We Are Immortal Launches Today

Friday 27 April
Media release
For immediate release

A limited edition journal showcasing the work of two local artists will launch in Wellington this evening.

We are immortal is the collaboration between photographer Emma Anderson and writer Jenah Shaw, both recent graduates and young artists at the beginning of their careers. The book, which combines three short stories with a series of black and white photography, went to print with funding raised on PledgeMe – New Zealand’s first crowdfunding website.

The launch will be followed by a city-wide poster exhibition displaying imagery from the book. Supported by Phantom Billstickers Ltd, this very public exhibition will run for three weeks from mid-May.

We are immortal will launch at 7pm this evening, Friday 27 April, at Wellington’s The Russian Frost Farmers Gallery. The book will be available for purchase through the project’s website, www.weareimmortal.co.nz, and stockists to be confirmed.

ENDS

Side by Side – Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine. Ed. Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On, Eyal Naveh. New Press, New York, 2012.

Reviewed by Jim Miles
Full Review: Review – Side by Side: Israel and Palestine | Scoop News

This is an intriguing work of historical writing. For the parameters that it has set itself it succeeds. It is written as would be expected with both sides choosing their words carefully as descriptive words and active verbs can influence the perceptions of the reader. It is a good primer text for the situation in Palestine/Israel, but there is much more material that can extend both these narratives by providing much more detail and more importantly, more context.
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From Wellington.Scoop

Friends and former colleagues attended this week’s launch of a new book written by Mike Nicolaidi. The event was held at the Film Archive in Wellington. Read more »

Imagine: The Science of Creativity by Jonah Lehrer The Text Publishing Company, 2012

Reviewed by C P Howe

Imagine: The Science of Creativity, by an implausibly young Jonah Lehrer (he was just 30 when this book was published) taps into the increasingly popular genre linking science with popular culture and the arts. Lehrer pitches himself somewhere between Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast, and Slow) and Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Outliers.) Gladwell is even quoted on the cover of Imagine praising Lehrer’s scientific and authorial expertise. Lehrer’s book takes a similar line to Outliers, with its use of well-known people as examples and case studies. With chapter titles like ‘Bob Dylan’s Brain,’ and ‘The Shakespeare Paradox,’ Lehrer is to a certain extent playing down the complexity of the content in order to not scare off readers who might be daunted by more scientific language.

Anyone who has tried to dream up a new product, or write a poem, or put paint on a canvas, knows all too well that the circumstances in which creativity happens are hard to define and predict. Lehrer acknowledges this in his introduction. In a few short pages he promises (in a breathless, fast moving and rather too clean a run through of the way a major US corporation changed the face of floor cleaning products) that his book will tell the ‘real’ story of how we imagine. I was hooked by his introduction, and I think most readers would be. But would the rest of the book deliver on his grand promise?
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My Little Geek Press Release

Educational ABC book keeps parents and kids entertained from Android to Zombie.

Palmerston North, New Zealand – April 17, 2012 – A tech-inspired ABC book for children looks to revolutionise educational books by introducing a fun, geeky twist.

Available from retail stores in a printed version or online for the iPad or iPhone, My Little Geek turns “A for Apple and B for Ball” into “A for Android and B for Binary” with quirky illustrations by Edit Sliacka.

Palmerston North-based parents Andrew and Sarah Spear created the book when they noticed that all their alphabet books were the same.
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Trafficked by Sophie Hayes, published by HarperCollins (2012)

Reviewed by Mamoon Alabbasi

Even if one is familiar with stories of human trafficking, one never ceases to be shocked when hearing the details of new ones. And shocked you will be when you read ‘Trafficked’, an autobiographical account by Sophie Hayes, a young British salesgirl who was forced into prostitution after she accompanied her boyfriend, Kas, to Italy.

Although it appears that Sophie had ample opportunities to escape from her captor, who said his girlfriend must make sacrifices for him to pay off a debt, she saw no salvation in running away as Kas had threatened to kill her younger brothers in retaliation. She felt she was “brainwashed” into thinking that there is no hope in escaping the grip of her boyfriend. For this reason she never told the Italian police her true story when they took her to the station on one occasion, nor did she attempt to flee back home when Kas was away for a whole week while she was briefly working on the streets of France, on another occasion.
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Floundering by Romy Ash (Penguin Books Australia, 2012)

Reviewed by C P Howe

Ash’s first novel, set in Australia, is distinctive and memorable. Whether it does enough to gain the widespread support that some early commentators seem to think it deserves is another matter. The story is centred on Tom, his older brother Jordy, and their mother Loretta. Their ages are not disclosed, but Jordy is probably in his early teens. Tom is a little younger. Loretta is most likely in her late twenties.

Michael Laws would undoubtedly categorise Loretta as ‘feral,’ and Ash does everything she can to re-inforce this perception. Loretta collects the two boys from her parents’ house and they head off on a road trip. Loretta doesn’t have a clue what the boys need, drives a car that is falling apart and full of rubbish, and seems to not have much money. She feeds them junk food from time to time, which she may or may not have stolen. Constantly hot and thirsty, the boys appear glad to be with their mother, as far as we can tell.
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Sr Citizen by Charles Olsen

Reviewed by Helen Heath

You can, I think, immediately pick up when reading Olsen’s poetry that he is a musician and visual artist. The rhythm of flamenco taps through his poems, which are frequently snapshots, fragmented images and instances captured.

The intense otherness we often feel when travelling is constantly present. Moments seem so vivid and the traveller feels hyper-aware. I imagine Olsen sitting outside a Spanish cafe, listening to flamenco, jotting these down. At the same time Olsen seems to be finding his place.
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Demolition by Sally Sutton, illustrated by Brian Lovelock (Walker Books 2012)

Reviewed by Ruth Brassington

It’s clear why Demolition’s dedication is to “Mum, who gave me stories, and Dad, who gave me music”. Sutton’s rhythmic story-telling, with Lovelock’s bright pictures, is a delightful action-packed offering for pre-schoolers fascinated – or even frightened – by large machinery and adults who enjoy reading rhyming language to them. The award-winning team that gave us Roadworks has made another great picture book with the same large design format and rhythmic rhyming style.

The clear primary colours of the double-page illustrations are overlaid with the dusty tones of a demo site and few words. In the hands of men and women who are clearly in control, huge realistic machines “crash” and “crunch” their way through a building. As with Roadworks, illustrated facts about machines such as bulldozers, crushers and excavators follow the story.
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A Tiger In Eden by Chris Flynn (Text Publishing 2012)

Reviewed by Andrew Jack

Billy Montgomery is a bad man, or at least so he’d have you believe. A former Loyalist hard man on the run from the law, he spends the opening of A Tiger In Eden living like the worlds toughest backpacker in Thailand. Enjoying the beaches, the brawling and every female tourist he can talk into bed, we know Billy is running from something terrible in his past:
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