Emily Writes
Aotearoa rainbow author feature
Emily Writes published her first piece of writing on her blog in March 2015, writing about the difficulties of settling her newborn baby to sleep at 3 a.m. Following its breakout success, she has since published three books and numerous pieces about the struggles of parenting. Her first book, Rants in the Dark (2017), was adapted as a play and toured around New Zealand.
In addition to her own newsletter, Emily has also written columns for Metro magazine, The New Zealand Herald and the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly. She is also the editor of The Spinoff Parents.
Instagram: @emilywritesnz
Facebook: @emilywritesnz
Substack: emilywrites.substack.com
Q: Ko wai koe?
Emily: I’m Emily Writes. I’m a queer, neurodivergent author, writer, activist and volunteer. I’ve written three books – Rants in the Dark, Is it Bedtime Yet?, and Needs Adult Supervision. And I make my living writing a newsletter unoriginally titled Emily Writes Weekly! I’m also a mum of two kids, a lazy greyhound, and two adorable cats.
Q: What inspires you as a rainbow author?
Emily: I’m really inspired by parents and children – particularly parents and children from neurodivergent, disabled, medically fragile and queer communities. That’s probably because they’re my communities too – and I see the beauty, courage, and strength in those communities. I am inspired by activists and advocates and anyone who tries to make the world a better place – if you’re fighting for change and peace in the world or your whare, I’m with you.
Support Emily’s Work!
Rants in the Dark
Emily Writes
Popular blogger Emily Writes gives words of encouragement to sleep-deprived parents everywhere.
With two small boys, both non-sleepers, Emily finds herself awake in the wee small hours night after night. Her writing is often done then, and she offers her own often hilarious and always heart-warming experiences to other exhausted parents. She describes the frustrations as well as the tender moments of real parenting, as opposed to what you thought it was going to be like, or what well-meaning advice-givers tell you it should be like.
A must-have for all new parents and parents-to-be.
Category: NZ Author, Non-fiction
Representation: Bisexual
Content Warnings: unknown
Published: 2017 by Random House NZ
ISBN: 9780143770183
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Is it Bedtime Yet?
Emily Writes and friends
A collection of writings on being a parent in Aotearoa – from hilarious to heart-breaking.
The experience of parenthood is different for everyone. And every day can be different too. Read a hilarious and moving collection of perspectives from the well-loved Emily Writes and her friends. Some of them are experienced writers, others have put pen to paper for the first time. If it takes a village to raise a child, then this writing comes from the whole village. Yet every experience is a real one, and you will feel the joy, the horror, the love and the heart-ache as you read about birthday parties, vasectomies, hugs, hospitals and, of course, sleepless nights.
Category: NZ Author, Non-fiction
Representation: Bisexual
Content Warnings: unknown
Published: 2018 by Random House NZ
ISBN: 9780143772835
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Needs Adult Supervision
Emily Writes
Needs Adult Supervision is Emily Writes’ take on growing up and feeling like a real adult. This book looks at the growing pains of kids and their parents and their attempts to navigate a world that’s changing by the minute. Emily paints a vivid picture of all the feelings, fortunes and failures that come with trying to parent when you don’t always feel up for the task. What it feels like to be learning at the same time your kids are. What happens when we get radically honest about the challenges parents are facing.
In Emily’s inimitable way it’s incredibly insightful and hilarious, and leads to the odd tear being shed along the way.
From trying to convince your child’s teachers on Zoom that your house isn’t falling apart around you, or staging a funeral for a sea creature, to rescuing a dog that rescues you – Emily’s stories will have you reflecting on what it means to grow up.
Funny, sad, thoughtful, inspiring and ultimately up-lifting for parents at all stages of life.
Category: NZ Author, Non-fiction
Representation: Bisexual
Content Warnings: unknown
Published: 2022 by Random House NZ
ISBN: 9781761048494
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Emily’s rainbow book recommendations!
Articulations
Henrietta Bollinger
A well-known writer, activist, and disability rights advocate, Henrietta Bollinger’s debut essay collection speaks to their experiences as a queer, disabled person, and as a twin. Articulations is a timely, personal, and poignant appraisal of life in Aotearoa New Zealand. Soundtracked by the Topp Twins, Anika Moa, Woody Guthrie and more, Bollinger’s essays take us on a journey from first crushes and first periods to parliamentary reform and Disability Pride. They challenge the norms of our ableist society, asking us to consider better ways of being with each other and ourselves.
