News of New Zealanders via Global Media

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…

James Morcan’s Anno 2020 Readies for Distributors

James Morcan’s Anno 2020 Readies for Distributors

Filming has wrapped on Tauranga-born writer/director James Morcan’s film Anno 2020, which involved separate crews shooting cast members in Israel, China, and Italy, as well as several states within the US and Australia, with dialogue…

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…

Olivia Shivas Helps Those with Disabilities Travel

Olivia Shivas Helps Those with Disabilities Travel

In a Washington Post story, three travellers with disabilities, including New Zealand journalist Olivia Shivas, relate how they cope with an added layer of worry and logistics. In the podcast “What’s Wrong With You?”,…

The New York Times Sends the World to Northland

The New York Times Sends the World to Northland

In Northland, “cultural lessons await, as do hot springs where visitors can recharge body and soul,” according to Daniel Scheffler writing for The New York Times. The region is included in the publication’s 2022…

Revival for Moriori Pushed Close to Cultural Death

Revival for Moriori Pushed Close to Cultural Death

On the windswept coast of Chatham Island stands a statue of a thick-jowled, cheerful man, his gaze fixed on the endless sea stretched before him, Pete McKenzie writes for The New York Times. The memorial…

Gemma New a Highlight of 2021 Classical Calendar

Gemma New a Highlight of 2021 Classical Calendar

The year in classical music was marked by challenge and determination as the pandemic continued its cultural stranglehold for much of 2021. But for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO), which Wellington-born Gemma New conducted…

Neil McLachlan’s London Folly on the Market

Neil McLachlan’s London Folly on the Market

New Zealand interior designer Neil McLachlan’s “eccentric two-bedroom apartment is available  in London’s Bloomsbury neighbourhood on the ground floor of Russell Court, a renowned Art Deco building designed by late architect George…

The Power of the Dog Among Worthy Globe Winners

The Power of the Dog Among Worthy Globe Winners

Jane Campion’s “handsome, complex and brilliant” western The Power of the Dog won best picture (drama) and best director at this year’s Golden Globes, along with best supporting actor for “the excellent” Kodi Smit-McPhee,…

Outdoors Vital for Children Agrees Rachel Carrell

Outdoors Vital for Children Agrees Rachel Carrell

Home Nursery, an offshoot of New Zealander Rachel Carrell’s Koru Kids childcare agency, has been launched to address the growing number of parents wanting their city-dwelling kids to learn while surrounded by Mother Nature,…

Temuera Morrison’s the Only Face for Boba Fetta

Temuera Morrison’s the Only Face for Boba Fetta

New Zealander Temuera Morrison vividly remembers the first time he tried on his Boba Fett suit, David Betancourt writes in a story for The Washington Post. He sat in a meeting room with Star Wars…

Newcastle United Sign Striker Chris Wood

Newcastle United Sign Striker Chris Wood

New Zealand striker Chris Wood has readily admitted he never envisaged a club triggering the £25m release clause in his contract at Burnley but, once Newcastle United activated it, he felt powerless to say…

Booker Prize Winner Keri Hulme Always a Storyteller

Booker Prize Winner Keri Hulme Always a Storyteller

Keri Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize, has died at her home in Waimate, South Canterbury. She was 74. Hulme worked as a tobacco picker,…

Podcast Explores Vibrant Roots of Our Hip Hop Scene

Podcast Explores Vibrant Roots of Our Hip Hop Scene

In podcast Aotearoa Hip Hop: The Music, The People, The History, Phil Bell aka DJ Sir-Vere talks to some of the genre’s most iconic figures and unsung heroes, exploring how music helped Māori and…

Pop Artist Billy Apple Defied Parochialism

Pop Artist Billy Apple Defied Parochialism

In an article for New York-based magazine Artforum, contributing editor Thomas Crow looks back on the life of New Zealand artist Billy Apple, who died aged 85 in 2021. “Though he was much else besides,…

Dreaming up 1925 Montana with Grant Major

Dreaming up 1925 Montana with Grant Major

Oscar-winning Palmerston North-born production designer Grant Major has transitioned from The Lord of the Rings to the wilds of 1925 Montana for The Power of the Dog, director Jane Campion’s acclaimed western drama that,…

Newsreader Oriini Kaipara Presents World-First

Newsreader Oriini Kaipara Presents World-First

Newshub broadcaster Oriini Kaipara has made the headlines herself in Britain with the Evening Standard reporting the Whakatane-born journalist is the first person to present a prime time news programme with a moko kauae. Kaipara,…

Predator Free 2050 a Force for Nature

Predator Free 2050 a Force for Nature

“Across the world conservation groups, researchers and volunteers are working to combat the key drivers of biodiversity loss identified by scientists,” Max Benato writes for The Guardian in a story that looks at “five…

Rose Matafeo Arguably Breakout Star of 2021

Rose Matafeo Arguably Breakout Star of 2021

After winning a New Zealand international comedy festival award for stand-up in 2007, at the age of 15, Rose Matafeo has conquered just about everything she has ever attempted, Stuart Heritage writes for The…

Invivo Launches World’s First Winery Airline

Invivo Launches World’s First Winery Airline

Before the pandemic halted in-flight booze service aboard a majority of airplanes, airplane drinks used to be something many passengers looked forward to. With select airlines slowly bringing that service back, New Zealand-based winery…

Lorde Is Learning to Put Real Life First

Lorde Is Learning to Put Real Life First

Lorde was thinking the other day about the strange fact that she is a pop star. ‘I wonder if part of it is because pop happened to be the medium that I was interested…

World Jockey of the Year is James McDonald

World Jockey of the Year is James McDonald

Never mind Frankie Dettori or Irad Ortiz, Christophe Lemaire or Joel Rosario. And never mind Ryan Moore, who has just been named the Longines World’s Best Jockey. No, the Jockey of the Year for…

Batsman Will Young Winning Hearts in India

Batsman Will Young Winning Hearts in India

He’s the Black Cap Indians are obsessed with. After an awkward call on the field in the first test between New Zealand and India in November, Will Young has caught the attention of the…

On the Hunt for Lost South Island Kōkako

On the Hunt for Lost South Island Kōkako

Birdwatchers around the world are being called on to turn detective and help in a search for some of the rarest birds on Earth, including New Zealand’s South Island kōkako, last seen in 2007. The…

Should the World Follow NZ in Banning Tobacco?

Should the World Follow NZ in Banning Tobacco?

“If you’re a smoker who wants to indulge your habit while gazing over the mountains of the South Pacific, you’d do well to move fast. New Zealand has announced plans to become the first…