Chris Bourke

Guest writer

Chris Bourke is the author of Good-Bye Māoriland, and Blue Smoke, which won the New Zealand Post Book of the Year award in 2011. He has worked as arts & books editor at the Listener, editor of Rip It Up and Real Groove, and producer of Radio New Zealand’s Saturday Morning with Kim Hill. He is now the contents editor at Audioculture.

Neon Picnic: the festival that never was.

Neon Picnic: New Zealand’s very own Fyre Festival

With 30 years’ hindsight, the failed Neon Picnic festival of January 1988 can be seen as the Fyre festival of its day. Chris Bourke writes.

By Chris Bourke | 24th March, 2019

Officially the coolest photograph ever taken of New Zealanders: Māori volunteers at the Tapawera Military Camp, Nelson district, 1916. Photo with permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, C-26005-1/2.

Book of the Week: A brief history of the power and glory of Māori popular music

One of the stand-out chapters in Chris Bourke's new best-selling history of New Zealand music in World War One is about the contribution and legacy of Māori music. He expands on the subject for the Spinoff.

By Chris Bourke | 2nd November, 2017