AOTEAROA NZ AUTHORS
2024 curated booklist
Rangikura
Tayi Tibble
Tayi Tibble returns on the heels of her incendiary debut with a bold new follow-up. Barbed and erotic, vulnerable and searching, Rangikura asks readers to think about our relationship to desire and exploitation. Moving between hotel lobbies and all-night clubs, these poems chronicle life spent in spaces that are stalked by transaction and reward. Here is a poet staking out a sense of freedom on her own terms in times that very often feel like end times. Tibble’s range of forms and sounds are dazzling. Written with Māori moteatea, purakau, and karakia (chants, legends, and prayers) in mind, Rangikura explores the way the past comes back, even when she tries to turn her back on it. At once a coming-of-age and an elegy to the traumas born from colonization, especially the violence enacted against indigenous women, Rangikura interrogates not only the poets’ pain, but also that of her ancestors. The intimacy of these poems will move readers to laughter and tears. Speaking to herself, sometimes to the reader, these poems arc away from and return to their ancestral roots to imagine the end of the world and a new day. They invite us into the swirl of nostalgia and exhaustion produced in the pursuit of an endless summer. A new highpoint from a writer of endless talent.
Category: NZ Authors, Poetry
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Racism, abuse
ISBN: 9781776920730
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Honouring Our Ancestors
Edited by Alison Green, Leonie Pihama
In these rigorous and challenging essays, writers from Aotearoa and Turtle Island (Canada and the United States of America) explore the well-being of takatapui, two-spirit, and Maori and Indigenous LGBTQI+ communities. Themes include resistance, reclamation, empowerment, transformation and healing. Central to Honouring Our Ancestors is the knowledge that, before colonisation, Indigenous peoples had their own healthy understandings of gender, sexual identities and sexuality. Some of these understandings have survived the onslaught of colonisation; others require decolonisation so that our Indigenous nations can begin to heal. Through this lens, the writers gathered here contribute their knowledge and experience of structural and social change. This collection was inspired by two major research projects: the HONOR Project, which investigated well-being in American Indian and Alaskan Native two-spirit communities, and the Honour Project Aotearoa, which investigated Kaupapa Maori strengths-based understandings of the health and well-being of takatapui and Maori LGBTQI+ communities. Edited by Alison Green and Leonie Pihama, Honouring Our Ancestors upholds the independent authorities and languages that distinguish our Indigenous nations and celebrates the relationships that bind us. Decolonised Indigenous knowledges are offered as a wellspring of unlimited potential for Indigenous communities and nations everywhere.
Category: NZ Authors, Non-Fiction
Representation: Takatāpui, two-spirit, diverse genders, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781776920730
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Greta & Valdin
Rebecca K Reilly
It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Maaori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.
Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary…) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop intruding: her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.
Category: New Adult, NZ Authors
Representation: Takatāpui, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Mental illness, racism, homophobia, sexual activity
ISBN: 9781668028049
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Not That I’d Kiss a Girl
Lil O’Brien
Lil O’Brien accidentally outed herself to her parents at the age of nineteen when they overheard her talking to a friend about liking girls. Half an hour later she found herself on the side of the road, with instructions to come back and pick up her suitcase the next day.
What follows is a heartbreaking yet hugely funny story of a young Kiwi girl – the deputy head girl from a posh private school – coming to grips with her sexuality in the face of stark disapproval from her parents.
Bit by bit, Lil finds the inner strength to pull herself into an entirely new world. Along the way she’s called out for looking too straight in a gay bar, tries to break in to the lesbian in-crowd and figures out how to send her internet lover back to America. She falls in lust over a knotted soccer shoelace, explores how the hell to have sex with a girl and dates four women at once – unsuccessfully.
Lil’s story is an insightful and honest look at how you figure out whether you’re gay, bi or whatever – and deal with what comes next. It’s an essential read for anyone who’s had to fight for who they are and what they believe in.
Category: Autobiography, Non-Fiction, NZ Author
Representation: Lesbian
Content Warnings: Discrimination, substance use/abuse
ISBN: 9781988547589
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tane’s War
Brendaniel Weir
One lifetime, two battles. It’s 1953 and Briar is a dreamer living with his father in Pukekohe. His behaviour sees him sent to a training farm to be “turned into a man”. But the plan backfires when his arrival awakens feelings in fellow shearer, Aussie. Tane is the farm foreman and his Māori heritage sets him apart. Briar and Aussie threaten the walls Tane has built around his own secret past; walls created in the trenches of WW1. Tane is confronted with a choice. He cannot change history but maybe he can help change the future.
Category: NZ Author, Historical Fiction
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9781988547589
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues
H.S. Valley
Tim Te Maro and Elliott Parker, classmates at Fox Glacier High School for the Magically Adept, have never gotten along. But when they both get dumped the day before the big egg-baby assignment, they reluctantly decide to ditch their exes and work together. When the two boys start to bond over their magically enchanted egg-baby, they realise that beneath their animosity is something like friendship… or physical attraction. Soon, a no-strings-attached hook-up seems like a good idea. Just for the duration of the assignment. After all, they don’t have feelings for each other, so what could possibly go wrong?
