Arthur lives at the edge of town. His house is rife with infestation, with weeds and aphids and pests of all varieties. The house is tucked away by the end of the court. It is the scourge of your street. * Arthur’s front yard is full of birds. He used to tend vegetables there, ripe…
Welcome to the very first takahē Fiction Readers’ Issue! This special mini-issue of takahē features five stories selected and co-edited by members of our Fiction Reading Team: Melanie Kwang, Rebecca Reader, Rebecca Styles, Clare Travaglia, Philippa Tucker, and Jill Varani. Our Fiction Reading Team usually works behind the scenes, with 20 members dedicating their time…
Melanie Kwang is a first-generation Taishanese-New Zealand writer from Ōtautahi. She completed the Master of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland in 2018. Her work has been published in various magazines and anthologies, and performed as play readings with local theatre companies. By day, Rebecca Reader helps university students polish their academic writing. By…
I’m waiting in the wings tonight. My eyes are locked in a tunnel of black and white. Without the clarity of keys, things are blurred and grey. Voices ring atonal. Away from a piano, I know nothing. I am a cold woman. I’ve been instructed to smile more, and to laugh at jokes, even when…
This story is a retelling of Hector Munro’s classic 1911 short story “Tobermory.” Everybody gathered at Bob’s place, drifting in late Christmas morning after they’d opened their presents wherever they were staying. The women from out of town brought meringues and whipped cream, then spread berries on top of the dessert. The men brought beer, except for…
A beautiful dress caught Emily’s eye in the Fortuny shop. A grey wisp of wool, falling softly from the shoulders. She was thinking of buying more antique fruit plates for her new flat on Nekrasova Street, but the dress drove them out of her mind. Beautiful china and clothes were an old craving, suppressed while…
There’s power in naming things: swallow/warou, yellowhead/mohua, saddleback/tīeke, tūī is tūī. I name the 23 glass birds flying along the length of our hallway. The long overhead skylight is a reflecting pool, the birds’ glass bodies deepening and lightening as they ring in the weather changes. Each bird a ‘this is your life’ moment, right…
When you’re just a young chap and it’s the nuns teaching you, what often happens during art class is you decide to paint Jesus. As if it’s your own idea and not Sister Perpetua nudging you in a certain direction. In my case, the picture of Jesus morphed into a picture of a hamburger. But…
Emma Sidnam is a Wellington-based writer and lawyer. As a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander, she is passionate about representation and ensuring that all voices are heard. She is a slam poet and her work has been published in the Spinoff, Capital, Newsroom and the anthologies A Clear Dawn and Middle Distance. Her debut novel Backwaters won the Michael Gifkins Prize and was longlisted for the…