Heritage et AL

Mana Publications produced collections of creative writings by Tangata Moana and Tangata Whenua from 1974. It was led and founded by Marjorie Crocombe who also ran the South Pacific University’s extension centre in Suva, Fiji. As a branch of the South Pacific Creative Arts Society, Mana was set up to support and publish South Pacific writers in a time when the Pacific was being too often misrepresented by writers with a colonial or European lens. It was time to nurture and prioritise Moana voices. From here, Mana grew into the publishing strong arm of the South Pacific.  The language and literature journal Mana Review: a South Pacific journal of Language and Literature soon followed in 1976 as a supplement to the collections. Mana Review’s first editor, Subramani, said the journal was intended as a platform to discuss Moana literature and criticisms and review in a backdrop of colonisation of which writers were drawing. The following year, Mana Review’s kaupapa shifted slightly to...

Recently at Auckland Central Library Research Centre, we’ve been celebrating contemporary wāhine Māori writers of innovative fiction - creative fiction which shapeshifts in form and genre with the power and flow of atua wāhine. We want our Indigenous collections to be embraced in a space dedicated to and curated by the author. We began with Talia Marshall’s pukapuka Whaea Blue. This time we’re showcasing the magical and healing hit of auto composite fiction, Kōhine, by Colleen Maria Lenihan. Similar to Whaea Blue, Kōhine defies genre, time and space and takes you on an enlightened yet haunting journey into the spiritual realm and back, through narrative twists and turns of memoir, poetry, and interconnected short fiction.  The following kaupapa is an interview with Colleen on Kōhine :  Rin Smeaton: Kia ora to you Colleen. Our mutual hoa Talia suggested that I talk to you! First of all, I wanted you to know that my co-worker Ash read Kōhine when it first got published and cou...