Public Address: Busytown

Tell You What: A Nonfiction Giveaway!

Jolisa Gracewood — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 12:18:00 +1300

When Susanna Andrew and I sat down to write our proposal for that old-fashioned thing, a book on paper, we wanted to make the book we wanted to read. What we wanted was to sit down each summer to a collection of powerful nonfiction from the year that was: an annual scoop of fresh hot words, salty and strong. Like the Best American Essays series (and its more eclectic spin-off, The Best American Non-Required Reading), but – well, our own.
We knew there’d be more than enough material – New Zealand has so many fabulous writers, journalists, and essayists – and we knew…

Beware of the Leopard

Jolisa Gracewood — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:33:00 +1300

Democracy is a funny old thing, an exercise in trust. We concentrate expertise and execution into the hands of the few, in the expectation that they will be steered by the will of the many. Hence town hall discussions, regular invitations for feedback, and public hearings on matters of note.
Hence also the deeply rooted distrust of the process and its occasionally wilful opacity, as captured by the late, great Douglas Adams:

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went…

Good as gold

Jolisa Gracewood — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:56:00 +1200

Everyone should have read the book by now. No, not Dirty Politics (although you should have read that too). The other one that came out quietly at the end of last year and has become the silent witness to this entire election campaign: Max Rashbrooke’s Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis. The one you probably feel, at this point, like you have read.
Last July, I went to the Auckland launch. It began with a lecture by Professor Robert Wade that was so popular, the lecture theatre overflowed. Inequality was evidently an idea people were itching to talk about, to see…

School bully

Jolisa Gracewood — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:23:00 +1300

When the National government introduced National Standards four years ago, I didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing. I’d been watching our older son acclimatise to public schools in New Haven, Connecticut, where kids and teachers alike struggled to breathe freely in the toxic atmosphere of No Child Left Behind.
You can read that story – my long, slow realisation that the testing-tail was wagging the educational dog – here, if you haven’t already. Go on. I’ll wait. It’s a good one.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked at the time.
I was pretty confident…

“Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”

Jolisa Gracewood — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:05:00 +1200

The news that Margaret Mahy has written all her stories – for that is what her death means to us as readers, while for her family it is a whole other dimension of inevitable, unfathomable loss -- came to me via Twitter. At first a whisper, then a rustle, and then suddenly words and sentences tumbled down the page as we shared the shock of it. Shock turned to sorrow, which steadily transformed into tribute. People recalled not just indelible lines from life-changing books, but the circumstances of reading them. We remembered where we were, who we were with, and who…

Sons for the Return Home

Jolisa Gracewood — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +1200

Over the years, you have all been so good to me. The last time I asked here for wisdom about moving house, it was on behalf of a two-year-old. Now I’m asking for myself, because this time, the Berenstain Bears just aren’t going to cut it. (Although if you do happen to know of a fixer-upper in Auckland that is shaped like a real tree, in a neighbourhood of friendly squirrels and bunnies, please send me the address.)
For those who haven’t caught up with the news: we’re coming home.
Now, let me be clear (as our current President is…

What was lost

Jolisa Gracewood — Tue, 03 May 2011 08:42:00 +1200

This morning, my older son said “Hey, Jojo! Watch this!” as he playfully piloted a plane into the ground, on his computer, for no reason, just for fun. Completely out of the blue.
I burst into tears. Not completely out of the blue. He had no idea why.
It does my head in: he’s a very well-informed little pitcher with exceptionally big ears, but he’s made it to the age of nine and a half without knowing the full facts of that day.
This is my theory about the long delay in Obama’s speech last night: that he was giving…

A new (old) sensation

Jolisa Gracewood — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 16:25:00 +1300

The piece below originally appeared in the January 2011 issue of Metro magazine, billed rather provocatively on the cover as "What's wrong with NZ novels?"
I'm grateful for the softening effect of that question mark: "A few diagnostic gestures towards a working theory of some current plot trends in the New Zealand literary novel" would have been more accurate, but probably wouldn't have helped sell copies of the magazine.
The article got a lot of feedback; most of it positive, and pretty much all of it off the record (both of which surprised me). One correspondent summed up the general…

She loves you, YA, YA, YA!

Jolisa Gracewood — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:29:00 +1300

Up-and-coming New Zealand author Karen Healey first caught my eye via her LiveJournal blog, the magnificently named Attention Rebellious Jezebels. One day, as a consciousness & self-esteem-raising exercise, she asked her readers to write in and explain why they were awesome. The resulting love-in made my day.
Turns out Karen herself is not short on awesome: a book-loving globe-trotting big sister of three who has spent several years in Japan, she has an M.A. (with a thesis investigating SuicideGirls.com's claim to be "empowering erotica"), and is currently completing a Ph.D. on contemporary superhero comics as fan-created text. At the University of…

A Classical Education: Chapter 4 Going On 5

Jolisa Gracewood — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:57:00 +1300

On Dialogue It is true, my child, that dialogue is how we come to understand the world. By steady question and answer, between the curiosity of youth and the wisdom of age, we approach truth. And yet though there may not be an end to your questioning, there may sometimes be an end to the answering, as when you find yourself yet again in a conversational cul-de-sac with your mother on the exact details of the demise in battle of Obi wan Kenobi, vis-à-vis the death by old age of Yoda. There are some things we do not know, or…