Category: NZ Author, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult
Representation: Takatāpui, gay, lesbian, bisexual, diverse sexualities
Content Warnings: Discrimination, mental illness, sexual activity, substance use/abuse
ISBN: 9781760508753
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tōku Whānau Rerehua / My Beautiful Family
Rauhina Cooper
How was school today, Huia’ her mum asked. ‘It was okay … but our news topic is our family.’
Huia feels too shy to talk about her family to her classmates because she has two mums. Will her friends laugh at her and tease her?
Over the next days, she learns that some whānau have a step-parent, some have one parent, and some children are adopted. There are all sorts of families! So when her turn comes to show her family photo, she doesn’t have to be shy.
Written in te reo Māori and translated into English (te reo appears first on the pages), Rauhina Cooper’s story is beautifully illustrated by award-winning illustrator Izzy White.
Category: NZ Author, Children, Children’s Picture Book
Representation: Gay, lesbian, takatāpui
Content Warnings: No warnings apply
ISBN: 9781760508753
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Tahuri
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku
Tahuri is a moving collection of short stories by Maori writer Ngahuia Te Awekotuku depicting the title character – Tahuri – coming of age in New Zealand. Tahuri is not interested in going with the boys, Tahuri likes watching the big girls, she likes watching the women dressed in men’s clothes, and finally Tahuri likes Mirimiri, a young woman like herself.
Category: NZ Author, Short Stories
Representation: Takatāpui, lesbian
Content Warnings: sexual violence, racism, homophobia
ISBN: 9780473385552
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Gideon the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir
The Emperor needs necromancers.
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.
Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.
Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.
Of course, some things are better left dead.
Category: Fantasy, NZ Author, Science Fiction, Series
Representation: Lesbian
Content Warnings: Character death, violence, suicide, gore
ISBN: 9781250313188
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Lamplighter
Kerry Donovan Brown
Old World lamplighters once lit the streets of cities like Constantinople, Alexandria and Rome. In the countryside, in the new colonies, the Lamplighter doesn’t light passages through the dark; he lights perimeters against it, and the wildernesses beyond.
In the tiny South Island beach settlement of Porbeagle, Candle is apprentice to his grandfather, Ignis. But as the community prepares to celebrate the Lamplighter’s retirement, old stories take on darker hues. If the origins of folklore are in a sunken history of violence and prejudice, what is the price of Candle’s freedom?
Inhabiting a luminous space between realism and parable, between an all-too-familiar contemporary New Zealand and a magical otherworld, Lamplighter is as captivating as it is unsettling. It is a remarkable debut from the winner of the 2012 Adam prize.
Category: Adult, NZ Authors, Fantasy
Representation: Gay
Content Warnings: Discrimination, abuse, violence, substance use/abuse, sexual activity
ISBN: 9780864739162
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Both Sides of the Moon
Alan Duff
Jimmy understands all about belonging and not belonging. He sees himself as part of both sides of the moon; ‘…kind of blackman, sort of n*****, in my own country, and kind of white, sort of The Man, the other half of me.
I am torn yet I am more whole since I am both…’He is part of a fractured family, and it’s only when he learns about his forebear – a brave warrior who became an outcast from his tribe – that he begins to understand the darker implications of his heritage.
Category: NZ Author
Representation: Takatāpui
Content Warnings: Abuse, character death, self-harm, suicide, sexual violence, sexual activity, substance use/abuse, violence
ISBN: 9781250313188
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Soulfire
Chaz Harris
Soulfire is an LGBTQ-inclusive upper middle-grade fantasy novel by Chaz Harris (Promised Land/Maiden Voyage).Twelve-year-old George Grimes is afraid of growing up. If becoming a teenager means he has to stop believing in Grandad’s tall tales about Mythika – a magical place where artists have special powers – then he wants to stay twelve forever. On the eve of George’s thirteenth birthday, a man with a forked beard and a crooked nose clambers out of the Grandfather clock in the upstairs hallway. The man claims to be from Mythika, where the evil Lord Helwrath, once a boy who lost his imagination, has been murdering Creators – artists who use their imaginations to keep Helwrath’s power in check. When George enters Mythika, he joins forces with a talented group of young artists to stop Helwrath before it’s too late. However, a long-kept family secret leads some to believe that George can create the only power strong enough to fight Helwrath…Soulfire.
Category: NZ Author, Fantasy, Children, Children’s Intermediate Book
Representation: Gay
Content Warnings: Unknown
ISBN: 9780473488772
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)
Things in the Sea are Touching Me
Linda Jane Keegan
You’ll squawk, screech, yelp… and laugh out loud at the surprises for all on this funny-sunny family day at the beach.
When a small child goes to the seaside with her Mum and Ma, she is unprepared for ‘things’ floating in the water. Ma explains what each one is and that it is nothing to be afraid of… then gets a big fright herself when Mum grabs her ankle!
Category: NZ Author, Children, Children’s Picture Book
Representation: Lesbian
Content Warnings: no warnings apply
ISBN: 9781775435709
Find it in your local library (WorldCat)