Landfall Tauraka 251
Landfall Tauraka is the country’s longest-running literary and arts journal and sits at the heart of literature in Aotearoa New Zealand. Bringing together voices and perspectives from established practitioners and emerging talents, Landfall Tauraka offers a vital snapshot of innovation and creativity in Aotearoa today.
Alongside the finest new writing, art and reviews from across the motu, Landfall Tauraka 251 announces the winner of the Landfall Tauraka Young Writers’ Essay Prize, an annual competition that encourages emerging writers to explore the world around them through words. This issue features the winning essay alongside the judge’s report from editor, Lynley Edmeades.
Founded in 1947, Landfall Tauraka has been in continuous publication for nearly 80 years. In that time, it has become a living taonga: a record of creative and critical expression in Aotearoa and a platform for an extraordinary range of voices. More than 2500 contributors have appeared in its pages, together producing almost 9000 pieces of work.
Cover art by Megan Brady.
Contributors
ART Megan Brady, Julian Hooper, John Reynolds, Deborah Smith
FICTION Molly Crighton, Heather Holdaway, Sam Keenan, Cait Kneller, David Large, Jemma Richardson, Grant Smithies, Cora Tate, Pearl Tuohy, Tarn Wright
NON-FICTION Cian Dennan, Uzair Khan
POETRY Tunmise Adebowale, Hannah Rose Arnold, Nick Ascroft, Izzie Birnie, Cindy Botha, Hana Buchanan, Nathaniel Calhoun, Kim Cope Tait, Brett Cross, Brandon de la Cruz, David Eggleton, Craig Foltz, Alison Glenny, Eliana Gray, Jackson, Erik Kennedy, Fiona Kidman, Brent Kininmont, Leonard Lambert, Jessica Le Bas, Carolyn McCurdie, Kirstie McKinnon, Alice Miller, Anuja Mitra, Janet Newman, Grace Nottingham, Gregory O’Brien, Jilly O’Brien, Claire Orchard, Harriet Prebble, Joanna Preston, Hope Rännäli, Vaughan Rapatahana, Richard Reeve, Holly Ruth, Will Salmon, Regan Solomon, Jillian Sullivan, Stacey Teague, Dunstan Ward, Andrew Paul Wood, Nicholas Wright
REVIEW Sally Blundell, John Gereats, Michael O’Leary, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Paddy Richardson, Elizabeth Smither, Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb
‘In an age where we are channeled content via the overlords of the internet, picking up a print copy of Aotearoa’s Landfall Tauraka right now feels like an act of subversion. It’s a quiet act of participation against the dopamine delivering machines we clutch ... Somehow, nearly 80 years on from its inception – in today’s testy climate of eyeball harvesting –Landfall’s spring edition, edited by Lynley Edmeades (with a new name Landfall Tauraka) not only pulls this off, but it does so very well. It is dense. It is modern. It contains some of the best of Aotearoa’s new and not so new writers.’
Claris Harvey for Kete Books Read
Lynley Edmeades
Lynley Edmeades is the author of the creative non-fiction book Hiding Places (Otago University Press 2025); two poetry collections, As the Verb Tenses (Otago University Press, 2016) and Listening In (Otago University Press, 2019); and a poetry and art picture book for adults, Bordering on Miraculous (Massey University Press, 2022), in collaboration with Saskia Leek. She currently teaches poetry and creative writing on the English programme at the University of Otago. She is the current editor of Landfall Tauraka and teaches English and creative writing at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
More About Lynley Edmeades
Listening In 
As the Verb Tenses 
Hiding Places