ANNA MACKENZIE

Festivals are fun. There's the standing on a stage in front of an audience of hundreds with the opportunity to talk about your work....

I had a day-long meeting in Auckland yesterday (I know: Sunday. It’s a writer’s life…). A lot of my meetings these days are online or...

Workshops, Book Week, Bookshop Day, the HB Arts Festival and a quick (business) trip to the big smoke: October is shaping up to be a busy...

Late July heralded Evie's official arrival into the world (though she'd been with me far longer!). The launch, held in the beautiful...

​ Launching a new book is an exciting thing, a beginning but also an ending. It marks the moment when the job is truly complete, and...

Africa excels at bureaucracy. No doubt the knack was acquired during the colonial past, but the locals have gone on to develop a...

Flying in Africa is a heady mix. I’m not much of an aviator, airsickness having too often prevailed, but sweeping low along the dry bed...

Evie is 18 and eager to tell you her story. Astonishing to think she was born in both 1897 and 2011 (when I first began thinking about...

Bulawayo feels like a city in reversion, subsistence poverty overlaid with lush decay. Once grand houses stand empty, crumbling as...

You can learn a lot about a place by reading the local signage. Yesterday a restaurant advised that ‘Firearms and or dangerous weapons...