Strong Words #2 showcases the long-listed entries for the 2019 and 2020 Landfall essay competitions. The contents, often poetic and psychologically insightful, gave editor Emma Neale a ‘hell of an intriguingly hard time’ deciding which sparkling explorations would knock off the others for the top three places in each year. This anthology gives readers a chance to sample the high quality work entered, without the agony of having to choose the winners. Including well-known names and promising newcomers, the contents roam far and wide over a number of subjects, such as Sarah Harpur’s irreverent, laugh-aloud essay about death; Siobhan Harvey’s potent essay about the memories of an abusive childhood stirred up by current house renovations; and Tan Tuck Ming’s essay about technology and how it mediates, enables and impacts intimate relationships. Strong Words #2 also includes the joint winners of the 2019 essay prize: Tobias Buck’s ‘Exit. Stage Left’, which explores issues of prejudice and bias through the experience of someone ‘the colour of cotton candy or pink marshmallows’, and Nina Mingya Powles’ work ‘Tender Gardens’, exploring Chinese cultural and poetic heritage and how to maintain a sense of home in a foreign land.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 184

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2021

The First New Zealand Himalayan Expedition, in 1951, was initiated by Earle Riddiford, who with Ed Cotter and Pasang Dawa Lama made the first ascent of Mukut Parbat, their target peak in the Garhwal Himalaya. Accompanying them on that expedition, though not to that summit, were two other New Zealand climbers, Edmund Hillary and George Lowe. Hearing of the success on Mukut Parbat, the New Zealand Alpine Club suggested to the Alpine Club in London that acclimatised New Zealanders would be a valuable asset on the forthcoming 1951 British Reconnaissance of Mt Everest, to be led by Eric Shipton. This resulted in an invitation for two New Zealanders to join the party: thrilling news the four climbers received while they were ensconced in the hill-country village of Ranikhet. A day and a half of bitter dispute rent the party asunder. Which two should go to Everest? In this enthralling narrative, journalist Lyn McKinnon tells the stories of Earle Riddiford and Ed Cotter, two extraordinary New Zealanders whose climbing achievements were forever eclipsed by the exploits of others. She draws on private papers as well as published work, and extensively interviews Cotter himself, and the families of both men, as well as many other contemporary climbers, to set the record straight.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 21-10-2016

The Yield is the vivid and lyrical new collection from award-winning poet Sue Wootton. These poems are sensorially alive, deeply attentive to language, the body, and the world around us.Down in the bone the word-strands glimmer and ascendoften disordered, often in dreams,bone-knowledge beating a path through the body to the throatlabouring to enter the alphabet.- 'Lingua Incognita'Wootton addresses subjects as various as the fraught relationship between medical institutions and individual suffering, the disintegration of the polar icecaps, the energising power of solitudeand the rewarding demands of creativity and love.This is a collection about give and take, loss and gain; about sowing, tending and reaping.Sue Wootton brings her characteristic linguistic dexterity, exuberance and versatility to every page. The Yield is rich harvest.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 84

Dimensions: 160 x 235 mm

The University of Otago has always taken pride in its status as New Zealand’s first university. Starting a university in 1869 was a bold move: other regions observed Otago’s action with a mixture of surprise, scepticism and envy. The venture paid off: from small beginnings, the university grew into a large institution with local, national and international significance. Like any organisation, the University of Otago has had its good times and its bad times. It has been at some periods and in some ways deeply conservative, and in other ways boldly entrepreneurial. A good history is a critical assessment rather than a public relations exercise, and Alison Clarke has consulted and researched widely to produce a forthright and fascinating account. While traditional institutional histories focus on the achievements of the most senior staff, she has been at pains to write an inclusive history painted on a much broader canvas. This history is arranged thematically, looking at the university’s foundation and administration; the evolving student body; the staff; the changing academic structure and the development of research; the Christchurch and Wellington campuses and the university’s presence in Auckland and Invercargill; key support services – libraries, press, student health and counselling, disability services, Māori Centre and Pacific Islands Centre; the changing styles of teaching; the university’s built environment; and finally, the university’s place in the world – its relationship with the city of Dunedin, its interaction with mana whenua and its importance to New Zealand and to the Pacific.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 472

Dimensions: 189 x 253 mm

Tramping is a journey into mountainous country, across passes, along ridges, beside rivers or through forests. It is a journey also, perhaps, to discovering more about the native plants and animals existing in these wild ecosystems, and a journey into friendship or self-discovery. New Zealand trampers have produced a rich body of literature about their activity, with writing spanning nearly two centuries and ranging from poetry and songs, journals and newspaper pieces to magazine articles and books. These stories may hold drama or tragedy, but more often they are about companionship, enjoying nature and finding challenge in wild environments. Across the Pass includes writing from New Zealanders such as writer John Mulgan, mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary and adventurer Graeme Dingle. The pieces range from epic tales to stories of strolls, writing that pokes fun at companions or instead celebrates that strong bond often forged when facing challenges together. Some writers appreciate the intricacies of nature or the splendour of the mountains, while for others an interest in history encourages them to tread the trails first pioneered by their ancestors. All say something about the many textures and colours of the experience we call tramping. EDITOR Shaun Barnett is an outdoors author, editor and photographer. He has co-authored several books including Tramping: A New Zealand History, Shelter from the Storm: the Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts and A Bunk for the Night.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 372

