Three New Queer Māori Books From Indie Āporo Press

Independent local publisher Āporo Press is thrilled to announce it will publish three new titles by March 2026. The press, which focuses on publishing work from minority voices often overlooked by mainstream publishing, has signed publishing agreements with three Māori authors and plans to release the books over the next 12 months.

In the 2024 Copyright Licensing New Zealand Contestable Fund, Āporo Press received $3,500 to publish a full-length debut poetry collection by San Francisco-based poet Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Pāoa, Pākehā).

This title, Overseas Experience, will compile work from Andrews’s USA-published chapbooks Māori Maid Difficult and Hinting at Decolonization, as well as a variety of other poems, for an Aotearoa release. Publisher Damien Levi says, “This collection will speak to all Māori who have lived away from their whenua as well as those who live on it. It knows when to get serious and when to pull back and share the laughter.”

This collection will also feature cover design by award-winning designer Kaan Hiini (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa). Overseas Experience is expected to be released in May 2025. On her upcoming release, Andrews says:

“Āporo Press is an inclusive, independent Māori press that knows when we need to take a principled stand for our communities, and when we just need to have a laugh or get a little weird—and I'm chuffed to be included on their roster of upcoming titles.”

Through a publishing partnership with Whitireia Publishing, Āporo Press will also publish Hoods Landing, the debut novel from Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi), in October 2025.

Vincent describes the novel as “a Southern Gothic-via-rural South Auckland anti-tragedy inspired by the works of Robert Altman and David Lynch featuring elderly lesbians, twins who aren’t twins, a 102-year-old tarot reader, people dropping like flies from cancer, several dogs named Roger, and a sexy baptism.”

On working with Āporo Press she says,

“This is the place my novel has been waiting for and I'm honoured to have my inaugural novel be yours/theirs too. Āporo Press and bad apple’s community building has been central to my experience as a writer in Tāmaki Makaurau and I have so much trust in their mahi. It's meaningful to me to be working with a Māori-owned/led press but also one that's really cool and there are no cooler hands to put my writing in.”

Finally, in early 2026, Āporo Press will release the debut poetry and photography collection, Frisk [working title], from poet, researcher and still/moving image-based visual artist Jo Bragg (Ngāti Porou).

This collection spans 10 years of poetic work from 2015–2025 and chronicles the life of Bragg through this period. From art school to the club, to the gender clinic; to the ‘corporate-artworld’ this collection is irreverently queer.

Bragg describes the work as “Starting out just like any gay person who aspires to greatness: a misaligned over-identification with Lana Del Rey.”

All three authors have been published previously by Āporo Press in its debut title Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa (2023), and they have all been featured on the online LGBTQ+ arts and literature journal bad apple.

To support the production of these three titles, Āporo Press is running a Boosted campaign that is currently live, with a goal of $5,500.

Expensive Hobby will distribute Overseas Experience, Hoods Landing, and Frisk upon release. The press's previous release, Marrow & Other Stories by Sloane Hong, is available now.

Bios:

Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Pāoa, Pākehā) grew up in Waitākere and currently works as a librarian in San Francisco. Their poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies; and they are the grateful winner of the 2023 AAALS Indigenous Writer's Prize in Poetry. Their craft has grown in writing communities including the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Tin House Workshop. Most of their poems were written in the company of a very spoilt Siamese cat.

Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi) is a writer from Waiuku, with poetry and fiction published locally and internationally, including in The Spinoff, PŪHIA, and the No Other Place to Stand and Spoiled Fruit anthologies, amongst others. Her poem ‘ACTIVITIES’ was part of an installation at Britomart for the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tāmaki. Laura has written the food blog hungryandfrozen.com since 2007. Her first novel, Hoods Landing, is forthcoming from Āporo Press, a darkly wry and cinematically dreamy Aotearoa Gothic tale. The novel is prickling with heat and decay and buzzing with wasps as it moves through time, life, and death with an idiosyncratic family of rural women.

Self-described hopeless romantic Jo Bragg (he/him) (Ngāti Porou) is a Tāmaki Makaurau born and based art writer, poet, researcher and still/moving image-based visual artist. Bragg holds an MFA by Research (First Class Honours) awarded in 2021 from Monash University (Naarm, Melbourne) majoring in contemporary art, gender and trans-feminist theory.

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