from New Zealand appeared at the Frankfurt Book Fair where New Zealand had...
The lie of the land
THIS IS THE biography of a painting I've known my whole life. At least, there hasn't been a time...
An A-frame in Antarctica
AHEAD WAS A peculiar vision. Black Island appeared to levitate above the Ross Ice Shelf. A shimmering dark lake...
Reading Geoff Cochrane
WHEN I WAS a child I had two dolls in a box. Each night I placed the dolls on...
A dialogue across the sea
RUBY: WE HAVE some disagreements, my mother and I, and not only about fairy tales. Mum says that I'm...
The princesses
I wanted a different storyline for these fairytale girls with their hair of sunshine gold and lips that shame the rose, and frankly not much else going on between the ears.
The elusive Australian fairy tale
JACK AND THE Beanstalk, Henny Penny, The Three Bears, and The Three Little Pigs were collected by the folklorist...
