Award-winning authors visit Wairoa, Gisborne schools for Storylines tour
Key takeaways from the panel discussion were to 'just get started', to join a writers' group where possible for invaluable support and to not get discouraged by rejections.
Award-winning poet, novelist, short story writer and playwright Apirana Taylor, of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Ruanui descent, emphasised the value of sharing work with peers.
He said he was lucky to have supporters like renowned author Patricia Grace and described how they would share their work and offer feedback.
Clare Mabey told the group about using the online platform Substack, which allows writers, journalists and content creators to publish newsletters, podcasts and other digital content and monetise their work through subscriptions.
The co-founder of Verb Wellington literary festival said she enjoyed Substack because it allowed her to be part of a community of readers and writers who could communicate through group chats.
Other takeaways from the panel discussion were the importance of getting a good editor and not being put off by rejections from publishing houses, which were primarily focused on the commercial value of work.
Rebecca Gibbs, Melanie Koster and Marie Gill agreed that doing further study, whether it be taking creative writing courses, doing master's programmes, or night school classes, was helpful as a way to have the pressure of deadlines and get your work critiqued constructively.
The group believed it was worth entering competitions as a way to get work published if successful.
Storylines offers awards such as the Joy Cowley Award for a picture book text and the Tessa Duder Award for a young adult novel manuscript.
The Storylines tour had already visited 13 schools in Gisborne and Wairoa before their presentation at HB Williams Memorial Library on Tuesday night.
On Thursday, they were travelling up the coast to Whangara School, Tolaga Bay Area School, Tokomaru Bay, Makarika School and Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Waiu o Ngati Porou.
On Friday, they will visit Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Uri a Māui, Gisborne Girls' High School and Waerenga-o-Kuri School.
Trustee Rosemary Tisdall said they tried to get to as many schools as possible across the country, including rural and remote schools.
She said some students may never have met an author or illustrator before, so it was great for them to engage with the group and realise what was possible.
The tour is designed to inspire children, young adults and their whānau to enjoy the magic of books and reading, especially reading books created for them by New Zealand writers and illustrators.
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The Spinoff
27-05-2025
- The Spinoff
‘Kōkā-made magic': Diary of a Storylines schools tour
Claire Mabey recounts her first time travelling with Storylines, an organisation that tours writers to schools. Twenty-five schools. 2081 students. 1129 kilometres. No onion, no garlic, no gluten, no prawns, no cats. We're an allergic lot, the eight of us on the Storylines Tairāwhiti tour 2025. For years I'd heard about how the Storylines Children's Literature Charitable Trust gathers a bunch of children's writers into a van and tours them around a specific region, to visit multiple schools a day for five days straight. The kaupapa of these packed roadies is 'to inspire children and young adults to enjoy the magic of books and reading, especially reading books created for them by New Zealand writers and illustrators.' Storylines' Tairāwhiti tour 2025 is Apirana Taylor (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Ruanui), Moira Wairama, Maria Gill, Melanie Koster, illustrator Rebecca 'Bex' Gibbs (Rongowhakaata) and me. Anne Dickson is our driver, and Rosemary Tisdall is our wrangler. For five days we travel together across Tairāwhiti where pools of flood water still glisten under the sun and school fields are boggy with Cyclone Gabrielle 's long and destructive tail. Day One: Te Wharau School, Kaiti School, Elgin School, Riverdale School, Gisborne Boys' High School, Rere School After a coffee stop ($4 for a flat white) we drop Api and Moira to Te Wharau School (it's the first time Storylines has made kura kaupapa connections and Api and Moira – writers and storytellers of vast talent and experience in both te reo Māori and English – mostly visit those) while the rest of us travel on to Kaiti. Kaiti School is humming. Stunning murals, lots of gardens. A mihi whakatau welcomes us in and from there the four of us are led to different classrooms. 'You're with the zany teacher,' I'm told. The classroom is alive with artwork that covers the walls. The cover of my novel is up on the whiteboard. The kids are sitting on the mat and I'm ushered into a comfy chair at the front of the room. All the small faces are focussed so intently I'm almost overwhelmed. 