Charlotte Graham-McLay

Charlotte Graham-McLay is a freelance journalist and broadcaster who lives in Wellington. She won a Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial in Association with The Spinoff Writer's Residency Award in 2017, when she worked on a memoir about dance. Charlotte was born in Dunedin in 1986.

Books
Sep 20, 2018

Book of the Week: the new JK Rowling is up there with Harry Potter

Charlotte Graham-McLay is dazzled by the new novel by JK Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith), which arrived in shops this week.

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Books
Jun 28, 2018

The feminist manifesto that isn't, thank God, a feminist manifesto

"I am wary of reading any more feminist manifestos these days because they are very exhausting," writes Charlotte Graham-McLay, in her review of a new memoir hailed as a feminist manifesto but it isn't, really.

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Books
Jun 20, 2018

Inside the Surrey Hotel: less than 24 hours to meet the deadline for New Zealand's finest writers residency award

As the deadline looms for the 2018 Surrey Hotel writers residency award, 2017 winner Charlotte Graham-McLay files a report on her experience at the Surrey. She danced a lot.

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Politics
May 8, 2018

But where was the roar? Watching the Hillary Clinton show in Auckland

There was no sign of the promise she'd 'let her guard down', and flashes of Sarcastic Wine Mom aside, Hillary Clinton offered little more than platitudes at Spark Arena.

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Books
Apr 12, 2018

Book of the Week: Charlotte Grimshaw’s new masterly novel

"Tyrants around the dinner table, fake news inside our heads": Charlotte Graham-McLay celebrates the new novel by Auckland writer Charlotte Grimshaw.

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Books
Mar 7, 2018

Novelist Charlotte Wood: ‘The female body seems to provoke this bizarre hatred’

Charlotte Graham-McLay interviews acclaimed Australian author Charlotte Wood - who is appearing at the New Zealand Festival this weekend - about sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and 'angry women'.

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Media
Sep 6, 2017

‘Why do I have to put up with this shit?’ Women journalists in NZ share their stories of online abuse

As newsrooms push for their reporters and audiences to engage with each other on digital platforms, some women journalists say gendered harassment and abuse from media consumers has become an exhausting, and accepted, part of the job. Charlotte Graham investigates.

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Books
Jul 19, 2017

Review: a rare memoir about being fat that doesn’t end in weight loss

Charlotte Graham reviews the 'horrifying' new memoir by Roxane Gay.

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Books
May 11, 2017

Auckland Writers Festival: Charlotte Graham interviews feminist author Susan Faludi

The best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival continues right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to long, intelligent encounters with guest writers. Today: Charlotte Graham talks with Susan Faludi, author of the classic 1991 book Backlash.

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Television
Apr 30, 2017

What Broadchurch got right (and then very wrong) about rape

Charlotte Graham applauds how Broadchurch handled sexual violence with a nuance seldom seen on television. That is, of course, until it shat the bed.

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Books
Nov 22, 2016

It’s not satire, although it is funny, and by the way the world is fucked: Charlotte Graham on the winner of the Man Booker prize

Charlotte Graham finds that good, standard conventional reviewing of The Sellout, which won the Man Booker prize for fiction, just doesn't cut it; the times call for something else, something frayed and raw.

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Books
Sep 20, 2016

A Little Life meets A Penguin Recent History of White People in New Zealand

There are some lovely lucid moments in Fiona Kidman’s latest novel, says Charlotte Graham, and it’s a reminder that “you’re reading a boss”.++++++

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Books
Aug 1, 2016

Harry Potter and the cursed script: An expert assesses the new adventure

Harry Potter fan Charlotte Graham reviews Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

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