Piquant, frank, open, wistful, tender, funny … this personal memoir by Diane Brown is deftly ‘marbled’ throughout with social history. From carefully chosen anecdotes it slowly unfolds a vivid and compelling sense of character and the psychological dynamics within the family. My favourite photo of Mum, snapped at the beach, her sensible wedding day suit ditched for saggy togs. Here she is, laughing at Dad, as if nothing had ever hurt her. Many readers will recognise the New Zealand so vividly portrayed here, as Brown marshals deeply personal events and childhood memories in a delightfully astute, understated poetic form.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 144

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 20-10-2015

Landfall is New Zealand’s foremost and longest-running arts and literary journal. Published twice a year, each volume showcases two full-colour art portfolios and brims with vital new fiction, poetry, cultural commentary, reviews, and biographical and critical essays. The 2022 Spring edition, Landfall 244, is no exception. Editor Lynley Edmeades brings together a range of voices and perspectives, from established practitioners to emerging voices. The result is an exciting anthology that has its finger on the pulse of innovation and creativity in Aotearoa today.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 20-11-2022

Always Going Home is the compelling personal story of Frances Edmond’s relationship with her ‘beloved, complicated, difficult’ mother, the award-winning poet Lauris Edmond (1924–2000). This book takes a more intimate look at areas of Lauris’s private life than have been detailed in previous family histories and autobiographies. Writing from memory, family recollections, and the ‘goldmine’ of Lauris’s correspondence and diaries, Frances details how her life intersected with, and often diverged from, her mother’s. As creative collaborator, sole literary executor, and a frequent sounding board and confidante, Frances was privy to details known to very few. Beyond the trivia of ‘who said what about whom’, she learned about the wounds her mother carried and her inability to manage, or influence, the shifting tides of grief and resentment within their family. Always Going Home is more than a personal account of an ‘impossible but greatly admired’ mother, and more than an account of a writer’s literary and familial struggles and triumphs – it is a revealing love story about how relationships between mothers and daughters evolve, complete with their unique blessings and challenges. Somewhere you are always going home; some shred of the rag of events is forever being torn off and kept —Lauris Edmond, from ‘The Sums'

Bind: paperback

Pages: 292

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 20-11-2022

This is a biography of one of New Zealand’s most colourful and persuasive politicians. When James Macandrew arrived in Dunedin from Scotland in 1851, other settlers were impressed by his energy and enthusiasm for new initiatives. With his finger in a lot of commercial pies, he set about making himself a handsome income which he eventually lost, declaring himself bankrupt and ending up in a debtors’ prison for a time. Politics became another enterprise at which he threw himself with a passion. Macandrew was a member of Otago Provincial Council for 10 years, during which time he held almost all the elected positions in that body. He was superintendent of Otago for a further decade, and at the same time he was a member of parliament for 29 years. This is the warts-and-all story of a Victorian settler who was a devoted family man, a staunch Presbyterian and a consummate politician. It examines the numerous local institutions that benefited from Macandrew’s touch – the University of Otago, the Art School (now Otago Polytechnic School of Art), the Normal School (later the College of Education) – along with his contributions to the building of roads, railways, wharves, harbours, schools and churches. Macandrew made plenty of enemies along the way, and has been severely judged by history. This re-examination of his life and political work reveals a man who both inspired and infuriated the citizens of Otago, and New Zealand, for almost four decades.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 384

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Naming the Beasts is a menagerie of poems about the gnarlier aspects of being a creature of this world. Within these pages wilderness and suburbia collide. The ‘I’ in these poems takes many forms: a wolf, a waterbuck, a bird ‘stuck circling the carnage’. Whether soaring above or prowling through the neighbourhood, Morton’s beasts bear witness to an unremitting vision of pain and ecological damage. As the flames climb higher, the beasts in this collection are left to wander and live out their lives. There is love and loneliness, passivity and rage. Yet there is always hope. Hoof and hide, fang and gut, these images and insights are those of an artist in a war zone intent on chronicling beauty in a world that’s falling apart. Morton’s poems take a bite out of the world around us, as they explore reality through the vitality and immersiveness of their imaginative powers.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 15-07-2022