'Mōrena kōkā Claire.' I learn here that the word 'kōkā' is like 'whaea'. I will love hearing it for the next five days. I show the kids some of Margaret Mahy's picture books, copies I've had since I was their age (six) – The Boy with Two Shadows, and Jam – that inspired me so much. The kids lean in, point at the illustrations. I tell them about how my last name used to confuse me – that I didn't know it was different to the word 'maybe' and they laugh. We talk about how words can be slippery fish. One tiny girl stands up and reads me her story about Māui slowing the sun and it's terrific – so clear. We applaud her. The 'zany' teacher tells me how every day they have 'office time' – she puts on music to help get in the zone and the kids can draw or write. There's kōkā-made magic in this room. When it's time for me to go the kids sing a waiata and I am proudly gifted a huge bottle of water and bombarded with hugs. Riverdale School is next. A dip in my stamina is a signal of what's to come. You have to keep dragging up the energy: every class is different and deserving of your best. Over time I come to find that the energy comes from the eyes. The kids looking at you just like you looked at the adults who landed in front of your class as if from outer space, bearing news of another planet. After our talks in the staff room, Maria and I make instant coffee and eat cookies while the principal tells us that in this area life can be tough and they work hard to make school a safe place. She's grateful their school lunch contract is with the YMCA who consistently deliver good food. Leftovers go home with the kids. Our last stop is Rere School. It's beautiful, around 30 kids on the roll, up in the hills – we're given great big Granny Smith apples fresh from the principal's tree. They have a superb school library with old hardbacks of Mahy's novels. We do a group presentation – the first time we get to see what we each do. We're all different – Melanie brings out instruments and helps the kids create a poem inspired by sound; Bex draws Simba from The Lion King on the whiteboard and blows their minds; Maria tells true stories about animals who served in the wars; and I talk about how stories have made me. Afterward some of the kids eagerly show us the comic book they've made together. It's so good. They're so proud. Day two: Makaraka School, Te Kura o Muriwai, St Joseph's School, Te Kura Tuatahi o te Wairoa, Wairoa College, Frasertown School, Te Kura o Waikaremoana; public event at HB Williams Memorial Library We are split up. Melanie and I go to Makaraka School and marvel at their astonishing library. There must be hundreds of picture books. We do a joint presentation using AV for the first time (I learn, quickly, how to chromecast) and the kids ask a lot of questions: a good sign, I'm learning. Anne Dickson is our van driver. She and our Hertz rental van eat the kilometres with such ease while Rosemary Tisdall keeps us on schedule. They're such safe hands I don't bother to read the spreadsheet but let myself be driven into the day's activities like a rolling stone. St Joseph's is a lovely school in Wairoa, a seaside town about an hour out of Gisborne. All of the buildings are lemon yellow. I have another instant coffee, more kai, and sit in the staff room and hear a story about the local vape shop that also sells sex toys. I do two sessions, one after the other. A talk about reading and stories with the young ones, and a worldbuilding workshop with the year 7-8s. It's the best workshop I've done: the kids have such great ideas and are so respectful of each other's thoughts. I can see them all writing their ideas down. I have no idea how far this lesson will go in their lives but I do get asked if I'll be back tomorrow. Storylines have scheduled us to do a public talk at the HB Williams Library. Katarina is the librarian who has organised it and she's got all sorts of snacks ready. A handful of people show up and we each talk about how we came to be writers before answering questions. There's a reporter there from the Gisborne Herald. She takes a photo and says maybe the article will be up by Friday. I sleep like a stone. Day Three: Ngātapa School, Te Karaka Area School, Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Whatatutu, Matawai School, Mōtū School Rosemary warns that Wednesday is the hardest. When you can't bear to repeat yourself again, when your energy is on the wane. But I love this day. We all go to Ngātapa School where there are 13 kids. We each talk for five minutes and it's wonderful to finally see Moira and Api in action. Api weaves magic with taonga pūoro, a flute he was given when he toured with an indigenous artist from America, and just two words, 'manu rōreka'. Moira is like a circus master: keeping the little faces entranced. One little boy shows me his stories about Crabby and even at age six he's got a way with sentences. After that we split up again. Melanie and I journey to weka country – Mōtū School has seven kids, and three are off sick. We are given sausage rolls and tomato sauce and sandwiches with no crusts for lunch. The kids talk about the weka, how annoying they are. We tell them those weka tales would make great stories. I leave with a handful of feijoas from a box going free by the front door. On the drive back we pick up Api and Moira and they tell us they've had the best time. Api has a new story about being distracted mid-poem by the smell of pūhā and pork bones on the boil. Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Whatatutu sounds idyllic – no school bells, working on their own time, their own way. We go to Thai Sunshine for dinner and the woman who serves us remembers all our orders – allergies and all – without writing it down. The food is so good and we're in such good spirits we vow to go back. Day four: Whangara School, Tolaga Area Bay, Makarika School, Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Waiū o Ngāti Porou After admiring ourselves on the front page of the Gisborne Herald, we drive to Whangara School. It's picturesque: sparkling sea all the way until we ascend and climb to Whale Rider country. I have a lame urge to tell Witi Ihimaera where we're going. It was his novel that showed me it first. The school is a picture of colour and trees and there's Paikea and the whale painted and carved. I love the gumboots outside the classroom and the poi hung up with the school bags. Rosemary stays with us while Anne drives Api and Moira to Tolaga Bay. Melanie and I are in the historic part of Whangara School. Small and wooden like a treehouse. They're gorgeous kids from age five to around nine. One older boy has a mind for dark stories and loves Stranger Things and Goosebumps: great taste, I tell him. After that we head to Tolaga Bay to pick up Api and Moira and go to Tokomaru Bay for Paua Pies. Api is starving and eats two. I go and visit the secondhand shop over the road and pat Pip the fox terrier. Bex buys bone earrings. Te Puea Springs is glistening and glassy as we pass. We discuss swans: how I hate them. And geese. Bex talks about picking asparagus. Bex knows a lot of things and we all agree she'd be an asset on any pub quiz team. At some point we talk about immune systems. We cover a lot of conversational ground in the van which is an excellent distraction from car sickness. I've lost count of the number of kārearea we've spied flying up from roadkill or above fields. We drop Api and Moira to Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Waiū o Ngāti Porou and the rest of us go on to Makarika, which has a roll of about 38 kids. It's on this stretch of road we see the worst of the flood damage. Massive rocks tossed into a wide open gash in the land: steel reinforcements rippled like paper. Makarika is bathed in sunlight. There's a kitchen in the middle of the school building with recipes for tomato relish and banana muffins written on a huge whiteboard. Bex leaves cute little illustrations beside them. We plate up the kai (roast chicken, buns, salad, school-made tomato relish) that's been prepared for us and sit in the sun. The kids have lunch delivered in paper containers: delicious looking mac and cheese. There's a huge box of fruit too, from the fruit in schools programme: we're encouraged to tuck into as there's much of it. Perfect little Jazz apples and tart mandarins. The session is a group presentation and it's one of my favourites. The kids are attentive and offer back their own stories to us; and a waiata to close. On the drive back to Gisborne and back to Thai Sunshine, Api tells us about living in Tokomaru Bay, his mother, and stories of the powerful wāhine Māori of this land and how their mana extended far. He and Moira talk about Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira and Ngoingoi Pewhairangi and how their work was instrumental in revitalising te reo Māori. I stupidly remark that 'Tolaga' doesn't sound like kupu Māori and Api says god knows why this place is called that. The real name is 'Uawa'. The drive goes fast. Day five – Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Ngā Uri a Māui, Gisborne Girls' High School, Waerenga-o-Kuri School Last day already. We check out of Pacific Bay Motel (lovely, central spot, highly recommend it) and drive by the protestors to give them the food we've over-bought before Anne delivers us to our various final destinations. Api and Moira to Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Ngā Uri a Māui; Maria to Gisborne Girls' High School; and Melanie, Bex and I to Waerenga-o-Kuri which is up in the hills and has magnificent views and plenty of weka. I give a presentation to the senior kids (about 13 of them) and it feels like my best. Finally got the full swing of it. There's a super keen boy in the front and he's bursting with questions. He emboldens the rest and I get the best questions of the tour so far. 'Are you the hero of your own story?''What books inspired you?' 'You're pretty.' At the airport it's weird. Too soon. We swap books. Flights are delayed. We all leave Api there and suddenly I have so many more questions to ask him. He has so many stories. We only skimmed the surface of the times he spent in a writing group with Keri Hulme, Rowley Habib, Patricia Grace. We just got started and now it's over. Afterword Certain kids stand out. The 'office time' artists at Kaiti; The Stranger Things fan at Whangara; the keen-as kid at Waerenga-o-Kuri; the St Joseph's worldbuilders; the Mōtū weka stories. Lots of others. Teachers make a school: everywhere we went kōkā were creating atmospheres of safety, resilience, manaakitanga, nourishment, play, creativity and respect. It's hard to know the impact of a 45-minute visit on a child. But the impact on us, as writers, is something like passing energy forward and getting a new wave of energy back. We write for these kids because we write for the kids in us. It's like a strange, ever-turning circuit between the writers before, the writers now, the writers ahead. The writers who came before us. Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira and Ngoingoi Pewhairangi; Margaret Mahy, Patricia Grace, Rowley Habib. They're there with us all the time in our conversation; the ones who inspired us. School libraries. Every school we went to had a library. They're essential. If you want kids to read, give them access to books. Eyes.
