R U Still In 2 It? Happy THE NERVE release day to AW & associate @stabbiesetc.bsky.social Can’t get enough of this one. AW plays Dark Room in Ōtautahi next March.

A pleasure to contribute to The Spinoff’s Best Books of 2025 roundup. Happy summer reading!

It was recommended by @steelydass.bsky.social who truly never misses with her picks!

Two of my worlds/interest areas come together in ‘The Silver Book’: Pier Paolo Pasolini & Olivia Laing!

WORD Christchurch festival kicks off on Wednesday 27 August - 31 August! Have you got your tickets yet? I’m hosting this session ‘This Band Could Be Your Life’ which is perfect for music lovers. Four writers tell us about a band/musician they love. If you’d like any festival recs, I’m here for you!

Black Sabbath on my grandfather’s farm at the 1973 Great Ngāruawāhia Music Festival in New Zealand. I remember my dad telling me a crack up story about how they burned a massive cross at midnight which shocked the locals but when you saw it up close it was really homemade and dungy. 📸 David Stone

A real joy to join the divine Susie Ferguson and Mihingarangi Forbes on Radio NZ's Saturday Morning show for Playing Favourites where I selected & chatted about 7 of my favourite songs and talked about WORD Christchurch 2025 and my life in books and music. What 7 songs, though? Listen to find out!

WORD Christchurch programme director extraordinaire Kiran Dass @steelydass.bsky.social is Playing Favourites on RNZ Saturday morning tomorrow 11.05am. Tune in! www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro... #WORDChch #pukapuka #WORDChristchurch ^DR

Most weeks, I gaze up at the @praddenkeefe.bsky.social books on my bookshelf and think, “I wish my favourite narrative nonfiction writer had a new book coming soon…” 🙏

The 2025 WORD Christchurch programme is now live and you can browse and book tickets. The theme of the festival this year is JOY! Love this incisive roundup from @secondzeit.bsky.social at The Press. As ever, I’m here for you to recommend sessions and books I think you’ll love. #TheJoyOfWords

"Tender, bittersweet... I loved this memoir and have never read anything quite like it." Thanks to @steelydass.bsky.social at RNZ for her thoughtful review of Base Notes. This really made my day. www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro... @whiterabbitbks.bsky.social

Popping by to play some records at Civil & Naval in Lyttelton on Sunday for a nice cosy 3-6pm moment. Will be spinning a dolly mix allsorts jumble of interesting records, do pull up for a quiet arvo pint and natter to round off the long Puanga weekend!

Sheffield Dreamin’ Need to get to Sheffield in October, somehow!

Let's celebrate @coseyfannitutti.bsky.social visionary, singular icon and cover girl on the latest issue of The Wire magazine. We are so lucky to have her. I love that someone asked her about her lovely sounding garden.

To celebrate the anniversary of the first episode of Shortland Street being aired on telly in New Zealand, let's revisit the time I not only got the word "c**t" spelled in full into the Guardian, but also a headline with the word "penis".

Never forget the dream I had where my friend bought a Mr Whippy van but instead of selling ice creams he was cruising around peddling mixtapes and bootleg cassette recordings of gigs by New Zealand underground artists 🍦

Please watch this beautiful, powerful, important, true speech by Max Porter as he announces Banu Mushtaq & translator Deepa Bhasthi as winners of the International Booker Prize for Heart Lamp, the first short story collection to win. “proudly walking into the abyss with a tote bag full of books.” 🤍

I’m constantly saying “I just need to return some books to the library,” and am very aware how much that makes me sound like Patrick Bateman.

If you like fiction & essays with "that dark NZ thing", Kirsty Gunn is at Tūranga on Monday 6.30pm talking to WORD Christchurch's @steelydass.bsky.social Get your tickets Ōtautahi! wordchristchurch.co.nz/programme/wh...

I’m looking forward to seeing Kirsty Gunn in conversation with @steelydass.bsky.social in Christchurch on 19 May. Her previous two short story collections were very influential on my own writing (you might not see, but it’s there! She does atmosphere so well). wordchristchurch.co.nz/programme/wh...

'future classic from one of the most intriguing, inventive & compelling writers of our time. What a book. It is just jaw-droppingly breathtaking...She is such an attentive, exacting & careful writer & I think one of the best in the world today.' @steelydass.bsky.social www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

“A future classic…what a book”. @steelydass.bsky.social enthuses for @catherinechidgey.bsky.social’s Book of Guilt - all of us early readers have felt just the same! www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

One of my most anticipated books of the year, especially growing up next to an awa in Ngāruawāhia & having lived in Whanganui where the awa was granted personhood in 2017 by an act of NZ parliament. The Whanganui was the first river in the world to be recognised as an indivisible and living being 🩵

Had fun playing records at Civil & Naval in Lyttelton. A witches brew of Pakistani surf rock, Afghani tea house music, krautrock, freak jazz, Nigerien-Ghanaian synth, Ethiopian keyboard music, Trinidad panharmonic orchestra steel band music, deviant pop from Europe & other gems. Pull up next time!

