Piquant, frank, open, wistful, tender, funny … this personal memoir by Diane Brown is deftly ‘marbled’ throughout with social history. From carefully chosen anecdotes it slowly unfolds a vivid and compelling sense of character and the psychological dynamics within the family. My favourite photo of Mum, snapped at the beach, her sensible wedding day suit ditched for saggy togs. Here she is, laughing at Dad, as if nothing had ever hurt her. Many readers will recognise the New Zealand so vividly portrayed here, as Brown marshals deeply personal events and childhood memories in a delightfully astute, understated poetic form.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 144

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 20-10-2015

A mysterious doppelgänger sister, a newborn baby, a boy in a mural, a detective, a former lover, a student stalker … are they real or imagined? Building on Diane Brown’s tradition of extended poetic narratives, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child is an inventive and heartfelt meditation on motherhood, the creative impulse and the blurred line between imagination and reality. This delightful, evocative poetic narrative wafts between the truly surreal and the ‘everyday’ absurd.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 164

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm