Lawrence & Gibson Publishing

10/05/2024

11 months on from launch, Turncoat hoons back onto the Unity Books Wellington best seller list. #10 this week - smooth!

Two new books from local poets rocket onto the charts.

05/05/2024

Lovely Sunday afternoon hearing from some of this crop of Maori authors who made the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist. Tīhema, first up, giving the context and then reading from the section where Daniel goes to a job interview...

04/05/2024

"If you’re lost, a meme dictionary or a quick google will come in handy but it won't matter, as there are enough wry references you will easily recognise that will keep you amused. Turncoat is hilarious. The satirical approach provides an accessible portal for Tīhema Baker’s critique of casual racism and institutional conflicts for Māori working in the Public Service." Stella from Volume.

Opening with the epigraph ”Live. Laugh, Love. — Ancient Human proverb,” you know that Turncoat isn’t going to be your standard Aotearoa fiction (that’s no surprise coming from the Lawrence and Gibson stable.) Your curiosity is piqued. “Ancient Human proverb” — sweet irony. I can alre...

02/05/2024

It used to be consider naff to set a book in Aotearoa. But here we are setting humans in Kelburn and Waiheke Island. Two years on from the double launch of these family-oriented yet NSFW novels.

30/04/2024

Kia ora to anyone curious about the Milk Island book as mentioned in this primer from Hera LB.

What to say when pesky journalists ask gotcha questions like 'can you name a single book you’ve ever read?' and 'did you read it, or did you just see the movie?'

18/04/2024

Tīhema Baker - Writer has been shortlisted as best novel for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards - presentation of the awards will be held at the Continuity 2024 convention on 6-7 July 2024 in Wellington.

The finalists for this year’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards can be found on Sir Julius Vogel Award Finalists – 2024. The finalists page also has links to the Long List, information about the SJV Voter Packet, and information about Voting. Congratulations to our finalists! About the author: Lynelle How...

09/04/2024

I kind of feel like everyone following this page has already bought a copy of Turncoat so, to accompany this feature, I ask you to put Turncoat to the front of the to-be-read pile. And if you have already read it, why not ink your name on the front page and lend it to a friend?

The policy advisor’s recent novel Turncoat parodies the experiences of Māori public servants working in government.

05/04/2024

Book o' the week, dawgs, courtesty of Volume - p.s. the whole referendum on Māori wards is dumb AF and propelled by ignorant right wing resentment.

The public service is hot news this week with cuts announced and more cuts to come. It fact, all year the Wellington folk who make the wheels of government turn have been in the churn of the news cycle. Not far behind are increasingly loud noises from the coalition government about co-governance and

27/03/2024

"I am left thinking that the most important question for readers is whether a settler-colonial state will ever serve the colonised. Turncoat’s high-ranking humans face this moral quandary and this ends up being the most incisive and caustic critique in the book. It is a brief scene of confrontation before the high-ranking human turns their back on Daniel to continue with their mahi. Ultimately, Turncoat left me with many more questions, the most important being: Is it better to be in or out?"

What if Pākehā were subjected to the same colonisation as Māori? Matariki Williams travels into the sci-fi world of 'Turncoat' - where an all-too-familiar narrative of colonisation plays out amongst aliens and humans.

23/03/2024

Great pic of Tīhema Baker - Writer from our pals at The Cuba Press - Tīhema was speaking at the Watermark: Otaki writers of beach, river and wetland event this weekend.

Tīhema Baker

19/03/2024

You can't spell community without... MUTINY! That's right, L&G collective member praises an author published by Moa Press... aren't we supposed to only talk of the 'undoubted brilliance' of ourselves?! Naw, just jokes. Anyway... check out the rich insights from Brannavan on the new novel, AMMA by Saraid de Silva.

The debut novel by Saraid de Silva navigates the migrant experience across generations, and the ways in which women persist.

15/03/2024

Knocking through a few hundred more Turncoats over the weekend because it sneaked back onto the Neilsen Bookscan top 10 this past week and high schools keep ordering classroom sets. I think the only other book we've had that for is Sprigs by Brannavan. Maybe Sodden Downstream, too?

07/03/2024

New short story from Tīhema Baker - Writer as guest author for this issue of Starling. Check out the whole Issue 17.

Divers, they’re called. I used to think there was something, I dunno, impressive about them. Going back to the Homeworld, dropping down into the ruins, tryna find lost treasure and all that. Sounded kinda exciting, I guess. Something to get the blood pumping again.

05/03/2024

Congrats to all the short listed Ockham New Zealand Book Awards authors and publishers. Big shout out to Dead Bird Books for keeping the indie flame alive. All power to the writers!

The 16 books still in the running for Aotearoa's biggest literary prizes.

27/02/2024

Tīhema and Emma get the Tara Black Comics treatment from their weekend session at Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts.

25/02/2024

Great weekend in the book portion of the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts with both Thomasin and Tīhema having one on one sessions. Many thanks to Pip Adam and Emma Wehipeihana for their rich questions and connections to the two books.

23/02/2024

"Turncoat is an exceptional book, asking its readers to consider the opportunities that truly honouring a covenant/treaty can present. It is beautifully plotted and original, comedic while deadly serious, and excitingly genre defying."

Humans are demonstrative, affectionate, aliens much more formal.

21/02/2024

L&G founding editor Murdoch Stephens will be in the retail trade from 5-10pm on Friday having a time of it with friends from the publishing, retails and performance world. Come bye for a chat and one of the last 5% of Rat King Landlords that haven't been shuffled out the door. 🥳

19/02/2024

Last two weeks in a row Tīhema has featured at #7 on the Unity Wellington bestseller list. I guess that is what happens with best sellers... best sellers gonna sell... now if we could just get round to ensuring the binder is back in 100% working order!

A new local memoir flies to the top of the chart in Wellington.

14/02/2024

Retail time! We're working with the other Rebel Press collectives to furnish yr minds at Performance Arcade. We'll be on harbourside one week from today.

The PA2024 Pop-Up Bookstore presents curated a selection of books and merchandise for PA2024 that engages with mātiro whakamua and the programmed works. We are thrilled to welcome Book Haven + Rebel Press as our bookstore hosts and collaborators this year. 

13/02/2024

Great review of Thomasin Sleigh's latest novel (and previous two!) from the inimitable Pip Adam ahead of their conversation at the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts chat in 10 days.

Today Pip talks to Jesse about author Thomasin Sleigh, who Pip is talking to for the Aotearoa New Zealand Arts Festival.

11/02/2024

Turncoat gets a 10/10 review from our pals in the books trade Wardini Books

Woah! A couple of heavyweight awesome reads this week on The Wonderful World of Wardini Books on Radio Hawke's Bay.

Turncoat by Tīhema Baker - Writer. An Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlister and, I predict, soon to be found on recommended and prize lists all of the universe. Absolutely brilliant.

Anna O by Matthew Blake. What a twisty turny page turner!

Click here:
https://radiohawkesbay.org.nz/Programmes/Details.aspx?PID=e145c042-a02c-4ec4-afaf-4e8e6164d6d0

Thanks for listening. Lou x
Lawrence & Gibson Publishing HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

10/02/2024

Here's how we make our covers (especially if there is no CNZ funding as with many of us last year): the collective and the author collaborate on a basic design... title, image, author's name. We make a dozen options that are wildly different, then narrow it down through a marvelous committee approach until all parts seem to be in the right place.

Then, we pay a small amount to a professional designer friend to take over and move the parts around, balance things out, offer suggestions and then ultimate agree on the cover. The first pic is where our co-founder, Murdoch, got to working with Tīhema... it looks good! But there was something wrong with the text, something a bit too slap-dash and not really speaking to the title or content. Judith Carnaby stepped in and shuffled it all around and... hurrah!

The second pic is the final version, albeit before the edges are trimmed - see the lamination lines and white border. Yeah, we print on oversize A4 pages called SRA4 so we can trim down the cover to just the right size as most of our books are slightly smaller than A5.

09/02/2024

In which we force you to click through to see which TWO Lawrence & Gibson titles made this list of ten. You will not believe it! Hey, that's just the way the internet clickbait works these days - hate the game, not the player.

Transport yourself to the windswept forests of Korowai and the humid streets of Auckland

02/02/2024

Turncoat by Tīhema Baker, a novel: "This satirical sci-fi novel published by Lawrence & Gibson in 2023 was, and is, a huge hit: it’s funny, it’s inventive, and it’s based on Baker’s (Raukawa te Au ki te Tonga, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) own experiences of working in the Public Service. An article on e-Tangata tells you why he wrote it, and a review on The Spinoff gives you a glimpse into what it’s about. If you’re in Wellington on 25 February you can go to this event and listen to Tīhema talk about this book, and the experiences behind it, at the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts."

How well do you understand Te Tiriti o Waitangi? If you're feeling short on the basics, here are some places to start.

31/01/2024

Congratulations to Tīhema Baker - Writer for making the long list at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It's a star-studded list if I ever saw one and we're proud to see you in there. Congrats and commiserations to all the other authors who made it and missed out - we were sad not to see Thomasin Sleigh's The Words for Her on the list after it received almost universal acclaim.

29/01/2024

25/01/2024

In a month, both of our 2023 authors get to shine in the International Festival of the Arts in one-on-one sessions on their books. And lots of other exemplary authors too...

24/01/2024

Frontispiece of absolute praise for the reprint of Thomasin Sleigh's 'The Words for Her' ... oh you bet we listened to that Kim Hill interview and put in that jaunty line about zombie apocalypses...

20/01/2024

Four weeks until Thomasin Sleigh gets interviewed by Pip Adam on Thom's monumental new novel. Great line up for the while Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts --> https://www.festival.nz/events/all/thomasin-sleigh/