Running two businesses, wrangling twins and launching the literary journal Folly has been keeping Emily Broadmore busy. She tells Sharon Stephenson how, and why, she does it.    Some days you’re Superman and some days you’re Clark Kent. When we chat, Emily Broadmore’s day is skewing more Clark Kent than the man in red tights.  The Wellington businesswoman and publisher of new literary journal Folly is dealing with a case of sunstroke, another of boredom and an absent husband. Emily is speaking to Woman from Australia’s Port Douglas where she’s on holiday with her p ..read more

Share on Get to know the One Lane Bridge co-creator and writer with our quick-fire Q&A. Who was your childhood idol/role model? The Wombles. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a paediatrician, because I loved babies. Until I discovered I’d have to give them injections! Same with being a vet. What’s your favourite Disney movie and why? Fantasia. It was the first ever movie I went to see. It was so bright and colourful and trippy with cool music. I remember the hippos wearing tutus. What was the big album of your youth? A tie between Duran Duran’s Arena and ..read more

I was taken aback at a bookshop recently when a fellow writer said women are ‘raving’ about my historical novel, The Seasonwife. But men are silent, he said.  “They reckon it’s feminist. Old white men are threatened,” he said. The refrain had a familiar ring. Speaking at a Word Festival event earlier this year, Eleanor Catton reflected on how after winning the Booker Prize, she was chastised publicly. Influential men and less influential haters, didn’t criticise her writing so much as her person and personality. Some men wanted to take her down, make her feel small. Catton has recovered ..read more

Call me a cynic, and plenty have, but I tend not to believe reviewers when they say things like ‘this book will define a decade’ or ‘this novel embodies the zeitgeist like no other’. But they weren’t far off the mark with The List, the debut novel from British journalist/podcaster Yomi Adegoke. The Guardian and British Vogue columnist blasts into the literary stratosphere with her tale of secrets, lies and the internet, in particular, our morally complicated online culture. Influencers Ola and Michael are a young Insta-famous couple, the king and queen of #blacklove. They’re about to get ma ..read more

 My Aunt Honor by Gillian Torckler is a non-fiction picture book about the active service role of women in WWII. Gillian Torckler talks below about her inspiration behind the book. Every now and then, my mother would reminisce about her family and her Aunt Honor who died in World War II. My mother was a little girl during the war and her memories were of a glamourous woman with bold red hair who always bore gifts. Honor was the youngest of my grandmother’s sisters. My mother always said she died in active service, which I had thought was an exaggeration (surely, women were not in acti ..read more

Dr. Vanda Symon is a Pacific crime novelist who relies on an element of darkness to become a successful writer. But she’s also got a soft and nurturing side which is helping her make positive changes in the Pacific community. As the youngest of a large Pacific family of 12 children, pharmacist and crime novelist Vanda Symon would lose herself in the literary world. The Tauranga-raised author describes herself as being “the product of a life-long affair with books.” “Reading as a child was an escape for me, especially when you have a large family living in a tiny house. You need a way to escape ..read more

You know that I’m a big fan of self-help and personal development books. Well, the book “Leap To Wholeness: How The World Is Programmed To Help Us Grow, Heal And Adapt” presents a fresh and captivating view.  Nelson-Isaacs is not your ordinary personal development guru. Picture a brilliant physicist as he is quite literally a physicist with a focus on quantum physics. Nelson-Isaacs is an explorer of the mind and the cosmos and uses this book to effortlessly blend his scientific background with a deep understanding of human consciousness, creating a delightful and engaging reading experien ..read more

Embarking on a career journey can be an exhilarating yet challenging endeavour. However, as we have traditionally been significantly disadvantaged in the workplace and still experience pay disparity, it can be even more difficult to navigate our way through a competitive and ever-evolving professional landscape. The highway to success, more than often not, involves a mentor. However, it’s particularly hard for women to find like-minded mentors (especially other females in the workplace) that we feel we align with and can relate to. Illana Raia, the founder of the membership platform called Etr ..read more

As winter settles into its coldest days, there’s few activities left for one to do – except to indulge in the age-old delight of curling up by the fire with a good book. As the temperature drops and the rain falls outside, there’s no better way to spend our time than to immerse ourselves in the realms of literature. WOMAN recommends these four books to get you through the cold nights.  The Interpreter By Brooke Robinson Single mother Revelle Lee is an interpreter who spends her days translating for victims, witnesses and the accused across London. Only she knows what they’re saying. On ..read more

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” is a groundbreaking book written by Daniel Kahneman, a renowned psychologist and Nobel prize winner in economics and all around superstar.  Kahneman is a prominent figure in the field of behavioral economics and psychology. Born in 1934 in Tel Aviv, Israel, he pursued his education at Hebrew University, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in psychology and mathematics. Kahneman went on to complete his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and later became a professor at Princeton University. So to say his accolades are significant is an ..read more