Biography & Autobiography

A memoir by a young man who grew up in 'New Zealand's remotest family', living in a cabin in the far southwest of the South Island, it recounts his unusual upbringing, the skills it gave him and how he has subsequently adjusted to and thrived in the outside world, including trave...lling the globe --Publisher information.
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One afternoon, journalist Hazel Phillips decided to close her laptop and head for the hills. She then spent the next three years living in mountain huts and tramping alone for days at a time, all the while holding down a full-time job.

'Barry was never a father to me, but he did become a friend.'-Martin Crump Barry Crump was a titan of New Zealand writing, his semi-autobiographical novels about life as a rugged outdoorsman selling more than a million copies. In his time, he was held up as the quintessential Kiw...i bloke. In our time, the situation is less sure, with Barry now well known for being an unscrupulous brute, womaniser, alcoholic and absentee husband. Barry was also the father of six children - all of them boys. For Ivan, Martin, Stephen, Harry, Erik and Lyall, Barry has always been an enigma that casts a strange shadow over their lives. Sons of a Good Keen Man is their story - the first time they've all gone on record together about their father. Published 25 years after Barry's death, Sons of a Good Keen Man offers straight-and-true anecdotes that grip, entertain, surprise and even provoke a few laughs. Each son writes frankly and movingly about how they have navigated life with or without Barry. Illuminating, essential, at times confronting, and containing never-seen-before photos, Sons of a Good Keen Man is a timely reflection on fatherhood and identity, the legacy of trauma, and how time can both heal and ask new questions.
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This is the breakout non-fiction book from award-winning New Zealand writer Mohamed Hassan. From Cairo to Takapuna, Athens to Istanbul, How To Be A Bad Muslim maps the personal and public experience of being Muslim through essays on identity, Islamophobia, surveillance, migration... and language. Traversing storytelling, memoir, journalism and humour, Hassan speaks authentically and piercingly on mental health, grief and loss, while weaving memories of an Egyptian immigrant fighting childhood bullies, listening to life-saving '90s grunge and auditioning for vaguely-ethnic roles in a certain pirate movie franchise. At once funny and chilling, elegiac and eye-opening, this is a must-read book from a powerfully talented writer. "Mohamed Hassan takes the things we universally love - food, music, family, dreams of travel, a heart's desire - and affirms their gorgeous ordinariness. Then he reveals how othering shatters what we share; how it splinters "us" to create confusion, ignorance, hurt and even hate. Sometimes his writing is gently observational, sometimes sad, sometimes justly angry, but always important, timely and true." - John Campbell "The book is amazing. Mohamed Hassan is so talented. In How To Be A Bad Muslim, he pulls off that rare trick of taking a poet's grace and applying it to his essays, making them as beautiful to read as they are illuminating." - Dominic Hoey "Mohamed's is a fresh voice but most of all, an important voice. We already have his poetry, which has been rightly recognised, but now New Zealand literature is all the richer for his elegant and powerful non-fiction." - Rachael King "Mohamed Hassan writes from a space that nobody else stands in; a space borne of deep understanding and lived experience. He is Muslim, a child of Egypt and the Middle East and a child of New Zealand; a global traveler and reporter with his finger very firmly on the socio-politics of the globe and our place in it. He has a depth of vision, a level of craft and a talen
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Finlay Macdonald's beautifully told, visually gorgeous biography of Dame Lynley Dodd and her creation, the rascally dog Hairy Maclary. 'A visual delight' NZ Listener's 100 Best Books of 2013 'Lynley Dodd is a national treasure, and this excellent book shows us why.' Weekend Press... Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy has been read and loved by millions since its 1983 publication. Its protagonist's shaggy face and mischievous eyes are now iconic. But what of his creator? 'People don't believe me when I tell them that Hairy Maclary fell out of a book - literally - but he did. It was just a scrap of paper I'd tucked between the pages of my ideas book, as you do. And I picked it up and thought, well, yes, I could do this. So I did.' In The Life and Art of Lynley Dodd, Finlay Macdonald tells the tale of how a small girl raised in Kaingaroa Forest became the illustrator and virtuoso wordsmith behind so many picture books that are living classics. But this is not just a story about a storyteller, it is a book that explores Lynley Dodd's working world. What is the secret behind her stories' linguistic dexterity? How does her paintbrush capture the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic expressions of her animal characters with such precision? As well as many favourite and familiar book illustrations, this volume contains never-before-seen sketches and cartoons, character roughs and picture-book drafts. The Life and Art of Lynley Dodd is both a tale of remarkable success and a window into a brilliant creative mind. This new paperback edition has been updated to include Lynley's latest story, Scarface Claw, Hold Tight! and the sellout exhibitions of her artwork over the last decade.
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