News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Designer Veere Grenney Brings Beauty to Life

Designer Veere Grenney Brings Beauty to Life

Veere Grenney could fairly be said to be a leading ‘decorators’ decorator’. Creating timelessly elegant interiors for more than 30 years, the New Zealand-born, London-based Grenney is one of the pre-eminent talents in English…

Will the Real Aldous Harding Please Stand Up?

Will the Real Aldous Harding Please Stand Up?

New Zealander Aldous Harding remains in an off-kilter space throughout Warm Chris, her third collaboration with producer John Parish, who’s worked alongside PJ Harvey and Jenny Hval, among others, Madison Bloom writes for online…

Becky Manawatu’s Auē an Enthralling Bestseller

Becky Manawatu’s Auē an Enthralling Bestseller

Things have gone right for New Zealand author Becky Manawatu. “Spectacularly,” Tina Makeriti writes in a review for The Guardian. “Unusually for a first book, Auē won New Zealand’s most lucrative fiction prize, the…

Vanity Fair Cover For Director Jane Campion

Vanity Fair Cover For Director Jane Campion

A decade ago, she almost walked away from movies. Now, New Zealander Jane Campion is the only woman ever nominated twice for an Oscar best director thanks to The Power of the Dog. Campion…

Bruce Glavovic Urges Climate Scientists to Strike

Bruce Glavovic Urges Climate Scientists to Strike

Sometimes, Massey University professor Dr Bruce Glavovic feels so proud to be an environmental scientist, studying coastal planning and teaching future researchers, that it moves him to tears. Other times, he wonders whether any…

Temel Ataçocuğu Walks for Peace Back to Mosque

Temel Ataçocuğu Walks for Peace Back to Mosque

It’s been three years since Christchurch faced a horrifying attack – and now survivor Temel Ataçocuğu has finally returned to the scene of the crime, Mehek Mazhar reports in a story for CBC Radio. Ataçocuğu…

Gender Revolution Brewing in New Zealand Rugby

Gender Revolution Brewing in New Zealand Rugby

One in five rugby players in New Zealand are now women, and their numbers are rising. But persistent stereotypes are proving hard to dismantle, Pete McKenzie reports for a feature in the print issue…

Andrew Barnes is Revolutionizing the Work Week

Andrew Barnes is Revolutionizing the Work Week

Andrew Barnes is speaking to Guardian journalist Tess McClure from one of his vineyards on Waiheke Island. On the scale of a globe, it’s a speck of land off the coast of a dot,…

Vanity Fair Looks Over Grant Major’s Back Catalogue

Vanity Fair Looks Over Grant Major’s Back Catalogue

In ‘The Portfolio’, Vanity Fair’s ‘Awards Insider’ columnist speaks with some of this year’s most notable Oscar nominees about their entire body of nominated work. Here, The Power of the Dog production designer New…

Hundreds Held After New Zealand-Led Investigation

Hundreds Held After New Zealand-Led Investigation

A two-year investigation led by the Department of Internal Affairs in New Zealand has resulted in the arrests of hundreds of people around the globe on charges of possessing and sharing child sexual abuse…

Runner Anne Audain Triumphed Over Adversity

Runner Anne Audain Triumphed Over Adversity

“By the time Anne Audain came to challenge for a place in the world record books, at the age of 26 in 1982, the New Zealander had already overcome a lifetime worth of trials…

Hypebeast Interviews Entire Studios Founders

Hypebeast Interviews Entire Studios Founders

“Dylan Richards and Sebastian Hunt saw eye to eye the moment they met at 17 years old. The New Zealand-born and raised creatives yearned to be anywhere but home, where support for their vision…

Andrew Dominik’s Nick Cave Doco Hypnotises

Andrew Dominik’s Nick Cave Doco Hypnotises

“Illuminating tracks from the superb 2019 Bad Seeds album Ghosteen and Nick Cave’s 2021 collaboration with Warren Ellis, Carnage, this remarkable performance documentary may be for the Nick…

Our Flag Means Death Stars Waititi and Darby

Our Flag Means Death Stars Waititi and Darby

“The new comedy series Our Flag Means Death was created by American writer David Jenkins and produced by the prolific Taika Waititi, who also stars as Blackbeard, to whom he brings a leonine grace,”…

Olympic Shot Put Star Valerie Adams Retires

Olympic Shot Put Star Valerie Adams Retires

Two-time Olympic women’s shot put champion Rotorua-born Dame Valerie Adams has announced her retirement at the age of 37, ESPN reports. Adams also won Olympic silver and bronze medals and was a four-time world champion,…

Māori Party Asks QEII for Divorce to Heal Colonial Wounds

Māori Party Asks QEII for Divorce to Heal Colonial Wounds

Among celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the Māori Party has proposed New Zealand’s “divorce” from the British Crown to heal wounds left by the colonisation of native…

New Zealand Bans LGBT+ Conversion Therapy

New Zealand Bans LGBT+ Conversion Therapy

New Zealand has passed legislation banning conversion therapy based on a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill was passed almost unanimously with 112 votes in favour and…

Inside Musical Instruments with Charles Brooks

Inside Musical Instruments with Charles Brooks

The New Zealand photographer Charles Brooks’ project “Architecture in Music” takes the viewer inside instruments, where music is created. A result achieved through a very specific technique. He explains his series to Enrico Ratto…

Silver Lake to Invest in New Zealand Rugby

Silver Lake to Invest in New Zealand Rugby

Silver Lake has agreed to invest NZ$200 million in the organisation behind New Zealand’s legendary All Blacks rugby team, as the US private equity firms continue to buy into sport amid the coronavirus pandemic,…

US Shows for Auckland band The Beths

US Shows for Auckland band The Beths

As The Beths make their way across the United States for a sold-out gig in Boston, it’s a good time to celebrate a strange band on a normal rock ’n’ roll tour. Fronted by…

Va’aiga Tuigamala a Huge Presence on the Field

Va’aiga Tuigamala a Huge Presence on the Field

Samoa-born Va’aiga Tuigamala, a former All Black, and rugby league player for Wigan Warriors and Newcastle Falcons dual-code international, has died in Auckland at the age of 52, BBC Sport reports. Tuigamala, nicknamed Inga the…

Thinking Differently with Alice Boyes

Thinking Differently with Alice Boyes

Greymouth-born former clinical psychologist, writer Alice Boyes, speaks with the UK’s New Statesman about the value of thinking differently, border restrictions in New Zealand and her experience of IVF. Boyes, who is now the…

Parris Goebel Doing Us All Proud

Parris Goebel Doing Us All Proud

After choreographing a Jennifer Lopez tour at 19, the New Zealand-born, IMG Models-signed dancer Parris Goebel, 30, went on to work for some of the biggest names in music, like Justin Bieber. Now, she’s…

Getty Research Institute Acquires Max Gimblett Artist’s Book Collection

Getty Research Institute Acquires Max Gimblett Artist’s Book Collection

New Zealand American artist Max Gimblett ONZM has celebrated six decades of creativity with the Getty Center’s acquisition of an archive of 275 of his artist’s books. The Getty of Los Angeles is a leading…

Chrissy Teigen Insta Endorses The Caker

Chrissy Teigen Insta Endorses The Caker

New Zealand-born Los-Angeles-based baker Jordan Rondel​ has described the moment mega-influencer and supermodel Chrissy Teigen​ endorsed her cake on Instagram as “surreal”, Amberleigh Jack writes for Stuff. Teigen, creator of website Cravings by Chrissy Teigen,…

Mainstream Cottons on to Talented Melanie Lynskey

Mainstream Cottons on to Talented Melanie Lynskey

After 30 years of critical acclaim, but not mainstream fame, New Zealand-born actor Melanie Lynskey is getting noticed and it feels very, very strange to her. Her show, Yellowjackets, has steadily become a hit….

Peter Jackson’s Beatles Epic Unmissable

Peter Jackson’s Beatles Epic Unmissable

“Nonplussed coppers, 60s London panoramas and the fab four very much alive … Peter Jackson’s film is moving and unmissable,” according to Guardian reviewer Peter Bradshaw, who rates the series five out of five…

Jane Campion Tops Oscar Nominations

Jane Campion Tops Oscar Nominations

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog has received 12 Oscar nominations, the most of any film this year. Amongst the categories, the New Zealander’s film was nominated for director, adapted screenplay and best…

Freestyle Prodigy Nico Porteous on How to Fly

Freestyle Prodigy Nico Porteous on How to Fly

It’s difficult to describe what it’s like in a superpipe – the biggest class of halfpipe, used in professional competition – without actually standing in one. The feeling is unnerving, Nick Remsen writes for…

Nina Mingya Powles Explores an Otherness

Nina Mingya Powles Explores an Otherness

New Zealand writer Nina Mingya Powles’ essay collection Small Bodies of Water “just might change the way you see the world” the Star Tribune’s Cory Oldweiler suggests. “Powles was born in Wellington, and is mixed-raced,…

Britain is Starstruck By TV’s Rose Matafeo

Britain is Starstruck By TV’s Rose Matafeo

With the hit BBC Three show Starstruck returning to UK screens for season two, Glamour magazine catches up with its New Zealand creator and star, Rose Matafeo. “Given the sheer amount of romcoms you reference…

Wānaka’s Nico Porteous Takes Gold in Beijing

Wānaka’s Nico Porteous Takes Gold in Beijing

Nico Porteous has dropped the curtain on New Zealand’s greatest Winter Games, overcoming the elements and a field of established champions to win the Olympic freeski halfpipe title, Bryan Armen Graham writes for The…

Director Peter Jackson Leads Forbes Rich List

Director Peter Jackson Leads Forbes Rich List

At the end of 2021 he was still making headlines with his Beatles documentary Get Back. Now Forbes magazine has named New Zealand director Sir Peter Jackson, 60, the world’s wealthiest entertainer, Germany’s Der…

Rugby League Farewells Legendary Olsen Filipaina

Rugby League Farewells Legendary Olsen Filipaina

Pioneering Kaikohe-born rugby league great Olsen Filipaina has died at the age of 64. Filipaina was a trailblazer, George Clarke writes in a story published online at Australia’s 7News, becoming one of the first…

Dubai-Based Kathy Johnston Loves Chocolate

Dubai-Based Kathy Johnston Loves Chocolate

New Zealand-born Kathy Johnston is so in love with chocolate, she lies awake at night thinking about it. “For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed,” she says. But as chief…

New Zealanders in Vietnam Thrive Despite Covid

New Zealanders in Vietnam Thrive Despite Covid

As Covid continues to cut a disruptive swath through Asia, expatriate communities have been hit hard. In the unique situation of living far from home in Vietnam, a trio of New Zealanders shared their…

Enter the World of S Asian Talent With Anita Chhiba

Enter the World of S Asian Talent With Anita Chhiba

Employing her community platform Diet Paratha to shine a spotlight on emerging South Asian talent, New Zealander Anita Chhiba, 31, is fighting the good fight against archaic systems of power in the global creative…

Meet Todd Antony’s Subjects from Sierra Leone

Meet Todd Antony’s Subjects from Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, the beautiful game is proving to be a source of joy and empowerment for amputee footballers, writes Deborah Nicholls-Lee for UK journalism magazine, Positive News. “They’re just phenomenal athletes,” said New…

1922 – A Year of Katherine Mansfield and Other Great Modernists

1922 – A Year of Katherine Mansfield and Other Great Modernists

“James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land are rightly hailed as masterpieces – but they unfairly overshadow 1922’s other great books,” writes John Self in a feature for the BBC, which explores…

Photographer Rebecca Zephyr Thomas Lights Up

Photographer Rebecca Zephyr Thomas Lights Up

As the chaotic fashions of the early 2000s are poised for revival, according to Dazed’s Emily Dinsdale, New Zealand-born photographer Rebecca Zephyr Thomas shares her images from the first time around for an art…

2-Metre Peter Poster Makes London Museum

2-Metre Peter Poster Makes London Museum

Two years ago Christchurch medical radiation technologist Peter Dooley loaned his 2-metre body to a Covid-19 social-distancing campaign, Cecile Meier reports for Stuff. Now the posters – featuring him lying down or spreading his…

Geoff Andrews, Kiwi Connector in the Big Apple

Geoff Andrews, Kiwi Connector in the Big Apple

Geoff Andrews, a leader and organizer of the New Zealand community in New York City, died on December 30, 2021, at his home in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, aged 76. He lived in New…

Gang of Youths Bassist Max Dunn on the Bigtime

Gang of Youths Bassist Max Dunn on the Bigtime

Music magazine NME sits down with one of Australia’s biggest bands, Gang of Youths, in their adopted home of London to talk fame, grief and their powerful new album Angel In Realtime. In the…

Zoi Sadowski-Synnott Wins Winter Olympics NZ-First

Zoi Sadowski-Synnott Wins Winter Olympics NZ-First

Wanaka’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, 20, stood on top of the podium in women’s snowboard slopestyle at the Beijing Olympics last week, winning the first-ever Winter Games gold medal for New Zealand, Reuters reports. Cheers erupted in…

Rower Hamish Bond Retires After Three Olympic Golds

Rower Hamish Bond Retires After Three Olympic Golds

Dunedin-born Hamish Bond, 35, has announced his retirement from rowing, bringing down the curtain on a glittering career during which he became the first New Zealand man to win gold at three consecutive Olympics,…

Success for Allbirds’ Tim Brown Has Meaning

Success for Allbirds’ Tim Brown Has Meaning

Allbirds co-founder New Zealander Tim Brown shares his insights on fuelling performance with a higher purpose. Brown tells Inc. magazine that when he retired from professional football, he found himself searching for his next…

Leave No Girl Behind Sings Kimbra in Campaign

Leave No Girl Behind Sings Kimbra in Campaign

Grammy award-winning artist, New Zealand-born New York-based Kimbra, has released an original song to launch the Leave No Girl Behind initiative with the not-for-profit So They Can, Leah Rodriguez writes in a story…

Sonny Bill Williams Our Very Own Antihero

Sonny Bill Williams Our Very Own Antihero

From Iverson and Kyrgios to Vick, Zidane, and New Zealander Sonny Bill Williams, GQ magazine presents the greatest male renegades, rebels, and mavericks in global sports. “As long as there have been sports, there have…

Shining the Light on Actor Melanie Lynskey

Shining the Light on Actor Melanie Lynskey

The Yellowjackets star New Zealander Melanie Lynskey has gone from character actor to leading lady thanks to her singular ability to project simmering rage beneath a placid exterior, EJ Dickson writes for Rolling Stone. This…

Wayve’s Alex Kendall Teaching Cars to Drive

Wayve’s Alex Kendall Teaching Cars to Drive

UK autonomous driving start-up Wayve, co-founded by New Zealander Alex Kendall, has been backed by a host of big name investors including Microsoft, Virgin and Baillie Gifford in a US$200 million funding round that…

Finnegan Tui Releases a Reflection of Darkness

Finnegan Tui Releases a Reflection of Darkness

New Zealand-born multi-instrumentalist and producer Finnegan Tui “has released a haunting electronica ballad, ‘Spring’, describing the search for hope at the darkest time of year,” the UK’s Notion magazine reports. “Tui nurtured his own…

Commentator Niki Bezzant Writes on Menopause

Commentator Niki Bezzant Writes on Menopause

An edited extract from New Zealander Niki Bezzant’s book This Changes Everything: The Honest Guide to Menopause and Perimenopause, was recently published in The Guardian. “For centuries the symptoms of menopause were documented, but women…

Tom Hardy’s Stuntman Jacob Tomuri Opens Up

Tom Hardy’s Stuntman Jacob Tomuri Opens Up

There is an icy chill to the water in Wellington’s Oriental Bay at 7pm. For Jacob Tomuri, after long days filming high-octane fight action, a daring dip cleanses, rejuvenates and helps relieve the off-camera…

Nico Porteous Claims Freeski Halfpipe World Cup Win

Nico Porteous Claims Freeski Halfpipe World Cup Win

Just days after recovering from Covid-19, New Zealand’s Nico Porteous, 20, has claimed victory at the Freeski Halfpipe World Cup in California, Stuff reports. This was a maiden World Cup triumph for the Wanaka skier…

Reappraising Unjustly Neglected James Courage

Reappraising Unjustly Neglected James Courage

“New Zealand-born James Courage is one of those fine writers who, though he enjoyed considerable success in his lifetime, has now more or less slipped from view. None of the eight novels he published…

Track Hero Nick Willis Tries Sub-4:00 Again in NY

Track Hero Nick Willis Tries Sub-4:00 Again in NY

Over the course of five Olympics, the New Zealand mid-distance runner Nick Willis has become a track and field legend. At 38, he recently embarked on an unprecedented quest. GQ went trackside to witness…