An invitation to the tower
A writer’s life. It’s not all ivory towers or garrets with gloves. Sometimes you have to hang out on building sites with hot chips and the right amount of ketchup and this is called research or...
Thinking Allowed
Go, go to the beach
Go, go to the beach
When you’re tired, go to the beach. When you’re happy, when you’re bereft. When you’re hopeful. Go by car, go by bike, get a bus, go on foot, writes Liz Breslin.
Wanaka’s wonderful week
Wanaka’s wonderful week
Six things Liz Breslin loves about Wanaka's Festival of Colour.
Dispatches from the fringes
Dispatches from the fringes
Someone made a week for me last week. Well, it was more like some LOTS - the organisers, volunteers, actors, directors, costumers... everyone who came together to make Dunedin Fringe Festival, writes Liz Breslin.
An entire colonnade
An entire colonnade
"They called you ‘Famous Hawea Writer Liz Breslin’," said my girlfriend. Who did? Am I? After I got off the phone I got under the duvet and stayed there a while.
A mother who counts the months
A mother who counts the months
It’s been another week where people I love have lost people they love and are feeling lost themselves, writes Liz Breslin.
Taking up residency in a blizzard
Taking up residency in a blizzard
My screen time is up 46%. I have divested myself of Facebook, cancelled my ongoing TradeMe favourite searches and turned off my notifications. And yet, my screen time is up 46%, writes Liz Breslin.
Liz Breslin: If the shoe fits
If the shoe fits
I was planning to write about the train. I had an excellent time on the train. Everyone, IMHO, should take a Sunday trip on the Seasider and nobody should open their emails afterwards. And they...
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes, little boxes
There’s a stretch of road leaving Wanaka where if you look to the left you see small square boxes floating on the lake, and to the right you see THIS IS A WORK SAFE WORK SITE FOR SALE, writes Liz Breslin.
Pain’s many faces
Pain’s many faces
The thing about this is that I’m thinking in bursts. I need to not think about it but there’s nothing else I can think about, writes Liz Breslin.
Old friends on new adventures
Old friends on new adventures
Have e-bikes, will travel. Liz Breslin takes a dream trip on the rail trail.
Breathing through the verbing
Breathing through the verbing
I’ve started my column at least five times this week, writes Liz Breslin.
Facing the facts
Facing the facts
It’s time to face up to it. Face the facts. The fact is there are too many headshots by far in the world, writes Liz Breslin.
Season of the slam
Season of the slam
Sometimes I’m not sure what my favourite season is because finishing a swim in the lake is like being born, rainbow leaves on the track are a joy, snow is a miracle and lambs are cute, but this year I’m really clear, writes Liz Breslin.
This week in cultural vandalism . . .
This week in cultural vandalism . . .
Fun fact, or not so fun, depending on which side of the destruction you’re on, writes columnist Liz Breslin.
Rehearsing for bad situations
Rehearsing for bad situations
We met in the summer of 1999 in Perth. We partied like it was, too. And we talked. Kat had The Book of Questions, which she gifted to me when one of us left, and through it we, and the rest of the...
An ordinary word in your ear
An ordinary word in your ear
A lockdown habit I’ve kept, as I walk along the lake track each day, is to take a camera snap of the expanse of beach and send it to extraordinary friends in exotic places - Luggate, Wellington, Melbourne, writes Liz Breslin.
Accounting for a life
Accounting for a life
Being a child of maths teachers, I have been known to find solace and surety in numbers, writes Liz Breslin.
When the cheese is full of holes
When the cheese is full of holes
"The chi inside is the same as the chi outside. There is only this chi, and we are a part of this chi."
What a tangled web
What a tangled web
This week the postie brought me a yellow-beige book-shaped packet. And I was excited, because surely, surely it was my long-awaited copy of The Tree and the Vine, writes Liz Breslin.