Author Interview: Henrietta Bollinger’s ‘Articulations’

Pōneke-based writer, activist, and disability rights advocate, Henrietta Bollinger’s debut book Articulations is a collection of essays that speak to their experiences as a queer, disabled person in Aotearoa New Zealand. The book journeys through different personal insights; from first crushes and first periods to parliamentary reform and Disability Pride. Bollinger challenges the norms of our ableist society, asking us to consider better ways of being with each other and ourselves. 

Watch our  interview with Henrietta Bollinger where we chat about their advocacy work and the process of writing and publishing their first book with Tender Press.

We extend our thanks and appreciation to Henrietta for taking the time to answer our questions, and for providing insight into their writing and disability advocacy work. You can reserve a copy of Articulations below. 


Articulations / Bollinger, Henrietta

Articulations is a timely, personal, and poignant appraisal of life in Aotearoa. Soundtracked by the Topp Twins, Anika Moa, Woody Guthrie and more, Bollinger’s essays take us on a journey from first crushes and first periods to parliamentary reform and Disability Pride. They challenge the norms of our ableist society, asking us to consider better ways of being with each other and ourselves. (Adapted from Publishers description)

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Our exclusive author interview: John Summers on his latest book The Commercial Hotel

New Zealand writer and essayist John Summers has just published his latest work The Commercial Hotel.  John’s clever and often humorous book is part reportage, part memoir and is a meditation on his life and personal interests. Whilst the areas the book covers include John’s past, wider interests and obsessions, in doing so it also speaks to the reader about a wider story, about a side of New Zealand that is fast vanishing.

The book has a strangely modern, haunting quality to it. The Commercial Hotel in part achieves this by looking at some of the less celebrated and explored aspects of New Zealand’s recent past, especially in the more provincial areas of the country. By looking at things such as New Zealand Elvis impersonators, freezing works, night trains, hotel pubs and landfills he gets behind the surface of these things to reveal something deeper about life and death in New Zealand.

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing John about The Commercial Hotel in conjunction with the Caffeine and Aspirin arts and entertainment review show on Radioactive FM.

Click below to hear the interview:


The Commercial Hotel / Summers, John
Combining reportage and memoir, The Commercial Hotel is a sharp-eyed, poignant yet often hilarious tour of Aotearoa: a place in which Arcoroc mugs and dog-eared political biographies are as much a part of the scenery as the hills we tramp through ill-equipped. We encounter Elvis impersonators, the eccentric French horn player and adventurer Bernard Shapiro, Norman Kirk balancing timber on his handlebars while cycling to his building site, and Summers’s grandmother: the only woman imprisoned in New Zealand for protesting World War Two. And we meet the ghosts who haunt our loneliest spaces.” (Publisher information) 

The mermaid boy / Summers, John
“From Christchurch to China, from mattress manufacture to Burmese medicine, these true stories explore one man’s experience with the exotic and the mundane. Witty, perceptive, and often surprising, The Mermaid Boy introduces striking new ways to write about love, travel, and home.” (Publisher information)