Megan Dunn

Riffing on Ray Bradbury's classic novel about the end of reading, Tinderbox is one of the most interesting books in decades about literary culture and its place in the world. More than that, it's about how every one of us fits into that bigger picture - and the struggle to make sense of life in the twenty-first century.

Tinderbox

From the writer who brought you Tinderbox, a book about a woman trying to write a book, comes Things I Learned at Art School, a memoir by a woman who has never kept a diary. Until now. Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn's ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of her early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the '70s, '80s and '90s. From her parents' split-up to her Smurf collection, from the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash!, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this is a dazzling, killer read from a contemporary voice of comic brilliance. Chapters include- The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty- That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don't Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room and Submerging Artist. Praise for Tinderbox- "Tinderbox is deadpan hilarious and Megan Dunn is a comic genius." - Susanna Andrew, Metro "Megan Dunn's wry, whip-smart memoir about Fahrenheit 451, literary ambition & the last days of Borders Bookstores is funny & insightful as hell. Like Kathy Acker meets Sue Townsend. The read of the summer! ... already one of my favourite New Zealand books." - Hera Lindsay Bird "Witty, highly entertaining." - Philip Matthews, Stuff "Tinderbox is such a shape-shifter, such a sui generis work, that to call it a memoir does it a disservice ... Dunn's voice is hard to resist - sardonic, brazen, sagacious - recalling, in places, Nora Ephron, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Maggie Nelson." - James Cook, Review 31

Things I Learned at Art School

Seraphine Pick

Courtney Johnston

Sian Van Dyk

Birgit Krippner

White Noise

Art & Artist Files (Australia and New Zealand)].

Megan Dunn Interviews Andrew McLeod

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Amy Wilkinson

Holly Martin

Gina Buckle

Zenab Anwar

Amy Betteridge

Srishti Verma

Lauren Spokes

Aimee Spence

Shona Smith

Shriya Ruparelia

Adam J. Robson

Georgia Preece

Phoebe Singer

Daisy Moon

Niamh Madden

Caitlin Lewis

Shakira Kumar

Hannah Lawson

Phoebe Gunton

Juliette Flach

Class of 2020

A lot of people know a lot of stuff, and most of us don't get to share the best bits with other people. So this book gets together twenty-one recent graduates to share something they think you should know. Among other things you can learn: Why you should care about Japan's ageing population How a baby is made (after the fun bit) How the English and Scottish dealt with 'witches' Why we should think about disasters a bit differently How performance analysis works in sport Our editors graduated from university in 2008, during the last once in a lifetime financial armageddon. The idea behind this book was to allow recent graduates (who are hitting the real world a full twelve years after it went wrong last time) an opportunity to do something interesting with their time. Our experience tells us the next few years’ worth of graduates will spend a long time being called lazy and stupid for the crime of being born about twenty-one years before it all went pear-shaped. So, for our authors, at least, they will have something to point at that they have achieved to disprove that. But mostly we just wanted to get together twenty-one chapters worth of stuff we didn’t know before.

Shared Knowledge

Megan Dunn

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