Listener’s top 100 list: New Zealand’s most intriguing people
Intriguing, influential, not always admirable, and in some cases downright inexplicable – here are 100 New Zealanders who are making a difference or at least getting noticed. For good, and occasionally ill, each has their own vision and mission. Some you’ve never heard of, others you’re sick of hearing about, but all are worth your attention ... (especially No.100).
Books and writing
Pip Adam – novelist
Ground-breaking, genre-bending, fearless and funny, more productive at this level than anyone has a right to expect, and apparently with a lot of fuel left in her creative engine.
Tusiata Avia – poet
Her The Savage Coloniser Book sparked charges of anti-Pākehā sentiment and proved that poetry still has the power to shake things up.
Fergus Barrowman – publisher, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University Press
If not a stranglehold, Barrowman has at least a firm grip on the publishing of literary fiction and verse. Authors include Eleanor Catton, Catherine Chidgey, Vincent O’Sullivan and Tayi Tibble.
Nicola Legat – publisher, Massey University Press and Te Papa Press
Has turned the university publisher into an outfit that produces books that combine exquisite design and production with intellectual rigour and sometimes even popular appeal. Her inky fingers are also all over the annual Ockham Book Awards and the Auckland Writers Festival.
Paula Morris – author and academic