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Gabriel Clutch was a thief and a liar but he was right about one thing. He told me he had a great secret in his collection that would shake the literary world to its roots if it ever got out … So begins the delightfully dark Snark, a tumultuous romp through worlds created by Lewis Carroll and here brought to life through the vivid imaginings and fabulous art of award winning author and illustrator David Elliot. What exactly did happen to the Snark expedition? Did his dagger-proof coat protect the Beaver from the Butcher? What befell the Boots in the Tulgey Wood? Who fell foul of the Jabberwock? The Bandersnatch? The Jub-Jub Bird? And, finally, the big question: what precisely is a SNARK …? David Elliot’s hero, the Boots, here reveals the whole truth for the first time, from his recruitment to the Snark expedition, to his return from a journey of unimaginable, death-defying adventure ... In this charming book for grown-up children of all ages, David Elliot is at his spellbinding and artistic best.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 208

Dimensions: 250 x 285 mm

Publication Date: 14-11-2016

Phoney Wars looks at the lives of New Zealanders during the greatest armed struggle the world has ever seen: the Second World War. It is not a political, economic or military history; rather it explores what life was like during the war years for ordinary people living under the New Zealand flag. It questions the war as a story of ‘good’ against ‘bad’. All readers know that the Axis powers behaved ruthlessly, but how many are aware of the brutality of the Allied powers in bombing and starving ‘enemy’ towns and cities? New Zealand colluded in and even carried out such brutal aggressions. Were we, in going to war, really on the side of the angels? Contrary to the propaganda of the time – and subsequent memory – going to war did not unite New Zealanders: it divided them, often bitterly. People disagreed over whether or not we should fight, what we were fighting for and why, who was fighting, who was paying, and who was dying. In this provocative and moving book, Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg explore New Zealanders’ hopes and fears, beliefs and superstitions, shortages and affluence, rationing and greed, hysteria and humour, violence and kindness, malevolence and generosity, to argue that New Zealand need not have involved itself in the war at all.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 424

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 13-10-2017

How does a city make a writer? Described by Fiona Kidman as a ‘ravishing, immersing read’, A Strange Beautiful Excitement is a ‘wild ride’ through the Wellington of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood. From the grubby, wind-blasted streets of Thorndon to the hushed green valley of Karori, author Redmer Yska, himself raised in Karori, retraces Mansfield’s old ground: the sights, sounds and smells of the rickety colonial capital, as experienced by the budding writer. Along the way his encounters and dogged research – into her Beauchamp ancestry, the social landscape, the festering, deadly surroundings – lead him (and us) to reevaluate long-held conclusions about the writer’s shaping years. They also lead to a thrilling discovery. This haunting and beautifully vivid book combines fact and fiction, biography and memoir, as Yska rediscovers Mansfield’s Wellington, unearthing her childhood as he goes, shining a new lamp on old territory. "It’s not enough to say I immensely enjoyed A Strange Beautiful Excitement … it’s simply splendid." – Dame Fiona Kidman "… the best account I have ever read of Wellington and Karori as they were in Mansfield’s day … Vivid and vigorous, it is a pleasure to read." – Kathleen Jones, KM biographer

Bind: hardback

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 150 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 24-07-2017

Dan Davin was the author of the only substantial body of war fiction written by a New Zealand soldier during any of the wars of the 20th century in which the nation was engaged. The General and the Nightingale brings together Davin’s 20 war stories, some drawn from his war diaries and loosely based on his experiences as ‘a wartime scholar-soldier’ and those of his fellow soldiers in the British and New Zealand armies. They yield an unparalleled insight into the Kiwi or Anzac soldier at war during the Mediterranean and African desert campaigns of World War II. Editor Janet Wilson notes they can be read as ‘fictionalised accounts rather than imaginative fictions’. Born and raised in a working-class Catholic family in Southland, Davin was a Rhodes Scholar and had recently completed a degree at Oxford when he enlisted in the British Army in 1939. After receiving a commission in 1940 he successfully applied to be transferred to the New Zealand forces. He saw active service in Greece and North Africa, was wounded in Crete, and rose to become General Freyberg’s intelligence officer in the Italian campaign. The General and the Nightingale updates an earlier collection of Davin’s war stories published in 1986 as The Salamander in the Fire and long out of print. This new publication features comprehensive notes, a glossary, a chronology, a map of story locations, a bibliography and an extensive introduction by Janet Wilson. It is a companion volume to The Gorse Blooms Pale: Dan Davin’s Southland short stories (OUP, 2007), which is also being reissued.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 364

Dimensions: 138 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 24-01-2020

Come Back to Mona Vale is a beautifully written, compelling narrative/memoir that sets about unravelling the mysteries and anomalies behind the public history of a wealthy Christchurch business family in the first half of the 20th century. The author-as narrator gradually becomes aware that his family heritage isn’t necessarily the norm, nor what he expected. That family members can’t bear to speak to each other about the most private and family-influenced events, facts and atmospheres. That he grew up shielded from aspects of contemporary reality by money and class. The story unfolds like a crime or detective tale, and also delves into the history of the Canterbury colony, contrasting Christchurch’s public values, aspirations and beauty with its murkier private behaviour. And yet the story is told with a graceful touch and an eye for the vivid, comic and telling detail. Alexander McKinnon’s explorations of his family’s past is the record of a beautiful and grand (yet gradually crumbling) manor interwoven with social history – with a sense of the Gothic, of obsession, and of a tight-knit circle where secrets wreak a terrible climax leading to a form of inter-generational haunting.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 288

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 03-09-2021