“I love the sense of “crip community” threaded through this book, and the insightful and frank exploration of growing up disabled, with thoughtful political commentary neatly interwoven. Living a disabled life in an ableist world is engagingly described with grace, humour and passion, mercifully free from inspiration porn. I finished reading wanting more.” – Robyn Hunt
Category: NZ Authors, Short Stories, Non-Fiction
Representation: Non-Binary
Content Warnings: Unknown
Published: Tender Press, New Zealand, 2023
ISBN: 9780473678265
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
he’s so MASC
Chris Tse
In How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, Chris Tse took readers back to a shocking 1905 murder. Now he brings the reader much closer to home. He’s So MASC confronts a contemporary world of self-loathing poets and compulsive liars, of youth and sexual identity, and of the author as character – pop star, actor, hitman, and much more. These are poems that delve into worlds of hyper-masculine romanticism and dancing alone in night clubs. With its many modes and influences, He’s So MASC is an acerbic, acid-bright, yet unapologetically sentimental and personal reflection on what it means to perform and dissect identity, as a poet and a person.
Category: Poetry, NZ Author
Representation: Gay, BIPOC
Content Warnings: No warnings apply
Published: Auckland University Press, New Zealand, 2018
ISBN: 9781869408879
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Meatlovers
Rebecca Hawkes
In this dazzling first collection, acclaimed Wellington poet and Canterbury farm-girl Rebecca Hawkes takes a generous bite from the excesses of earthly flesh – first ‘Meat’, then ‘Lovers’.
‘Meat’ is a coming of age in which pony clubs, orphaned lambs and dairy-shed delirium are infused with playful menace and queer longings. Between bottle-fed care and killing-shed floors, the farm is a heady setting for love and death.
In ‘Lovers’, the poet casts a wry eye over romance, from youthful sapphic infatuation to seething beastliness. Sentimental intensity is anchored by an introspective comic streak, in which ‘the stars are watching us / and boy howdy are they judgemental’.
This collection of queasy hungers offers a feast of explosive mince & cheese pies, accusatory crackling, lab-grown meat and beetroot tempeh burger patties, all washed down with bloody milk or apple-mush moonshine. It teems with sensuous life, from domesticated beasts to the undulating mysteries of eels, as Hawkes explores uneasy relationships with our animals and with each other.
Tender and brutal, seductive and repulsive, Meat Lovers introduces a compelling new mode of hardcore pastoral.
Category: NZ Author, Poetry
Representation: Bisexual
Content Warnings: Unknown
Published: Auckland University Press, New Zealand, 2022
ISBN: 9781869409630
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Hera Lindsay Bird
Hera Lindsay Bird
This impressive debut has established Hera Lindsay Bird as a good girl………with many beneficial thoughts and feelings………
with themes as varied as snow and tears, the poems in this collection shine with the fantastic cream of who she is………juxtaposing many classical and modern breezes
Bird turns her prescient eye on love and loss, and what emerges is like a helicopter in fog………or a bejewelled Christmas sleigh, gliding triumphantly through the contemporary aesthetic desert………
this is at once an intelligent and compelling fantasy of tenderness………
heartbreaking and charged with trees………without once sacrificing the forest………
Category: NZ Author, Poetry
Representation: Bisexual
Content Warnings: Sexual activity, self-harm
Published: Victoria University Press, New Zealand, 2016
ISBN: 9781776560714
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Head Girl
Freya Daly Sadgrove
‘The first time I read Freya’s work I thought . . . uh oh. And then I thought, you have got to be kidding me. And then I thought, God fucking dammit. And then I walked around the house shaking my head thinking . . . OK – alright. And then – finally – I thought, well well well – like a smug policeman. Listen – she’s just the best. I’m going to say this so seriously. She is, unfortunately, the absolute best. Trying to write a clever blurb for her feels like an insult to how right and true and deadly this collection is. God, she’s just so good. She’s the best. She kills me always, every time, and forever.’ —Hera Lindsay Bird
Category: NZ Author, Poetry
Representation: Bisexual
Content Warnings: Sexual activity, self-harm, suicide, mental illness
Published: Victoria University Press, New Zealand, 2020
ISBN: 9781776562961
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)