EDIT (June 2022): this role has been filled! Thank you to the scores of people who applied :) — GOOD BOOKS needs a bookseller to work 10 hours a week, on Fridays and Saturdays. Your role will involve excellent customer service and spot-on book recommendations. Previous bookshop experience is a bonus but not essential, but you must be a big reader! GOOD BOOKS is New Zealand’s first accredited Living Wage bookshop and is a safe, welcoming and supportive place for both staff and customers. The hourly rate for this role is $22.75 (the current Living Wage). We are also looking for one or two peop ..read more

Wellington-based Cadence Chung’s debut poetry collection, Anomalia, is populated with strange specimens, cicada husks and glittering gems. These poems explore the love and cruelty in human nature. Cadence answers our quick Q&A below. 1. How are you and what have you been up to lately? New liver, same eagles. I feel like I'm simultaneously very busy and also feel like I have an insane amount of freedom right now. I recently started my studies in Classical Performance at the New Zealand School of Music, and feel like I'm truly falling in love with opera for the first time, which is a great ..read more

With Mother’s Day coming up on Sunday 8 May, we thought it would be helpful to gather a few gift ideas for the mother-figure in your life. Photo: Anna Briggs GOOD BOOKS SUBSCRIPTIONS What’s more exciting than getting a parcel of good reading in the mail every month? Nothing, we reckon! So treat Mum to a GOOD BOOKS Subscription and give the gift of reading for six or 12 months! We’ll start by emailing her a Reading Preferences Questionnaire. Using that information, the GOOD BOOKS team will put our heads together and carefully select books we’re sure she’ll love. In the first week of each mont ..read more

Author photo by Ebony Lamb Meat Lovers, the debut poetry collection by Rebecca Hawkes, is one of the books we’re most pumped about this year. Our Freya is even quoted on the back cover: “Rebecca Hawkes is the unmatched empress of viscera. Thrillingly perverse, utterly compelling – you eat these poems like overripe peaches, or like your own tongue.” Rebecca answers our quick Q&A. 1. How are you and what have you been up to lately? I am an agent of chaos!!!!!!!! This year is (gladly) hectic - Meat Lovers is out and AUP are also releasing No Other Place to Stand soon ..read more

Notes on Womanhood cover image by Henrietta Harris, Fixed It XV1, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Melanie Roger Gallery. Poet Sarah Jane Barnett has written a highly anticipated book about what the concept of womanhood means to her. Notes on Womanhood is part memoir, part feminist manifesto, part coming-of-middle-age story. She answers our quick Q&A. 1. How are you and what have you been up to lately? I’m good, thanks. My family has been sick this week so everything has been a juggle as my son’s been at home. He’s better now and I’ve just dropped him at a friend’s house so I have a few ..read more

Former Green Party MP Gareth Hughes has written the biography of former Green Party co-leader, the late, beloved Jeanette Fitzsimons. He answers our quick Q&A here. 1. How are you and what have you been up to lately? Great! I’ve recently moved off Quarantine Island / Kamau Taurua, where I wrote A Gentle Radical, to Portobello, Dunedin, which makes getting the kids to school so much easier. I’ve traded in the small dinghy for a yacht which is moored out front of my little cottage and has become my passion. I’ve just finished up a year supporting the Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance and starte ..read more

essa may ranapiri (Ngaati Raukawa, Highgate, Na Guinnich) is one of the most exciting poets currently writing in Aotearoa New Zealand. Their first book, ransack, was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards in 2020, and their new collection, echinda, has just been released. They answer our quick Q&A. 1. How are you and what have you been up to lately? I'm struggling, I think like a lot of people, with the whole return or attempt to return to normalcy and yeah. I've been doing a lot of writing, working on my PhD, writing commissions, and all of the emails in the world hahaha. 2. If you we ..read more

Fifi Colston is a Wellington icon, a writer, illustrator and “straight-up creative”. Her new children’s novel, Masher, is a warm and funny novel about animal companions, imaginary friends, perceived enemies, and finding your happy place. Fifi answers our quick Q&A. 1. How are you and what have you been up to lately? I am very good, thank you, and I put it all down to being a “Better Beach Babe”. We are a diverse group of women who swim at 7.30 am at a local beach (known as Best Beach) a few times a week, come what may. Wellington water is not known for its balminess, so we must all be bar ..read more