Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Mairātea Mohi (Te Arawa, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui), publishing associate te reo Māori at Auckland University Press.

The book I wish I’d written

As a publisher, I know writing a book is no small feat – it’s an all-consuming, borderline deranged process. Some authors vanish into their writing caves for years, emerging only to blink at the sun like startled possums. Others won’t stop talking about their book or the project — which, more often than not, never sees the light of day. The sheer focus required sometimes looks like a self-inflicted form of madness. Love them to bits, but I’m not entirely sold on putting myself through that.

However, if I had to be part of a creative team, I’d want to be with those responsible for Horrible Histories — both the books and the TV show. It’s history, but funnier, messier, and occasionally more traumatising than the real thing. Now ain’t that accuRAT~! (IYKYK).

Everyone should read

More fan fiction. More indie publishing. More of the small guy stories with the big impact. 

There’s a kind of magic in these spaces. Small publishers and indie writers do what the big players can’t — they speak between the cracks, capturing the voices, perspectives, and stories that might otherwise go unheard. They shape the literary world in ways that are bold, unpredictable, and exactly what we need.

I grew up on Wattpad and Tumblr, where storytelling was raw, immediate, and downright chaotic. Some of my earliest writing attempts involved very questionable K-pop boy band fanfic requests. But in those messy, unpolished corners of the internet, I found gold — 200-part epics written by teen superfans on a school night, genre-bending stories that would go down in AO3 history, and writers pouring their hearts out for free, just because they had to tell their story.

So, tell that fan to start writing. Pick up more indie books. And, for the love of good storytelling, spend your money on local stories.

The book I want to be buried with

My koro kept a large diary that holds the stories of our whānau, our whakapapa and the pūrākau tied to our land. Over the years, it’s passed through many hands, each of us adding our own piece. It’s a treasure trove of wisdom, with a karakia or a tohī for every occasion — from the mundane like a house blessing to the deeply tapu, like miscarrying on non-whānau land. 

There’s only one copy in the world and in a perfect scenario I would take it with me to the grave. But I couldn’t do that to our future uri. 

Otherwise give me an I Spy book and I should be sweet. I just need something to pass the time right?

The first book I remember reading by myself

My mum read to me a lot as a child, so I don’t really remember the shift from her voice to my own inner voice. Though I can remember slowly becoming more and more impatient once I could read, simply because she wasn’t doing it fast enough! 

When I think of my first memories with books I have this fever-dream memory of reading a book about a little girl who befriended a family of mokomoko living in the pā harakeke of her marae. With a similar art style to the books found at kura, the Peter Gossage and Robyn Kahukiwa types, it was a tale of tiaki whenua and whānau. And I say fever dream because the protagonist shared a name with me. It stuck out, not because I love reptiles, but in a country with only two recorded living people named Mairātea (I checked Stats NZ) it came as a surprise. I can barely find a keychain — let alone a book character! 

But here’s the thing — I can’t find the book anywhere. No library, no secondhand shop, no Google search turns it up. Maybe a very bored kid stuck waiting for her mum in an iwi board hui made it up to pass the time?

(For the record, the other Mairātea is also from Rotorua, just without the macron. And yes, I know her family. She’s very lovely.)

Fiction or nonfiction

Both! My reading taste is similar to that of a very keen young guy on Tinder. I’ll give anything a go at least once! 

Also like a guy on Tinder, I’m often juggling multiple at once. I just finished Pacific Arts Aotearoa edited by Lana Lopesi, and I’m diving into Just Kids by Patti Smith now. On the fiction side, I’ve just finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – because who doesn’t love a weird sister duo? Ew, delved a little too far into my Tinder man alter ego there, sorry. 

The book that haunts me

A translated EXO fanfic from China called 48 Hours. Inspired by the Japanese novel Battle Royale by Koushan Takami, where schoolchildren are dropped on a deserted island to fight to the death, this version trapped the members of EXO in a house with the same grim premise. The story is told in retrospect, from the winner’s perspective, as he details the blood and gore to the cop who picks him up after the “competition”.

I later found Battle Royale at the formidable age of 14. Safe to say it left a bloody mark.

The book I pretend I’ve read

Anything on my uni reading list … :/

Pride and Prejudice? DNF. Never made it through a single Brontë sister. And despite working with the Māori translation of Macbeth (coming later this year!) I still haven’t properly read or watched any Shakespeare. I can appreciate the classics for their technical brilliance, but relatability? Different story. All I’ll say is Charlotte Brontë was not writing with a 21st century Māori girl sitting hillside in the outskirts of Rotorua in mind.

For the most part, I get by on film adaptations — enough to float through conversation at least, but I don’t pretend otherwise. I’ve never read the “greats”, and I’ll admit it freely. Sure, I get the occasional raised eyebrow, considering my occupation. But I have only one life, if a book doesn’t hook me in 50 pages, I’m not slogging through it. Besides, my TBR is long enough for two lives, maybe even three.

The book that made me cry

The Australian Editing Handbook 3rd Edition.

If I could only read three books for the rest of my life they would be

The Hunting Accident by David Carlson and Landis Blair, The Strange tale of Panorama Island by Edogawa Ranpo, and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. 

They each have some strange, absurdist, thought spiralling element to them all. If I only had limited options, I would want something I could read over and over again and find a new meaning every time. Plus, the pictures are pretty. 

