Keri Kaa, Hohi Ngapera Te Moana Keri Kaa, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou, CNZM QSO, was also winner of Te Tohu a Ta Kingi Ihaka in 2016, in recognition of lifetime contribution to Nga Toi Māori and strengthening Māori culture, as well as many other awards; and a much-beloved arts matriarch. …

by Marian Evans Some beautiful things happened for Spiral in 2021. Poet and academic Emer Lyons offered to select and introduce a major collection of Spiral founder Heather McPherson’s poems: some already published and others that Heather left ready for publication when she died in 2017. Emer calls the collection…

I loved Kim Hunt’s crime novel The Beautiful Dead when I read it. Loved her protagonist, Cal Nyx. Could see the movie. Now The Beautiful Dead is short-listed in the Ngaio Marsh Awards, Best First Novel category. And Kim has completed the second in the Cal Nyx series, The Quarry…

Backstory — In 2005, Aotearoa New Zealand was proud of our women feature filmmakers; and of our equitable allocation of taxpayer funding. No gender problem here, I was told by authoritative people: we have Jane Campion, Niki Caro, Gaylene Preston, Christine Jeffs. …

Poet and activist Heather McPherson founded Spiral in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand in 1975. This ongoing publication includes highlights from Heather McPherson’s and Spiral’s herstory and some images and writing that we cherish, from other sources; and occasionally news about current projects. Key Spiral information is available, alongside details of its associated organisations, Women’s Gallery and Kidsarus 2, at Anne Else’s Women Together project for Manatū Taonga, the Ministry of Culture & Heritage; and in Wikipedia, thanks to @chocmilk.

Some Good Things: But *Problems Persist* — I’m a huge Roseanne Liang fan. For her stunning work on screen, like Shadow in the Cloud, winner of the Audience Award at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival (now available here). For all the webseries she’s made with JJ Fong, Perlina Lau and Ally Xue, as Flat3: they’re highlights…

(first published 25 July 2015) The first part of this series delighted in the roar of the collective, global Activist Complex Female Protagonist who works to improve representation of women in front of and behind the camera. …

Book review: ‘The Bone People’. Keri Hulme. Spiral, 1984. First published in ‘The Republican’, November 1984, 4–7. Republished with kind permission from Merata Mita’s whānau. NGA MIHI ATU KI A KOE KERI. If to choose a language is to choose a world, then being denied a language is being denied…

It’s gold, listening to in-person submissions to the Wellington City Council. I love seeing and hearing people whose submissions are based on lived experience in a particular place, caring about a particular community. …