A paleontological site of international significance, Foulden Maar in Otago, New Zealand is home to an amazing record of life on Earth. Formed by a volcanic eruption 23 million years ago, the Maar’s undisturbed sedimentary layers are the resting places for countless rare, well-preserved fossils. The site is unsurpassed in the Southern Hemisphere as a scientific record of changing life and ecosystems at the beginning of the Miocene. In recent years, the fossil treasures of Foulden Maar have been threatened by a proposal to mine the site’s rich diatomite deposits. Local and national scientific researchers rallied to call for the protection of this unique location, sparking an international debate about the importance of the preservation of paleontological sites worldwide. In Fossil Treasures of Foulden Maar, authors Daphne Lee, Uwe Kaulfuss and John Conran share their passion and knowledge for this extraordinary spot. They tell the story of the site and reveal the paleontological discoveries that have been made to date. Their book demonstrates the educational and scientific importance of Foulden Maar, paying tribute to the scientific researchers who have helped bring Foulden Maar’s scientific marvels to the surface and who continue to fight for its preservation. Richly illustrated with beautifully detailed images, this volume captures the science, the mystery and the beauty of this astonishing place.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 216

Dimensions: 210 x 246 mm

Publication Date: 15-08-2022

Dunedin poet Iain Lonie (1932–1988), a Cambridge scholar who enjoyed an international reputation as a medical historian, died before his poetry was fully appreciated. He published five slim volumes but his style was not the one that dominated New Zealand poetry at the time. And yet, argues Damian Love in an essay in this volume, ‘To read him now is, for most of us, practically to discover a new resource.’ This collection, assembled from sources public and private, is the result of poet David Howard’s determination to rescue a memorable body of work from oblivion. As well as the poems from Lonie’s published volumes, it includes over a hundred unpublished works, two essays and an extensive commentary. While his keen interest in mortality was focused by the premature death of his wife Judith (aged 46), Lonie’s poetry is also an attempt to recover the loved in us all. As he eavesdrops on desire and grief he reports back, often wittily, leaving the most poised body of elegiac poetry New Zealand has. For younger poets, Iain Lonie’s poetry has become ‘a place to go on from’

Bind: hardback

Pages: 392

Dimensions: 140 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 20-05-2015

Landfall is New Zealand’s foremost and longest-running arts and literary journal. It showcases new fiction and poetry, as well as biographical and critical essays and cultural commentary. Each issue brims with a mix of vital, fresh work from Aotearoa’s newest writers, alongside well-known and established authors such as Vincent O’Sullivan, Catherine Chidgey, Breton Dukes, C.K. Stead, Albert Wendt, Cilla McQueen, Selina Tusitala Marsh and David Eggleton. Landfall also features art portfolios in full colour and reviews of the latest New Zealand books.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 208

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 18-05-2022

Dr Thomas Morland Hocken (1836–1910) arrived in Dunedin in 1862, aged 26. Throughout his busy life as a medical practitioner he amassed books, manuscripts, sketches, maps and photographs of early New Zealand. Much of his initial collecting focused on the early discovery narratives of James Cook; along with the writings of Rev. Samuel Marsden and his contemporaries; Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the New Zealand Company; and Māori, especially in the south. He gifted his collection to the University of Otago in 1910. Hocken was a contemporary of New Zealand’s other two notable early book collectors, Sir George Grey and Alexander Turnbull. In this magnificent piece of research, a companion volume to his Amassing Treasures for All Times: Sir George Grey, colonial bookman and collector, Donald Kerr examines Hocken’s collecting activities and his vital contribution to preserving the history of New Zealand’s early post-contact period.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 464

Dimensions: 155 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 20-05-2015

See No Evil issues a challenge to New Zealanders. The book begins by relating the little-known history of West Papua, but its focus is on the impact of New Zealand’s foreign policy on the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants. In the 1950s New Zealand supported self-determination for the former Dutch colony, but in 1962 opted to back Indonesia as it took over the territory. Delving deep into historical government archives, many of them obtained under the Official Information Act, this meticulously researched book uncovers the untold story of New Zealand’s unprincipled and often hypocritical diplomacy. The consequences of repressive Indonesian rule have been tragic for the West Papuan people, who are experiencing ‘slow genocide’. West Papua remains largely closed to foreign journalists, but its story is now beginning to be heard. A growing number of Pacific Island nations are calling for change, but so far New Zealand has opted for caution and collusion to preserve a ‘business as usual’ relationship with Indonesia. See No Evil is a shocking account by one of New Zealand’s most respected authors on peace and Pacific issues, issuing a powerful call for a just and permanent solution – self-determination – for the people of West Papua.

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 18-06-2018