Damien Wilkins

"A witty and sentient writer"—LA Times "Wilkins can command a breathtakingly supple literary style"—The New York Times 1928: Thomas Hardy is dying in the upstairs room of Max Gate, the house he built in his beloved Dorset. Downstairs, his literary friends are locked in a bitter fight with local supporters. Who owns Hardy’s remains? Who knew him best? What are the secrets of Max Gate? Housemaid Nellie Titterington narrates this earthy and emotionally-charged novel about ambition, duty, belonging, and love. Damien Wilkins is the author of seven novels, including the New Zealand Book Award-winning The Miserables.

Max Gate

Evelyn has left her home and her husband. She has taken her thirteen-year-old daughter two thousand miles across the USA to her childhood home. The drizzly Pacific Northwest suits Evelyn's mood perfectly. She takes small doses of liquor from a secret supply and spends her time smoking under wet trees in the company of a hen. But her home town has more on its mind than Evelyn's troubles. The volcano that sits on the horizon has suddenly become active. Scientists, tourists, thrill-seekers flood the district. Evelyn tries to ignore it. She cannot, however ignore the phone calls she starts receiving following a car accident. Who is the caller? What does he want?

Nineteen Widows Under Ash

Bill Manhire

Chris Price

Ken Duncum

Contains writing prompts to help beginning writers and to help tackle writer's block. In between are exercises from a host of New Zealand and international writers that explore the nuts and bolts of craft - in poetry, fiction and scriptwriting - along with others that tap into sources of inspiration or show the value of revision and editing.

Creative Writing Exercises from Victoria University's Institute of Modern Letters

The Exercise Book

Fifteen-year-old Ricky lives in Aspiring, a town that's growing at an alarming rate. Ricky's growing, too — 6'7&”, and taller every day. But he's stuck in a loop: student, uncommitted basketballer, and puzzled son, burdened by his family's sadness. And who's the weird guy in town with a chauffeur and half a Cadillac? What about the bits of story that invade his head? Uncertain what's real — and who he is — Ricky can't stop sifting for clues. He has no idea how things will end up . . .With sunlight, verve and humour, award-winning writer Damien Wilkins brings us a beguiling boy who's trying to make sense of it all.

Aspiring

Paddy Thompson, speech therapist, newspaper columnist, is fifty and happy. His dark period is behind him: a failed marriage, a career crisis. Now he lives with Helena ('the best thing that ever happened to him'), helps kids with their speech problems, and has moved his mother into the next-door apartment. His life feels sane and settled. So what are these new signs of upset? One of his clients refuses to speak. Helena is under stress at work. His newspaper column has run out of puff. Paddy buys a bicycle. He feels, with a typical metaphorical flourish, that 'one of those great wheels of life had begun a revolution'. Then his mother presents him with the biggest challenge of his life. What follows, in this wonderfully expansive novel, takes Paddy deep into the vortex of family love.

A Novel

Somebody Loves Us All

Anthology of fiction, poetry and essays on non-sporting themes.

The Best of Sport Magazine, 1988-2004

Great Sporting Moments

Since 2000, the online anthology Best New Zealand Poems has showcased the most exciting and memorable poetry produced in this country. Here, for the first time, is a selection of this work in book form. Edited by founding publisher Bill Manhire, and writer Damien Wilkins, this anthology is an indispensable guide to the richness, strangeness, and liveliness of contemporary poetry. With over sixty poets appearing, there's classic work by some of the best-known figures in our writing, including Sam Hunt, Allen Curnow, Jenny Bornholdt, Cilla McQueen, Elizabeth Smither, and Ian Wedde; there are also compelling poems from new writers. Each poet's own note on the selection illuminates the work and takes us inside the writer’s personal workshop. The first decade of the new century comes into view as a vibrant, argumentative, restless period, with our poets unafraid of either political engagement or strong personal feeling.

Damien Wilkins

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