Bravo!

Today we're releasing our latest report: A Window on Disability. Are you or someone you love disabled? Are you receiving the same quality of healthcare as non-disabled people in Aotearoa New Zealand? The answer is no and these data - never seen before - prove it: www.hqsc.govt.nz/resources/re...

Big news goes live tomorrow:

‘To read Bill Manhire’s poetry is to be lulled, with an ironic lack of effort, into a landscape that is loaded with sense and meaning for the poet’s narrator(s), but perceived as gently out-of-kilter by the charmed observer’ - unpacking Lyrical Ballads. yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Reas...

A Lullaby

The great irony of the Welsh success of Reform, run by millionaire ex-public schoolboys, is that one the greatest Welshmen, & founder of the NHS, warned of this “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies whole art of Tory politics” Aneurin Bevan

Pleased to have a new short story, "Silence", out via ReadingRoom @newsroom.co.nz A musician confronts difficult questions years after the tragic death of his lover... 🎻👬 newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/25/s...

Kelly Ana Morey’s final novel to be published on first anniversary of her death

So brilliantly reviewed

Opening in two weeks. Watch this space for news about a special closing event that I’ve been cooking up with some friends…

My review of the new @tricialockwood.bsky.social novel is up in the latest Listener: (Paywall after tantalising opening mafraid) www.magzter.com/stories/news...

Poetry Updates

Love this interview with Pip, so much wisdom here! 💚 thecreativeindependent.com/people/autho...

Huge news! Today we're launching our biggest sale ever, to celebrate the move to a shiny new website. ✨ Smooth website experience 📚 50% off ALL books from 2022 & earlier 🗓️ For all of August, while stocks last The sale is live now at www.teherengawakapress.co.nz.

Catherine Robertston reviews Carl Shuker's The Royal Free on RNZ Afternoons:. 'It's the best thing I've read in years... Can't recommend it more highly... It's a tremendous piece of writing.' 💙 www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

Wow ok unfollowing now. Loved his refusal of servitude in heaven, did not know he was responsible for the fall of man

My book got the sweetest medal! www.thesapling.co.nz/nzcya-2025-n...

If you were forced to bet on which university courses of study still will be relevant in 50 years, languages, literature, history, philosophy, and arts are all pretty good wagers. They have an excellent track record over the past thousand years or so.

Yeah, I was asked to recommend good writing about sex, and yeah, I went there thespinoff.co.nz/books/03-07-...

Vital perspective thespinoff.co.nz/society/02-0...

Landfall comes for THE ROYAL FREE. A long close read that almost gets it…. landfallreview.com/what-we-fear...

A week and a half until the international premiere of my post-apocalyptic found footage instructional film on acid GUT INSTINCT in Oakland, CA at Shapeshifters Cinema, complete w/ a circuit-bending audio set by Kyle Bruckmann (@issimo-sempre.bsky.social) and Q&A by me. Limited seats, don't miss out!

How is AI affecting New Zealand creatives?

Three of the best fictioneers feature on the latest Writers on Mondays episode!

VERY useful briefing on broader implications of US strike on Iran from @warinthefuture.bsky.social mickryan.substack.com/p/america-bo...

I wrote about billionaire space dreams, interstellar inequality, and Pip Adam's extraordinary new novel, for @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

So excited to see the ever-perceptive @robrubsam.bsky.social writing in @theatlantic.com today on @pipadam.bsky.social's "extraordinary" Audition, out in North America this month www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

Sample (just a sample) of the Smiths collection with period pricing

A present from my old friend to celebrate completion of the first draft of my new project. 39 for this and so much else over so long @ryskel.bsky.social

Ouch. "I groaned​ my way through The Emperor of Gladness. I writhed. I felt real despair every time I forced myself to open the covers. It was one of the worst ordeals of my reading life." Tom Crewe shines his hatchet in the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Two of my favourite NZ books of recent vintage - this and AUDITION by @pipadam.bsky.social - have been published in the States this month. Both urgent, challenging and rewarding. Check them out, Ameri-friends.

It’s publication day in the US for The Royal Free. I’m so proud of this book and grateful to be with Counterpoint Press who published geniuses like Ballard and Janet Frame in the US, and Evan Connell and David Markson. Thank you. I’m a lucky man.

"That’s the great thing about writing: the problems that solve the last novel will not help this novel in the slightest." A knockout interview with the great @pipadam.bsky.social #pukapuka

This is the really scary language now. “Republican forces.”

Sad news, the founder of one of the greatest longitudinal studies ever undertaken has passed away. Over 1300 research papers have been derived from this incredible body or work. www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

Coming up in the US in seven days from Counterpoint! THE ROYAL FREE all silky and dark.

The Freedom Florilla and National Guard in LA - both obvious outrages legally and morally, both occurring as if scripted by power

How I used to think about writing fiction. Waking up every morning trying to figure out what happens next while giving the impression I knew everything all along. Determined to be brave and delighted at the end of every day. #amwriting

#TheCovidResponse comes to Nelson this Wednesday evening. Join Naomi Arnold and I to talk about what worked and what didn't, and to find out what needs to happen to prepare for the next pandemic.

New album, Antidepressants out in September. New single and video, Disintegrate, out now. And we take over the Southbank for a series of gigs in the Autumn. www.suede.co.uk

Thrilled to announce that Italian rights to @pipadam.bsky.social's brilliant Audition have sold to Verona's Cantoni Editore! They publish high-quality literary works with covers designed in collaboration with emerging contemporary Italian visual artists. #Audizione www.cantonieditore.it/contatti/

Hoping to die before it comes out to give the marketers a humorous angle. 😃

Someone on X said this is a list of the new Pope’s favourite books, and I’m like daym

"In a Fishy Church by Catherine Chidgebone." Wonderful reminiscences of @modernletters.bsky.social @pacificraft.bsky.social and @catherinechidgey.bsky.social: newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/06/c...

Bill delivers, as usual @pacificraft.bsky.social

Home

Finished the epic and epochal Bass on the lesser-known Nuremberg of Asia. Just amazing. Comprehensive in ways we’ll grapple with for a century. Standouts: weaponisation of the Indian judge’s dissent making the colonialist case Japan was doing what Allied empires were doing for hundreds of years.

‘The Comprehensive Bookshop” - my cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

Collapsed chair from teenage rocking and leaning inexpertly repaired with a cheap screw through the back? Simply remove twisted and broken screws, chisel and sand every fleck of old wood glue from mortise and tenon for an hour, glue, reassemble and ratchet strap and minutes of function return!