It’s a long walk up between streets, a Wellington short cut, past cabbage trees and damp, tightly-planted agapanthus. […] Stopping to catch their beery breath, turning, they see the city below them. Closer, lights glow in scattered windows of the university buildings, patterning the sky. In ‘Beer goggles’, Warren and Lola take “a Wellington short … Read more…
short fiction
A memory of others
This month marks 20 years since the publication, in May 1998, of my first piece of fiction, in this fine wee book: Another 100 New Zealand Short Short Stories, edited by Graeme Lay, and published by Tandem Press (it’s out of print now, though probably in secondhand bookstores and libraries; stories from three volumes in the series were – … Read more…
Short Story Club, on stage and on air
Back in May 2017, Jesse Mulligan kicked off a new weekly feature on his weekday afternoon show on Radio New Zealand: Short Story Club. The idea for Short Story Club first came up, if I’m not mistaken, one afternoon a few weeks earlier when Jesse had frequent bookish guest and LitCrawl Queen Claire Mabey on the show. It works like this: every … Read more…
Short Story Book Club Live at LitCrawl Wellington
I’ve been enjoying heading in to the RNZ studio now and again this year (here, here, here and here) to take part in Short Story Club, a weekly feature on Jesse Mulligan’s afternoon show. One of my stories, ‘Once had me’, has even been the story for discussion (not, obviously, a week I took part in the discussion; … Read more…
Passion
A short story by Tracy Farr Ellie’s having trouble finding rabbits for sale. ‘Not much call for them,’ the man at the supermarket tells her. ‘You could try the butcher in Island Bay,’ but she already has. And no, Bambi won’t do. It has to be rabbit. At Easter. She has to cook the Easter … Read more…
At the bay
The kids are busy at the river mouth. … There’s one black dog right in there with them, a mad barker, lolling and lollopping. Another dog, black-and-white, more serious, is hanging back, watching, crouched up the beach on its haunches, front paws out, ears up, attentive, as if it’s watching skittish sheep. The dog glances … Read more…
Greenwich, meantime
I started off on the path, but the cold soon got to me, and when I hit an open patch and felt the sun pull on my arms like some strange gravity I veered off to the left and onto the grass. There were Canadian boys with a hackysack – there are always Canadian boys … Read more…
Viva baby, viva!
They’d started drinking at noon. It’s one o’clock the next morning when Liz finally curls up on the beanbag in the lounge-room. The still dark heat, or some drunk obsession, keeps Jan from falling into bed, makes her start to clean up – wipe the salt shaker’s bottom of its crust of salt and lime … Read more…
Purple suit, junkie lover
Her plan took her back to his shop one afternoon – for the bookstore, she knew, was a time-honoured place for the acting out of romantic fancies – at a time when she knew he was most likely to be in attendance himself, reading at the counter, or perhaps arranging and rearranging the Bukowskis in … Read more…
Portrait as a Tehuana, 1989
She rummages in a plastic shopping bag under the table, and pulls out something stiff and white. Lacy, like old-fashioned underwear. ‘It’s nearly finished,’ she says, holding it wide near her face, making a shape I can’t distinguish. ‘What is it Lou?’ Liz asks. ‘Frida’s undies?’ ‘One of her costumes, cara.’ Lou’s fake Mexican accent … Read more…