Award-winning New Zealand writers Martin Edmond, Maurice Gee, Kirsty Gunn and Owen Marshall explore life and memory in this bundle of BWB Texts. These four works are combined into one easy-to-read e-book, available direct and DRM-free from our website or from international e-book retailers. Martin Edmond’s Barefoot Years is a memoir in which the author attempts to re-inhabit the lost domain of childhood. Widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest fiction writers, Maurice Gee has written virtually no non-fiction. The exceptions are the two exquisite childhood reminiscences combined in a mini-memoir, Creeks and Kitchens. In this exquisitely written ‘notebook’ – ‘My Katherine Mansfield Project’ – Kirsty Gunn explores the meaning of ‘home’ in Thorndon. Owen Marshall reflects at length on his writing career and the forces that have shaped him as a writer, in Tunes for Bears to Dance To. BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Commissioned as short digital-first works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.

‘It is there, in the background. Always. Increasingly urgent. Its ominous hum is the soundtrack to every other story we tell.’ The devastating summer of Australian bushfires underlined a terrifying sense of a world pushed to the brink. Then came Covid-19, and with it another dramatic lurch away from business as usual. Some observers are worried that the all-consuming effort to control the pandemic will distract us from the long-term challenge of limiting catastrophic climate change. At the same time, many people are hoping for a ‘green Covid-19 recovery’: a cleaner, fairer and safer world. This BWB Text brings together mātauranga Māori and Pasifika perspectives, voices from academia, activism, journalism and economics to bear witness to these troubled times.

Better Lives provides a comprehensive overview of immigration in New Zealand, showing how immigration is not just an economic imperative that needs to be managed, but an opportunity to enhance people's lives. This book shifts immigration debate in Aotearoa in exactly the right direction.

‘I have fought a running battle with medicine for much of my career. I have wanted to leave it for poetry. This is the story of how that has come to change for me. And how both those worlds have at last arrived at some sort of reconciliation.’ As a youth worker, doctor and award-winning poet and children’s writer, Glenn Colquhoun has led a ‘life lived in two parts’. Writing and reading has always transported him to a world ‘flickered’ by colour, warmth and connection. Meanwhile his work as a GP in the Horowhenua has confronted him daily with scenes of doubt, dislocation and disadvantage. Late Love is a meeting of these worlds, a moving attempt to show what it is, as a doctor and writer, to be alongside people.

Morgan Godfery is one of New Zealand’s most energising young thinkers. In just a few years he has become a leading voice in the country’s social and political life. Starting out under his own banner, ‘Māui Street’, his writing now appears across national and international publications. This curated selection brings together the best of Godfery’s writing. Read together, the collection charts the emergence of a significant New Zealand voice.

Decolonisation is a term that alarms some, and gives hope to others. It is an uncomfortable and often bewildering concept for many New Zealanders. This book seeks to demystify decolonisation using illuminating, real-life examples. By exploring the impact of colonisation on Māori and non-Māori alike, Imagining Decolonisation presents a transformative vision of a country that is fairer for all.

Award-winning writers Geoff Chapple, Claudia Orange, Anne Salmond and Dick Scott explore pivotal moments in New Zealand’s history in this bundle of BWB Texts. These four works are combined into one easy-to-read e-book, available direct and DRM-free from our website or from international e-book retailers. In When the Tour Came to Auckland Geoff Chapple describes the startling scenes as the Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand in 1981 comes to a violent conclusion. In What Happened at Waitangi? Claudia Orange explains the events on the ground that led to the signing of the Treaty on 6 February 1840. Anne Salmond’s First Contact details the dramatic visit of Dutch ships led by Abel Tasman to Golden Bay at the top of the South Island in 1642, and the meeting of Māori and European worlds. Dick Scott’s Parihaka Invaded describes the non-violent defiance of Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, Tohu Kakahi and their followers at Parihaka and is one of the great New Zealand narratives. BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Commissioned as short digital-first works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.