R.I.P David Thomas of #PereUbu buff.ly/sDUnrc9

An unplanned coincidence! In the space of less than a week I’ve written about & spoken on the radio about 2 different sheep farmers. Reviewed the enchanting The Place of Tides by James Rebanks on RNZ’s Nine to Noon. For those who love nature writing & reading about environment, ancient traditions.

Remarkable story by @steelydass.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

I loved writing about the remarkable Central Otago sheep and cattle farmer Eden Hore and his amazing fashion collection for The Guardian. Such a New Zealand story! ‘Central Otago Couture: The Eden Hore Collection by Jane Malthus & Claire Regnault, 📸 by Derek Henderson (Te Papa Press) is out now.

‘The Conversation’ is the only essential Coppola film. The perfect film, a masterpiece of 1970s paranoid cinema (my favourite genre). Each shot framed to perfection and one of the best uses of extraordinary sound design in a film ever. And Hackman. Pitch perfect in that existential, melancholy role.

I made a Valentine’s Day playlist and went a bit overboard. Multiple vibes, just like a romantic rollercoaster. And a lot of the songs are actually pretty evil. Fill your boots!

"YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY HERE, JACKIE WEAVER!" Stopping by to remind you about my favourite British comedy - this Handforth Parish Council Planning & Environment Committee Zoom meeting that went feral.

Alight. Here it is, again. And it’s called… Blue Monday. The third Monday in January is known as “the most depressing day of the year.” In fact, this was just a concept cunningly constructed by a travel agency to boost holiday sales. It also always coincides with my first day back in the office…

One of the greatest opening scenes in a film. David Lynch was a master of the weird and eerie, and as perfectly seen here, a singular and smart visual storyteller 🥀

Caught up with Sunday Star-Times to talk about what books I’ve been reading and recommending this summer. Feat. Aotearoa and international fiction, memoir, biography, essays, backlist and juicy frontlist. @thwupbooks.bsky.social @whiterabbitbks.bsky.social @dauntbookspub.bsky.social

If there’s one sound that is guaranteed to transport me right back to a bleak, colourless small town childhood, it’s the enduringly wonky and brokenarsed tones of Mr Whippy’s ‘Greensleeves’. Long may it continue to ring out across the suburbs...

New year, new TBR pile. In praise of non required summer holiday reading! Currently loving ‘The Bee Sting’ by Paul Murray. It’s got everything you could ask for: Irish, big hearted, funny, moving, ambitious.

For my final piece for the year, I spoke to people embracing tiny home living in New Zealand, for the Guardian.

The excellent @monorailmusic.bsky.social has called ‘A Record Could Be Your Whole World’ edited by Bruce Russell & Luke Wood one of their music books of 2024. Thrilled to have written an essay about ‘Dazzle Ships’ for the book, which is perfect for the record lover in your life (maybe that’s you!)

Annual reshare of the greatest post ever.

@steelydass.bsky.social Being asked for your favourite song of the year and choosing something from 35 years ago is about the most Kiran thing that has ever happened

Happy summer, everyone! "Only a fool would ignore this. But there's one born every minute." They don't make public information films like they used to. Stay safe in the water.

thank you to @steelydass.bsky.social for my bday reminder of this fav drunk dancing film scene. It’s got it all: disco stones, creep, Tilda, some rich fucks Waiheke bach, a swimming pool and lens flare youtu.be/623d9vZqF-4?...

We’ve heard it. @memorialdevice.bsky.social 45 years of reinvention. Here’s 6 1/2 hours of ‘Marquee Moon’ to top you up 🙏

Psyched to announce my next book, Volcanic Tongue: A Time Travelling Evangelist’s Guide To Late-Twentieth-Century Underground Music, coming March 2025 from @whiterabbitbks.bsky.social Pre-order: geni.us/VolcanicTongue

Scene report: I’m at Bob Mould. Can’t see shit. Lots of ballheads. He sounds great.

To celebrate @steelydass.bsky.social's arrival on here, giving our shared adored Chills song a spin! (🎵But just standing still in twilight gloom By my house with a hundred rooms The lights are for the likes of you🎵) www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzWa...

2 of my favourite people. In a lovely place. And inspired by a lovely place. I’d deffo be there if I could…

An honour to be chairing a panel inspired by Derek Jarman's extraordinary Prospect Cottage, about personal utopias, to tie in with the Delphinium Days exhibition at The Dowse Art Museum next month. A lovely excuse to re-read his important book 'Modern Nature'. Free but RSVP is appreciated.

Hey everyone @steelydass.bsky.social is here! Our book and literary festival queen 👸