Hastings

A boy’s own adventure

“If I’d been asked to vote on it I would’ve said I’d landed at the centre of the universe. Standing on our corner of Sylvan Road and Victoria Street, with Te Mata Peak, the Tukituki River and the mad wilderness of Windsor Park to the back of me and the distinctly non-wilderness of Cornwall Park and the misty vista of the Ruahines in front of me, I was the master of all I could barely survey.”

So writes the much-loved painter Dick Frizzell in this charming, big-hearted memoir. It’s an endearing, and at times hilarious, love letter to his home town, Hastings, and the weirdly innocent world of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Take a look inside.

About the editor 

Dick Frizzell MNZM is one of New Zealand’s best-known painters. He studied at the Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury from 1960 to 1963 and then had a long career in advertising. Alongside his career as a painter, Frizzell is also the highly sought-after designer of a range of products from toys to wine. He is the author of Dick Frizzell: The Painter (Random House, 2009), It’s All About the Image (Random House, 2011) Me, According to the History of Art (Massey University Press, 2020) and The Sun Is A Star (Massey University Press, 2021). Dick exhibits regularly and often works in collaborations with writers and other artists. He lives in Auckland with his wife, Jude.

Pātaka Kai

Growing kai sovereignty

Food for hope and wellbeing

We face a biodiversity crisis and a climate meltdown. Our food systems are broken, our soils are depleted and our seeds are owned by global corporations. The mainstream response to these crises drowns out the Indigenous perspectives and solutions that offer pathways to ecological, cultural and socio-economic sustainability as well as greater connection to food in our everyday lives.

This book salutes Indigenous food heroes from across Aotearoa and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa whose inspiring stories show how change begins locally and on a small scale.

Written by verified Hua Parakore farmers, activists, Indigenous researchers and Indigenous food sovereignty leaders Jessica Hutchings and Jo Smith, Pātaka Kai encourages a return to Indigenous values and practices to achieve kai sovereignty and wellbeing for Mother Earth and her people.

Take a look inside.

About the author

Dr Jessica Hutchings (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Huirapa, Gujarati) is a senior kaupapa Māori research leader, author, activist and Hua Parakore grower.

Associate Professor Jo Smith (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu) is a senior kairangahau Māori for Papawhakaritorito Charitable Trust who also researches and teaches at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

You Are Here

WHITI HEREAKA AND PEATA LARKIN

A unique collaboration in words and art

The sixth book in the remarkable kōrero series, edited by Lloyd Jones, features Jann Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and the acclaimed artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa, in a collaboration based on the Fibonacci number sequence.

In a feat of managed imagining, Hereaka’s words spiral out to the centre of the book and then back in on themselves to end with the same words with which the text began. As the pattern spools out and then folds back, Peata Larkin’s meticulous drawings of tāniko and whakairo and her lush works on silk weave their own entrancing pattern.

“It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,” Hereaka says.

You Are Here is a beguiling and important addition to the kōrero series.

Take a look inside.

About the author

Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) is a playwright, novelist, screenwriter and a barrister and solicitor. Her fourth novel, Kurangaituku, won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Peata Larkin (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, and Ngāti Tuhourangi) graduated with a Master of Fine Art from RMIT, Melbourne, in 2009 and has a BFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland.