Flash fiction: Beer goggles

Bonsai (CUP, 2018)

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…

The Hope Fault – Notes, resources and references

Hope Fault close-up 2015 South Island Geology map, Unfolding the map exhibition

Like most writers, I’m a magpie, taking shiny things from the world around me and making them my own, absorbing and transforming them in my writing. So, in addition to the acknowledgements printed in the back of the book (reproduced at the bottom of this page), I wanted to acknowledge some of the sources, resources … Read more…

At the bay

Good Dog 2016

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…

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…