'Gee's O Trilogy was so important to me when I was 10. I met the guy in my late 30s and didn't tell him this of course. We are supposed to look back and regret such cowardly moments but I don't. There's an honour in not bothering people.' —Nick Ascroft. www.thepress.co.nz/culture/3608...

Don't believe anyone really likes peppermint.

Fred Tucker's Billiard Room, Helensville, 1915

Photo: Auckland Museum; www.aucklandmuseum.com/discover/col...

Come along and see Nick Ascroft get shot out of a cannon! Or so I assume, I didn't really read the details

Also...
I Got His Blood on Me - Lawrence Patchett
A Mistake - Carl Shuker
Selected Poems - Jenny Bornholdt

Small sample of books on sale today:
What Sort of Man - Breton Dukes
Everything We Hoped For - Pip Adam
Memorandum of Understanding - Bill Nelson
Vanilla Wine - Geoff Cochrane
Can You Tolerate This - Ashleigh Young
The Commercial Hotel - some guy?
Back with the Human Condition - Nick Ascroft

The Commercial Hotel When John Summers moved to a small town in the Wairarapa and began to look closely at the less-celebrated aspects of local life – our club rooms, freezing works, night trains, hotel pubs, landfills – ...

Belated reminder that my book The Commercial Hotel is among those available half price on the THWUP website until the end of the month share.google/v2PPe3so41VH...

Stuck on this exercise-hotdog cycle

Home Theatre Winner of the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction, 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards Welcome to the Repertory Apartments—where scenes of tenderness and trouble, music and magic, the uncanny and the macabre play ...

Get 50% off my #pukapuka Home Theatre and heaps of other titles in this @thwupbooks.bsky.social sale 📚💚

teherengawakapress.co.nz/products/hom...

Fantastic creative nonfiction on sale!

Nice to hear that piece resonated with you. Thank you!

Thanks Tina!

The Commercial Hotel When John Summers moved to a small town in the Wairarapa and began to look closely at the less-celebrated aspects of local life – our club rooms, freezing works, night trains, hotel pubs, landfills – ...

Belated reminder that my book The Commercial Hotel is among those available half price on the THWUP website until the end of the month share.google/v2PPe3so41VH...

Great article on Raymond Ching and the huia…

New Breton Dukes story!

YouTube video by Connie Francis - Topic Siboney

RIP Connie Francis youtu.be/gfoBKJf0wLQ?...

A Novel That Reimagines the Meaning of Outer Space In Pip Adam’s extraordinary, humane book Audition, the stars are both a dystopian place and a site of uncharted possibility.

I wrote about billionaire space dreams, interstellar inequality, and Pip Adam's extraordinary new novel, for @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

Sad to read this. Hope it turns up.

A new book by Nick Ascroft! This truly terrific collection is about lost friends, new frailties, new braveries, and being stuck in an organ pipe during recital and not wanting to bother anyone about it. It's What He Would've Wanted is out in September. 🧨
teherengawakapress.co.nz/it-s-what-he...

Spent a pleasant morning at Pick-a-Part, Taita

Incredible poem by @erikkennedy.com www.bestnewzealandpoems.org.nz/2024-content...

Coming Up Autumn 2025 SeasonThursdays, 6 – 27 March6.30 pm to 8.30 pm Deans, Fitchett, Fleming, Gray, Green, Morgan, Morton, Nelson, Pickens, Taylor … and maybe YOU? Download your own pdf copy of the poster …

I'm reading some poems tonight in Christchurch with the excellent Joan Fleming and Zoë Deans if anyone is around. It'll be great!

canterburypoets.org.nz/coming-up/

A bird in the hand Huia were last seen alive in 1907, according to official records. But the New Zealand bird artist Raymond Ching tells another story. A Wellington taxidermist killed a trio of the birds in 1912, Ching ...

My piece in the latest issue of @nzgeo.bsky.social about artist Ray Ching and huia, taxidermy and obsession www.nzgeo.com/stories/a-bi...

I reviewed Simon Burt's Route 52 for Newsroom, a book about caravans and small towns newsroom.co.nz/2025/02/27/b...

Thanks Martin!