Home : New Writing

A compendium of non-fiction pieces held together by the theme of ‘home’ and commissioned from twenty-two of New Zealand’s best writers. Strong, relevant, topical and pertinent, these essays are also compelling, provocative and affecting.

What is home when it’s a doorway on a city street because you are homeless? What is home for urban Maori returning to their tribal lands? How do refugees make new homes while coping with the fact that their old homes are in ruins? 

In this marvellous collection, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Laurence Fearnley, Elizabeth Knox, Ian Wedde, Tina Makereti, Sarah Jane Barnett, Sue Wootton, Ingrid Horrocks, Brian Turner, Helen Lehndorf, Paula Morris, Anna Gailani, Nick Allen, Diane Comer, Gina Cole, Ashleigh Young, Lloyd Jones, Thom Conroy, Jillian Sullivan, Bonnie Etherington, James George and Martin Edmond show that the art of the essay is far from dead.

Dr Thom Conroy teaches creative writing in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University. He is the author of two novels, The Naturalist (2014) and The Salted Air (2016), both published by Penguin Random House. His short fiction has appeared in journals in New Zealand and abroad, including Landfall, Sport, New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and Agni. His fiction has been recognised by Best American Short Stories 2012 and has won other awards, including the Katherine Ann Porter Prize in Fiction and the Sunday Star-Times Short Fiction Competition. In 2013 Thom received a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence.