Auckland University Press

23/07/2026

Meet the author ✏

Dame Juliet A. Gerrard DNZM, HonFRSC, FRSNZ, trained at Oxford and moved to New Zealand in 1993. She is the author of over 175 publications, including three books, and is currently a professor in biological and chemical sciences at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. From 2018–2024, she served as the Chief Science Advisor to three Prime Ministers (Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins, and Christopher Luxon).

Her book, Front Row Seat: How Science Can (and Can’t) Shape Public Decision-Making, will be published with AUP in September.

Photograph: Elise Manahan

23/07/2026

Out in September: a scientist and three prime ministers – the inside story.

Front Row Seat: How Science Can (and Can't) Shape Public Decision-Making is Dame Juliet A. Gerrard's incisive account of her six years as Chief Science Advisor to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successors, reflecting on the realities of providing evidence to inform policy in the political arena on the wicked problems of our times.

In all good bookstores from 10 September, or pre-order today via the AUP website.

23/07/2026

Meet the author 🌟

Chris Tse is a writer and editor living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. He studied film and English literature at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters.

He is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC and Super Model Minority (a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and longlisted at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). Alongside Emma Barnes, he edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (Auckland University Press, 2021).

In August 2022, Chris was appointed Aotearoa New Zealand’s thirteenth Poet Laureate; he completed his term in August 2025.

Dance-Floor Romance, his fourth poetry collection, will be published in September 2026. Pre-order now!

22/07/2026

Coming soon⚡Dance-Floor Romance is the fourth poetry collection from former Poet Laureate, Chris Tse.

Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy – and what it means to make a vocation of vulnerability. Dance-Floor Romance is poetry that seeks answers from the art we turn to in times of uncertainty, that ‘Holds the present as much as it / holds a whisper of the future’, and amplifies it. Someone hand Tse the AUX cord.

Available in all good bookstores this September, you'll also be able to catch Chris at Verb Wellington – stay tuned for more about the festival programme.

Cover design by Greg Simpson

21/07/2026

Me mihi ka tika ki Tākuta Atakohu Middleton (Waikato, Pākehā). Kua neke atu i te toru tekau tau a Atakohu e mahi ana hei kaikawekōrero. I te tau 2005, nōna e mahi ana i te Hērora o Aotearoa, ka kopoua ia hei Commonwealth Press Union Harry Brittain Fellow mō Aotearoa, ā, e ono ngā paraihe kaipūrongo kua riro i a ia mō āna tuhinga. Kua mahi hoki hei kaiako matua i Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau. Nā tāna tuhinga tākutatanga i ara mai ai tana pukapuka tuatahi, arā, Kia Hiwa Rā! Māori Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand (Huia Publishers, 2023).
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Meet the author 🌟 Atakohu Middleton (Waikato, Pākehā) has worked as a reporter and feature writer for three decades. She held the Commonwealth Press Union Harry Brittain Fellowship for New Zealand in 2005 while working at The New Zealand Herald and has won six national media awards for news and feature writing. She has also been a senior lecturer at AUT. Her first book, Kia Hiwa Rā! Māori Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand (Huia Publishers, 2023), was based on her PhD thesis.

Atakohu's second book, a collection of short fiction in te reo Māori, Waka Aroha: He Kohinga Pakipoto, will be published by AUP in September.

Photo: Trinity Thompson-Browne. Courtesy of the Māori Literature Trust, May 2026

21/07/2026

Ā kō kō ake nei ... Waka Aroha: He Kohinga Pakipoto nā Atakohu Middleton.

He rangatahi ngākau whiwhita ki ngā waka tetere. He kairapuhara wahine Māori e mahitahi ana ki roto i te ao kikokiko me te ao atua. He kaihoahoa hūmārie ka tukirae atu ki tētehi manuwhiri i te rārangi harirū. He pakipoto mā ngā kaipānui katoa i roto tonu i te reo Māori!

From well-known journalist Atakohu Middleton comes Aotearoa’s first collection of short stories written entirely in te reo Māori. Police procedurals and family dramas, fantasy stories and coming-of-age yarns, this is gripping and exciting writing for contemporary Aotearoa.

In stores 10 September. Pre-orders are open now via the AUP website.

Cover by Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho

16/07/2026

New review of The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul!

A story of psychedelia, darkness and being artist outsiders 'in a country that didn’t always embrace them'.

16/07/2026

Padam? Padam. You hear it and you know it’s a new Chris Tse collection.

Dance-Floor Romance

In stores 10.09.2026

08/07/2026

It's publication day for AUP New Poets 12! We got ahead of the celebrations with a lovely launch at Time Out books on Tuesday, but the book is now available in bookstores around the country, just in time for your long-weekend reading.

Discover poems for our times and for the future from three striking new voices – Zephyr Zhang, Loretta Riach and Anuja Mitra, edited and with a foreword by Anne Kennedy.