The Spinoff
25-05-2025
- The Spinoff
If you take anything online seriously, the joke's on you
Some quick thoughts on bait, not getting it, and the new online divide. This article was first published on Madeleine Holden's self-titled Substack. I am to internet culture what a recently released prisoner is to the outside world. The prisoner in this analogy did three years inside. From the late 2000s until 2022, I was a heavy user of social media, especially Twitter in the 2010s. My finger was on the pulse of online culture; I 'got it'; I was even something of a mover and shaker. I quit it all in April 2022, pregnant and eager to avoid brain-rot motherhood. My Twitter, Instagram and Facebook lay fallow for three disciplined, grass-touching years. In 2025, I returned to promote the godforsaken newsletter in which this piece first appeared. It's difficult for a free man to notice how the outside world shifts in the space of three years, but for the recently released prisoner, the change is like a slap in the face. Here's what's slapping my face online lately: the bait. I'm sure you're familiar with 'engagement bait' and 'rage bait' and their proliferation online, but you may not be acutely attuned to how they've morphed in three short years. When I quit social media in April 2022, X was Twitter and still had some ability to shape important conversations; Instagram and Facebook were usable, if boring; and ChatGPT wasn't in the hands of the everyman. Online was bad because of the 'attention economy', not because of 'slop'. Bursting back on the scene in the slop era is an insane experience. The website formerly known as Twitter has gone dark in every sense of the term, from the user interface to the bleak affective experience of using it. We are all served some slightly different mess from the bucket, of course, so here's what my trough looks like on X: fandom minutiae concerning celebrities I've never once cared about, Tesla ads, aspirational before-and-after photos of gender transitions (I'm not trans), explainer videos about pressing topics like whether Rumi Carter is autistic, and softcore porn. All of this comes from accounts I don't follow, which dominate my feed and – this is a new one – notifications. So far so tedious, but this is not really what I mean by bait. This is all sincere and straightforward, lowest-common-denominator entertainment: naked bodies, celebrity gossip and the now familiar capital-D Discourse. The bait I'm talking about fucks with you more, is post-post-ironic, requires intense online savvy to parse, and involves an element of deception. Here's an example: Here's what's happening in this post if you take it at face value: a woman has shared a picture of a random man's bedroom while he's on the toilet, the implication being that she's back at his place to hook up after a date. She's scanning his room for red and green flags and inviting her X following to join her, and everyone does: Tao Lin on the bookshelf, get out; unframed Malcolm X poster, cringe; Bar Italia, 🔥🔥🔥; natural deodorant, debatable. If you think this is an invasion of privacy, if you think this says something concerning about gen Z's dating ethics or the gender wars or something, [BUZZER NOISE] you don't get it. The woman who posted this picture is in a relationship with the guy whose bedroom it is, and he's in on the joke. 'you should get off your phone and stop invading the mans privacy you freak bitch', one user responded, echoing my initial gut feeling exactly, to which the boyfriend replied, 'Hey it's a joke and it's my gf and my room.' Here's one more example then I'll get to the point: Here's what's happening in this post if you take it at face value: two young women are filming themselves shopping at a discount store when a dowdy weirdo grabs their phone and starts lecturing them incoherently about objectification and commodity fetishism. Was the dowdy weirdo in the wrong? Did she have a point? [BUZZER NOISE] you idiot, you absolute idiot, it's all fake, everything online is fake. A lot of people got off the internet around the same time I did. You will have seen the thousands of 'Here's why I'm quitting Twitter' or 'My year without social media' stories. (I wrote one.) Many of us were millennials, and that made sense: we were the guinea pigs for each social media experiment so our brains rotted first. Now we're collectively grappling with how to salvage them. We have to: we're in our 30s and 40s, forming families and realising four-plus daily hours of Instagram is incompatible with raising well-adjusted kids or any other mature endeavour. But since we announced our grass-touching sabbaticals in the early 2020s, a lot of us have slunk back online and found it not quite the same as we left it; back in the mix with people who never logged off. Savvy, cynical, permanently online people. People who don't care whether content is staged or 'real'. People who can't be lured into Chicken Licken panics by well-hidden bait. People who feel (or will admit to feeling) only amusement or indifference to the things they see online. People who can digest slop. It's tempting to frame this as an old/young or millennial/gen Z divide, and that's part of it, but it's really a question of temperament: can you tell when someone's trying to get a rise out of you? Can you tolerate or even enjoy the sloppified internet, or does it make you lose your mind? Does the breakdown of truth and meaning have you rocking in a corner or hollering out the sunroof? Who do you think needs to get a grip: shitposters and engagement farmers, or the people who take them seriously? Every lifestyle journalist worth their salt knows these binaries need names, and I think it's important to caricature and insult both camps, so I'm going with 'Lickens' versus 'Pigs'. Lickens take things at face value; fall for bait and feel betrayed by it; believe in the value of truth and meaning; and kinda do honestly believe the internet is making the sky fall. Pigs take nothing online seriously; gobble down their slop with resigned indifference; step around bait the same way you avoid dogshit on the footpath; and never log off. Tag yourself, as we used to say back when my finger was nearer the pulse. Or test yourself: do you care who owns TikTok? Does the orange test annoy or concern you? Do you think Adolescence should be shown in schools? Do you feel comfortable taking a sincere stand on a moral or political issue using your real name online? Yes = Licken. No = Pig. The whole internet seems to be siloing off along these temperamental lines. You cannot survive X today without a Pig disposition. Substack is a haven for Lickens. I've never been on Bluesky or TikTok and I never will, but they seem Licken and Pig respectively. All traditional news media is Licken. 4Chan was peak Pig; Tumblr peak Licken. Allow me to don my tinfoil hat and prophesise wildly. Lickens and Pigs are going to become mutually incomprehensible enemies. Global politics will fracture even more deeply, not along gender or class lines but according to the Licken/Pig divide. There'll be Pig states and Licken states. Licken MPs will pass urgent legislation to counter whatever Pig rark-up is doing the rounds online. Shitposting Pigs will be rounded up and thrown into vans. Shady businessmen and corrupt politicians will have their schemes exposed by journalists; all they'll need to do to get Pigs onside is say they committed to the bit. All of this will be [cash register noise] for social media companies, our real and eternal rulers. This will all be very bad, or maybe very good. Crazed Lickens might be pushed to the brink and usher in an anti-tech revolution. Or maybe the cool cynicism of the Pigs will teach everyone a valuable lesson: the internet was never real. The joke was on anyone who thought it was.
Scoop
22-05-2025
- Scoop
Nadia Reid Surprises Fans With Free Release Of 2011 EP 'Letters I Wrote And Never Sent' On Bandcamp
Manchester, UK – 20 May 2025 New Zealand musician Nadia Reid has delighted fans by suddenly releasing her long-lost 2011 EP, Letters I Wrote and Never Sent, available now on Bandcamp as a free or pay-what-you-can download. The EP, which had previously been unavailable to the public, marks a special moment in Reid's career. Written and recorded when she was just 20 years old, Letters offers a raw and intimate glimpse into her early songwriting. The collection features five tracks, including the title song ' No Good Talking Man,' which showcases Reid's signature blend of heartfelt lyricism and haunting melodies. In a heartfelt note to fans on her Substack, Reid shares, 'I've always been a little shy about these early songs, but they're a part of my story. I want to give them to you now, as they are.' She describes the EP as a snapshot of her musical journey, capturing the spirit and vulnerability of her beginnings. Fans can access ' Letters' now on Nadia Reid's Bandcamp page, possibly for a limited time, as Reid states "Felt sentimental. Might delete later." The EP is available to download for free, or for a contribution of their choice. Reid is about to embark on a string of European summer dates, including Glastonbury Festival and Green Man, followed by a UK September solo tour and New Zealand & Australia shows with her band in December.
