Laura Jean McKay

Guest writer

Laura Jean McKay is the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc. 2013), shortlisted for three national book awards in Australia. Her work appears in Meanjin, Overland, Best Australian Stories, The Saturday Paper, and The North American Review. Laura is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University. Her new book is The Animals in That Country (Scribe).

2010; McKay and her Nanna (Photo: Supplied)

How to be brave in the face of, you know, everything

Bearing witness to the end of the world – or at least the end of the one we know.

By Laura Jean McKay | 27th October, 2020

The author out for a walk in Palmerston North (Photo: Tom Doig)

The novel coronavirus: On writing a pandemic, then watching it play out

Laura Jean McKay is hunkered down in Palmerston North, but her novel The Animals in That Country is out in the world – earlier than expected, too, because it's about a strange new flu.

By Laura Jean McKay | 6th April, 2020