Otago University Press Knihy

Judging her first Landfall Essay Competition in 2018, Landfall editor Emma Neale was seriously challenged. The overall high quality of the 90 submissions made it impossible to choose. After a nails-bitten-to-the-quick struggle, she optimistically submitted her 'shortlist' of 21 essays. The publisher had some strong words with her. Emma was told a shortlist needed to be shorter than 21. A lot shorter. There were no fingernails left to chew. She wasn't flexible enough to bite her toes. The only thing left to gnaw down was the too-long list. In the end she pared the list back to 10 but it seemed so wasteful not to be awarding many more prizes. The world needed to be able to read these damned fine essays. That's when this book was born ... Strong Words is a striking collection of essays that show what Virginia Woolf once described as the art that can at once 'sting us wide awake' and yet also 'fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification of life'. It celebrates an extraordinary year in New Zealand writing.

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. In the 2022 Spring edition, Landfall 244 , Lynley Edmeades brings together a range of voices and perspectives, from established practitioners to emerging voices.

Strong Words 3 showcases the best of the best of Aotearoa New Zealand's contemporary essays from 2021 and 2022, selected from entries into the Landfall Essay Competition. Strong Words 3 is packed with Aotearoa New Zealand's most compelling new writing on contemporary issues, tackling topics such as grief, lost language, poetic childhood recollections, gender, the long aftermath of colonisation, the nature of traumatic memory, and working as a comedian while solo parenting.

New Zealand author James Courage was born in Christchurch in 1903, and he became aware of his homosexuality during his adolescent years. He moved to London in 1927 and began writing novels, plays, poems and short stories. He was much more sexually open than most of his homosexual writer contemporaries - Frank Sargeson, Eric McCormick, Charles Brasch and Bill Pearson. A Way of Love, published in 1959, was the first gay novel written by a New Zealander, and some of his other seven novels (including Fires in the Distance and The Call Home) contain queer characters. Between 1920 and 1963, Courage confided his innermost thoughts to a private diary. He wrote about leaving New Zealand, the men he met in London's streets, and forging friendships in the literary scene. He was an evocative chronicler of landscapes and indoor settings: life on long ocean voyages, air raid shelters during the war, and the psychiatrist's clinic at a time when society was deeply ambivalent about homosexuality. Courage recorded his personal triumphs and struggles with an engaging honesty, a lively intelligence, and a whimsical sense of humour.

In this beautiful and transformative book, 24 Maori academics share their personal journeys, revealing what being Maori has meant for them in their work. Their perspectives provide insight for all New Zealanders into how matauranga is positively influencing the Western-dominated disciplines of knowledge in the research sector. It is a shameful fact, says co-editor Jacinta Ruru in her introduction to Nga Kete Matauranga, that in 2020, only about 5 percent of academic staff at universities in Aotearoa New Zealand are Maori. Tertiary institutions have for the most part been hostile places for Indigenous students and staff, and this book is an important call for action. 'It is well past time that our country seriously commits to decolonising the tertiary workforce, curriculum and research agenda, ' writes Professor Ruru.

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 new work by this country's best writers. There are reviews of the latest books, art, film, drama and dance. Landfall is a high-quality production, with artist portfolios in full colour. FEATURED ARTISTS Vita Cochran, Star Gossage, Robert West AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results from the 2020 Charles Brasch Young Writers' Essay Competition WRITERS John Adams, Johanna Aitchison, John Allison, Shaun Bamber, Tony Beyer, Iain Britton, Medb Charleton, Ruth Corkill, Doc Drumheller, Mark Edgecombe, Lynley Edmeades, David Eggleton, Johanna Emeney, Rhys Feeney, Michael Giacon, Carolyn Gillum, Patricia Grace, Eliana Gray & Jordan Hamel, Isabel Haarhaus, Bernadette Hall, Sarah Harpur, Jenna Heller, Stephanie Johnson, Erik Kennedy, Brent Kininmont, Megan Kitching, Claire Lacey, Leonard Lambert, Malinna Liang, Emer Lyons, Carolyn McCurdie, Cilla McQueen, Owen Marshall, Talia Marshall, Zoë Meager, James Norcliffe, Keith Nunes, Kotuku Tithuia Nuttall, Vincent O'Sullivan, Leanne Radojkovich, essa may ranapiri, Gillian Roach, Pip Robertson, Jo-Ella Sarich, Tim Saunders, Sarah Scott, Sarah Shirley, Elizabeth Smither, Charlotte Steel, Nicola Thorstensen, Rushi Vyas, Susan Wardell

This book tells the fascinating story of New Zealands endemic Huttons shearwater, a species that breeds only at two remote locations, high in the Kaikoura Mountains. Amateur ornithologist Geoff Harrow is the person most closely associated with the story of Huttons shearwater, for it was Geoff who discovered the two remaining nesting sites in the 1960s. For five decades he visited the mountains whenever he could to observe and record the birds, and to encourage the Department of Conservation and its predecessors to take steps to conserve this endangered species. As a result, scientist Richard Cuthbert was to spend three years living with 200,000 Huttons shearwaters and their neighbours, studying their behaviour, observing their interactions, measuring and recording facts and figures to build a detailed picture of why and how these birds had survived. The discoveries over time of Richard and his co-workers turned received wisdom on its head and revealed a whole new predator story. Richards beautifully written, witty account of the challenge and exasperation, the heartbreak and hardship, and the sheer joy of conservation fieldwork in a remote environment is beautifully interwoven with other fascinating stories of the discovery of the species by nineteenth-century scientists and collectors, and Geo Harrows discovery of the nesting grounds and subsequent long involvement with this species.

Home is a classic Landfall Open House issue, where anything and everything goes. Submissions poured in on every topic conceivable, and the result is truly a feast of good writing and imagination. Courtney Sina Meredith, Emma Barnes, Kay McKenzie Cooke, Tony Beyer and C K Stead (among others) offer up new poems exploring topics as disparate as the body, the corner dairy, 'cloud' technology, silent film stars and more. All make for exhilarating reads. Be enchanted too by a wealth of short stories: Alex Wild Jespersens deftly humorous tale of a media studies tutor's first experience with girl-on-girl boxing, Vivienne Plumbs The Cabin Trunk, David Herkts story set in the rarefied world of the uber-wealthy at the height of the financial crisis and Laura Solomon's futuristic piece about a Kiwi cult that breeds 'shumans' (sheep/humans). Nicholas Reid, John Horrocks, Peter Simpson and others offer up considered reviews of recent New Zealand books and Martin Rumsby investigates moving image installations.As for art, theres Anita DeSotos otherworldly paintings, while Darryn Georges unique blend of geometric abstraction and kowhaiwhai are present in both the portfolio pages and under discussion by David Eggleton in The Landfall Review.