TURBINE | KAPOHAU

What happens when a firefighter, tapa maker, sword swallower, music critic, booksellers, a film buff, a bunch of multi-linguists, martial artists, ex-Mormons, a union member, musicians and slam poets… Uh oh, the list of idiosyncrasies becomes so long I forget the joke I was making. 

The MA cohort of 2025 brings a wealth of experience that moves this issue of Turbine | Kapohau in many directions. We are stoked to include the 2025 Adam Foundation Prize winner, Niamh Vaughan and 2025 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry winner, Will Salmon, as well as the Modern Letters Fiction Prize winner, Stephenjohn Holgate, and Letteri Family Prize for Creative Nonfiction winner, Mauatua Fa’ara-Reynolds.   

Accompanied by emerging and established writers across the motu, including the Landfall Essay Prize winner 2025, Tasmin Prichard, and international writers stretching to Kansas and the United Kingdom, this issue brings together people from ngā hau e whā, unified by words and a knack for arranging them into compositions that remain with us long after reading.   

Across Turbine | Kapohau 25 you will find preoccupations with whakapapa, cats, autocrats, RNZ Concert, and carnivorous lovers. Consider different takes on the internet, literary journal guidelines, and deities across islands. Meditate on the karakia-like forest poem by Trevor Landers, and let Eleanor Hayward ask you what it means to let others into your lane. Contemplate giving in to the terrible voices in your head, like Jackson, or bounce on a Swiss ball with Hannah in Lucy Croft’s novel extract. While greatly varying in subject material, these pieces remind us that language is never neutral.  

You can read Anna Smaill, this year’s Te Herenga Waka University – Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence, talking with Lucy about her latest project, writing overseas, and finding new ways to enable the creative process rather than control it.

In the Reading Room section, six MA students seem connected by the idea of writing themselves into and out of their manuscripts. Mauatua Fa’ara Reynolds lays down a wero to write beyond trauma, much like Alex Stronach who isn’t interested in catering to picky [cishet] eaters. These reflections are pearls that enrich the writers’ creative works.  

We acknowledge all the tuākana of the IIML who strengthen the Te Whanganui-a-Tara writing community and beyond: our convenors Chris Price, Sue Orr and Tina Makereti, our magical administrators Clare Moleta and Katie Hardwick-Smith, and director Damien Wilkins. Thank you to photographer Robert Cross for your lovely portrait of Anna.  

Another big mihi goes to supervisors Anna Smaill, Damien Wilkins, Hinemoana Baker, James Brown, Pip Adam, Raj Chakraborti and Ruby Solly. Your mentorship will live on as these writers grow and go on to support other emerging wordsmiths in times to come. 

Finally, thank you to our writers for trusting us with your work. We can’t wait to read more.  

ada duffy, Isabella Smith and Stephenjohn Holgate.