Fiona Kidman

Guest writer

Dame Fiona Kidman is one of New Zealand's most distinguished writers. She has published ten novels, eight short story collections, and six volumes of verse. Fiona was born in Hawera in 1940.

Photo: Getty Images

The Friday Poem: ‘The clothes of the dead’ by Fiona Kidman

A new poem by Fiona Kidman.

By Fiona Kidman | 26th July, 2024

Dame Fiona Kidman: The heart of the matter

Dame Fiona Kidman: The heart of the matter

In the 2022 Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui, founding member Dame Fiona Kidman takes us on a lifelong journey of reading.

By Fiona Kidman | 9th November, 2022

The audience at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival (Photo by Patrick Reynolds; photo illustration by Archi Banal)

Fiona Kidman: Why I love literary festivals

We leave behind our books, our signatures, our dirty linen in hotel rooms. We take away a renewed belief in what we are doing.

By Fiona Kidman | 3rd April, 2022

“We married… in the Māori Anglican Church of St Faith’s on the edge of Lake Rotorua. For a long time we lived by the lake, and watched the purple light of long evenings fall over the water…” Image: Kyal Thornton, iStock, via Getty

An essay on love by that ‘bad, sexy girl’, Fiona Kidman

Today Dame Fiona Kidman publishes All the Way to Summer, a new collection of beloved stories. Here, in an essay especially for The Spinoff, she looks back on her life of love.

By Fiona Kidman | 3rd March, 2020

Rural Wairarapa, NZ. Image: Getty Images.

Remembering the sensational, ‘filthy’ first novel by Fiona Kidman

Last week, Dame Fiona Kidman won the 2019 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for her eleventh novel. Her first, A Breed of Women, was published 40 years ago, in 1979. Here, you can read the opening chapter.

By Fiona Kidman | 23rd May, 2019

Lauris Edmond

The Friday Poet: Dame Fiona Kidman on Lauris Edmond

A memoir by Dame Fiona Kidman on the occasion of a new, posthumous book of poems by her "beautiful friend", Lauris Edmond.

By Fiona Kidman | 5th May, 2017

The ID tags of the lost Pike River miners. Photo: gg.govt.nz

‘Moved to tears before the faces of the lost’ – Fiona Kidman on the fight to bring the Pike River men home

Among the protesters who gathered last week to oppose the sealing of the Pike River mine was the great NZ author Dame Fiona Kidman. Here she explains why more must be be done to retrieve the bodies of the 29 men killed in the 2010 disaster.

By Fiona Kidman | 4th December, 2016

Poetry for the soul

The Friday poem: Man Weeping, by Fiona Kidman

Good heavens - it's Fiona Kidman Day! Her insightful review of Helen Garner ran this morning; now here's a poem from her new, very handsome book of verse.

By Fiona Kidman | 1st April, 2016

Poetry for the soul

Book of the Week: Fiona Kidman reviews the amazing Helen Garner

Fiona Kidman once had Helen Garner over for dinner. It did not go well.

By Fiona Kidman | 1st April, 2016

Books: Does Funnyman Joe Bennett Know How to Write a Novel, and Does he Have a Problem with Women? Yes and yes, says Dame Fiona Kidman

Books: Does Funnyman Joe Bennett Know How to Write a Novel, and Does he Have a Problem with Women? Yes and yes, says Dame Fiona Kidman

Dame Fiona Kidman reviews King RIch, the debut novel by columnist Joe Bennett.

By Fiona Kidman | 30th September, 2015