On Boxing Day

pool water

It’s Boxing Day – the day after Christmas and a Commonwealth holiday I’ve never known the origin of and have never bothered to look up. I’m in the shower rinsing off chlorine and the layers of the sticky suncream I’ve been smothering myself with all day. Despite my diligence, the potent New Zealand skin hasRead more

The one paragraph writer’s bio

frida

MaiLynn worries that she cannot fill the space of a writer’s bio with prestigious alma matters, names of literary publications, forthcoming books, prizes, titles of grandeur. She has only the pieces of her writing: pages made from paragraphs made from sentences made from words made from letters made from memories, all of them crafted likeRead more

Shit makes excellent fertilizer

Hawkes Bay circa 2013

I’ve been talking, dreaming, writing and thinking in metaphors. It’s my thing these days – giving in to the urge to extract symbolic meaning from all of the weird experiences and situations I’ve found myself in lately. Call it the plight of a writer (if I can even call myself that), or the curse ofRead more

Writing about Melbourne (and about writing)

At Luna Park in St Kilda.

On the day before we catch the red-eye back to Wellington, Mel asks me if I might blog about Melbourne. She said it would be interesting to hear how I had witnessed the city and to compare it to her own experiences. It’s Monday night. Cat and Fiona took a flight back Auckland this afternoonRead more

Christchurch: It’s happening

My ride + another gap filler space

“We live in cities you’ll never see on screen. Not very pretty but we sure know how to run things,” Ella Yelich-O’Connor, better known as Lorde, sings in the chorus of her song Team. Lorde is an Aucklander, not a Cantabrian, but her lyrics play in my head as I cruise through Christchurch. I’m hereRead more

On being almost thirty

haim

I turn 29 this week. Being in my twenties has been a perpetual excuse to make light of my delightful assortment of neuroses, anxieties and mistakes. It’s also been a decade of miniskirts, two-day hangovers, quiet nights cozied up with a good book, six-hour Game of Throne binges, $130 yoga pants, quitting jobs to travel,Read more