You Are Here

The sixth book in the remarkable korero series, edited by Lloyd Jones, features Jann Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and the acclaimed artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa, in a collaboration based on the Fibonacci number sequence. In a feat of managed imagining, Hereaka’ s words spiral out to the centre of the book and then back in on themselves to end with the same words with which the text began. As the pattern spools out and then folds back, Peata Larkin’ s meticulous drawings of taniko and whakairo and her lush works on silk weave their own entrancing pattern. ‘ It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,’ Hereaka says. You Are Here is a beguiling and important addition to the korero series.

Peata Larkin (Te Arawa, Tuhourangi, Ngati Whakaue, Ngati Tuwharetoa) graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from RMIT, Melbourne, in 2008 and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. Her public and private commissions have included ANZ Tower, Westfield Newmarket, Park Hyatt and the International Conference Centre in Auckland. Her work is held in the collections of Memphis Museum of Fine Arts, USA, Rotorua Museum Arts Trust, Pataka Art + Museum, the University of Waikato and Massey University. Whiti Hereaka (Ngati Tuwharetoa, Te Arawa) is a playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and barrister and solicitor. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting) from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, and is a trustee of the Maori Literature Trust. Her fourth novel, Kurangaituku, won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She is a lecturer in the creative writing programme at Massey University and is working on her PhD in creative writing.