Stephanie Johnson

Guest writer

Stephanie Johnson lives in Auckland and is the author of novels including The Heart’s Wild Surf (1996), and The Shag Incident (2002), judged book of the year at the 2003 national book awards. A memoir was published by Bridget Williams Books in 2016. Stephanie was born in Auckland in 1961.

Embracing the void: a powerhouse writer turns to self-publishing

Embracing the void: a powerhouse writer turns to self-publishing

Stephanie Johnson is an acclaimed, multi-award-winning New Zealand author, and also the co-founder of the Auckland Writers Festival. But could she get her latest novel published? Yeah, nah.

By Stephanie Johnson | 15th April, 2019

How to make the story of an affair between a young woman and a much older man seem original

How to make the story of an affair between a young woman and a much older man seem original

Stephanie Johnson suspects the debut novel by English writer Lisa Halliday is "the first flaring of a great talent".

By Stephanie Johnson | 7th August, 2018

Book of the Week: Middle-class love and sex and agony

Book of the Week: Middle-class love and sex and agony

Stephanie Johnson luxuriates in the new Julian Barnes novel - a story of adultery which "wrestles with the deepest conflicts of human existence."

By Stephanie Johnson | 29th March, 2018

Book of the Week: A disturbing modern fable by Lloyd Jones

Book of the Week: A disturbing modern fable by Lloyd Jones

Two refugees are shut in a small cage and fed through a hole in the wires: Stephanie Johnson reviews The Cage, the claustrophobic, dystopian novel by Lloyd Jones.

By Stephanie Johnson | 15th February, 2018

The Monday extract: Stephanie Johnson on the problem with Australia

The Monday extract: Stephanie Johnson on the problem with Australia

An extract from Playing for Both Sides, a kind of memoir by Auckland novelist Stephanie Johnson on her love-hate relationship with Australia.

By Stephanie Johnson | 20th February, 2017

The Mervyn Thompson Affair: ‘The women who made the attack must have believed they were doing a brave thing’

The Mervyn Thompson Affair: ‘The women who made the attack must have believed they were doing a brave thing’

All week this week we revisit the Mervyn Thompson Affair – the strange, powerful 1984 incident when six masked women abducted an Auckland university lecturer, chained him to a tree in Western Springs, threatened to castrate him, and labelled him a rapist. Today: a memoir by Thompson's friend, novelist Stephanie Johnson.

By Stephanie Johnson | 13th September, 2016

Let us once more inspect the private lives of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

Let us once more inspect the private lives of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

Stephanie Johnson reviews a biography of Ted Hughes, which takes yet another close, obsessive look at his doomed marriage to Sylvia Plath.

By Stephanie Johnson | 21st January, 2016