Book
A play! If you're like, "Not Oscar Wilde again!", fast forward to Oscar Kightley! And Victor Rodger, Courtney Sina Meredith and the other talented writers behind these scripts about the encounter of Pacific and Western cultures in Aotearoa today.
A poem! This collection of 150 kiwi love poems has something for everyone: odes to lovers but also to a mother, a river, a child, even to a bicycle. Or if you have little ones to read to, try Green's "A treasury of NZ poems for children".
An essay! These funny, insightful pieces span personal history, politics, criticism and feminism. Try also Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Geoff Dyer, Rebecca Solnit, George Orwell, Jo Ann Beard, Charles D'Ambrosio and New Zealand's Ashleigh Young.
True crime! The subject matter may be disturbing, even shocking, but these books are a fascinating look into the human mind. How did Manson make his 'family' kill for him? What made those young men and women kill with no trace of remorse?
A diary! Here's an illustrated edition of 40 years of diaries from the hilarious and self-deprecating David Sedaris. And if you're exploring the literary canon, you can't do better than the diaries of Virginia Woolf or Franz Kafka.
Flash fiction! The characters in this love story set in the encroaching urban dystopia of 1980s Auckland navigate through cultural voids and colonial Pacific bloodlines, in a blend of lyric storytelling, flash fiction and poems with alluring depths.
Letters! In addition to his superb art, Van Gogh left behind a fascinating body of correspondence which speaks of his quest to find his destiny, his close bond with his brother Theo, his yearning for recognition, and his love of art and literature.
Journals! Kurt Cobain filled dozens of notebooks with lyrics, drawings, and writings about Nirvana, the meaning of fame, the state of music, and the people who bought and sold him and his music. More than twenty survived, published here in facsimile.
Creative non-fiction! In 1984, Colin McCahon went missing in Sydney for a night. Martin Edmond, winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction, imagines that night.
Cultural commentary! Here's a great example: a radically empathetic book about public shaming, and about shaming as social control. What are the effects of social media-enabled collective outrage on the shamed and those shaming them?
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