Tell You What Great New Zealand Nonfiction 2017

‘With the arrival of the second volume of Tell You What, the sum total of New Zealand non-fiction anthologies damn near doubles,’ noted the Sunday Star-Times when they picked up last year’s edition. Well, we thought, let’s damn near triple it. Because we’ve discovered that New Zealanders love their true stories. Last year’s Tell You What was ‘quite a ride . . . a gripping, thought provoking and inspiring reminder of how much talent is out there’ (KiaOra), featuring ‘some of New Zealand’s best writers, covering subjects like bullies, Barbies, girl bands and grandads’ (The Australian Women’s Weekly). ‘Take it and read it, as, one by one, each writer tells us their what’ wrote John Campbell in the foreword. And this year? Third time lucky we say. The talent is assembling. The stories are rolling in.

Susanna Andrew was born in 1966 and grew up in Glen Innes, Auckland. She has travelled extensively as a bookseller in the United Kingdom and Europe, and spent five years living in Berlin with her late husband Nigel Cox. As communications manager for the New Zealand Book Council, she founded the ‘True Stories Told Live’ initiative. She currently edits the book pages for Metro Magazine while raising three children. Jolisa Gracewood was born in 1968 and grew up in Naenae and Papatoetoe, which made it almost inevitable she would live in that other twice-told town, New York, New York. While in the US, Jolisa taught students at Cornell and Yale how to write essays and nonfiction prose; co-edited two anthologies of Japanese short stories for advanced learners; and wrote about books for her local newspaper and for New Zealand magazines.