How are you spending your time during lock-down?
Reading, writing, editing (my main job), gardening, walking, cooking, communicating with friends and family, and various volunteer work for several community groups: King Street Artworks, NZ Pacific Studio and Wairarapa Word.
Have you read any good books lately?
So many good books!
All Who Live on Islands by Rose Lu -- I really love these frank and open-hearted autobiographical stories.
How I Get Ready by Ashleigh Young -- the work I liked best within: 'Process' on page 58-9.
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren -- it's relevant to my upcoming exhibition, Family Tree Whakapapa, with my three artist-sisters: Susanne Slavick, Sarah Slavick, and elin o'Hara slavick.
Crescent Moon by Ans Westra and Adrienne Jansen -- I appreciate first-hand accounts of Muslims in Aotearoa, also comes as an exhibition. - relevant with Masterton soon becoming a resettlement community.
Chur, Proust by Wendy Brandon, set in Wairarapa, with images taken over a single weekend, dedicated to Harvey Benge.
Collected Poems of e.e. cummings, edited by George James Firmage - at over 1100 pages, I dip into this most every night, bedside.
Rereading my own Fifty Stories Fifty Images, set in Hong Kong, as I work on my next book, Town, of stories set in Wairarapa and Aotearoa.
I look forward to reading Juan Du's The Shenzhen Experiment - The Story of China's Instant City and Hinemoana Baker's Funkhaus.
Have you listened to any good podcasts or music?
Just this morning I joined the online hui with Creative New Zealand - I found the comments and questions by creative practitioners across the country inspiring and eye-opening, with a central one being: should there be an artist's wage?
If you could have your own Mad Hatters tea party, catered for by the Featherston Booktown Country Tea and Cakes volunteers, which writers would you invite and what would you most like to eat?
I would love Cantonese food around a large round table. Let's see if these people could join me: Pip Adam, Hinemoana Baker, Bei Dao, Will Connor, Juan Du, Gerard Henry, Tammy Ho Lai-ming, Luo Hui, Chad McKee, Zoe Meager, elin o'Hara slavick, Patti Smith, Caren Wilton, and Wong Yankwai.
Do you have a favourite author or genre at the moment?
I always read several genres at once. I like the blend. See question #1 for recent non-fiction, essays, poetry, photography, and question #4 for the various writers I've been reading.
In a perfect world who would you most like to hear speak at the next Featherston Booktown?
I would enjoy singer-writers, such as Hinemoana Baker and/or Patti Smith.
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