Fish of the Week Selected Columns

Steve Braunias, one of New Zealand's most celebrated journalists, has quite a few friends, legions of admirers, and many detractors. For a decade his satirical and closely observed writings, most recently in The Sunday Star-Times, have driven readers to drink, God, lawyers, and sometimes to the shops to shower him with gifts. In this lascivious selection of his columns in Sunday magazine since 2005, he addresses the state of New Zealand steak, the beauty of mangroves, the lunacy of film festivals, the attractions of small towns ('There is no statistic that says a village can accommodate only one village idiot'), the life and times of rest-home resident 'poor old Mr Wilson', the charms of Cambridge University, the strange habits of the English, and more - as well as his own intimate, seesawing, surprisingly vulnerable life as a writer and lovestruck father.

Steve Braunias is an award-winning writer and columnist. His weekly column appears in The Sunday Star-Times’ Sunday magazine. His first book of selected columns, Fool’s Paradise, won Best First Book of Nonfiction at the 2002 Montana Book Awards. He has been editor of Capital Times, feature writer at Metro, deputy editor at The Listener, and senior writer with The Sunday Star-Times. He is a contributing writer to TV One's Eating Media Lunch and The Unauthorised History of New Zealand.