Encounter with an author

I write a blog for work about what it’s like to be a newbie in publishing. Well, I heard through the grapevine that Witi Ihimaera reads it! Initially I wanted to wipe my digital existence off the face of the earth and go crawl into a hole, but eventually, I got over myself. Deciding to take a bit of a risk – and with the help of a lovely intro email by my boss – I sent him a letter asking if I could take him out for coffee and pick his brain about surviving the publishing industry. And crazily enough, he said yes!

So last week, in the cooling Auckland climate, we met at one of my favourite cafes in the city. As I go to settle in, bum barely in my seat, the first thing he asks is, “So … What are your dreams?”

It had been a very long time since I was asked that question and I was instantly taken back to year five rūmaki class bellowing to the room that I would be a world-famous archaeologist. (Spoiler: Yeah, nah.) In a mild panic I think I ended up saying something silly like “I have many dreams, I guess it depends on the day.”

Not the most poetic answer, but if I’m being honest? As a floundering young person, it was the realest one I had.

Greatest New Zealand book

For me it’s the school journals that the Ministry of Education distributed to kura kaupapa. They were a revelation — finally, stories that felt familiar and alive!

Each level had its own publication — He Kohikohinga for the little ones, Te Tautoko for intermediates, and Te Wharekura for us big kids. I remember a particularly thrilling issue of Te Wharekura with a story about a young warrior navigating treacherous rapids in his waka, only to save himself with karakia. Another told of a patupaiarehe guiding a tohunga through the dangerous forest. It was engaging, it was exciting, and it was something we could participate in together, as a class. These were stories with elements that we had only ever heard about in relation to old days passed. It brought these big lofty objects down to us kids and made our history feel more real, feel more relevant. 

They were a taonga filled with fiction, stunning local art, and even student submissions. I always wanted to submit a story; it felt like the pinnacle of literary achievement at the time. You could feel the care woven into every page and I only wish my nieces and nephews had something like that today. 

Best food memory from a book

I unabashedly call myself a foodie. I grew up watching my dad eat offal and host chilli eating competitions in the kitchen. He was my introduction to the different cuisines of the world and it’s a family tradition to eat as much as we can possibly fit whenever we manage a catch up. I think it’s why I connected so much to A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers. The writing was just to die for. 

Written as the prison memoir of a former food critic turned serial killer, it’s piquant, bitchy, and wickedly funny. Think lingua con le olive — using the tongue of a smooth-talking paramour. A perfectly seared rump roast (courtesy of a particularly fit lover) served with roasted vegetables. Or even Pâté à la Gil, smeared over warm toast.

This book pairs best with any snack you can eat off a fork (no dirty pages here) and a cold beer.

Best place to read

Anywhere where you can be horizontal. Favourites include:

• Amid a nest of pillows
• In the bath
• On a hillside where the earth meets your head at just the right angle to prop it up
• On your stomach, sunbathing after a dip in the sea, with chippies at your reach
• A little bit drunk, on the couch, with the fire roaring next to you. 

Pants are optional in all of these scenarios. 

What are you reading right now

Perfume by Patrick Süskind.

I’ve been taking my time with it, to the frustration of everyone on the library waitlist behind me, but I’m savouring the prose and the way Süskind builds his world through scent. I recently watched a film analysis of Parasite that explored how non-visual cues shape our perceptions — like how we ignore the scent of our own home or instantly recognise when someone just smells rich.

Smell is an underutilised sense in literature, yet it holds so much power. It has the ability to induce nostalgia, trigger an emotion or seduce in ways stronger than words, appearances, or even will. But imagine having no scent at all? No trace of yourself left in a room, no lingering presence on someone’s clothes, nothing to make you felt through the air. Nothing to prove you were ever there at all. 

Julie Hill reviews the Meta exposé written by the New Zealander who used to work there.

Sarah Wynn-Williams begins to get a sense that she isn’t in for a normal life when, at 13, she is munched by a shark.  

The Christchurch teenager is at the beach, on holiday with her family, and the nearest doctor is a 20-minute drive away. After a quick trip into town for some stitches, she returns to the campsite and proceeds to nearly bleed to death.  

As she begins to suffocate due to acute peritonitis, her parents, in one of the finest examples of Kiwi understatement ever captured in non-fiction literature, tell her she’s being dramatic. Her mother mumbles, “Mind over matter. Stop your hyperventilating.”  

It’s only when her eyes roll to the back of her head that her slightly too-relaxed parents finally spring into action, although her dad still checks the river for fish as they cross the bridge on the way back to the doctor. Spoiler alert: she survives.  

The shark brings Wynn-Williams many gifts, if by “gifts” we mean big shark bite marks on her torso and lifelong trauma. It also seems to ignite her already eldest-sister-of-four levels of ambition and determination into shooting flames. But the shark’s greatest gift, as far as the reader is concerned, is a truly unbelievable-seeming yarn and the ability to spin it.  

No doubt, Wynn-Williams has had a lifetime of repeating the shark tale, and it shows: as a storyteller she has great chops. In her new book, Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work, she confronts another shark, though he is more often compared to a lizard or robot: Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook.    

Her book takes its name from The Great Gatsby, with Wynn-Williams playing the role of the less financially endowed Nick observing his glamorous friends. As F Scott Fitzgerald puts it: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” 

In her 20s, Wynn-Williams is in New York working for the United Nations. She is one of the youngest there and finds progress glacial. When she learns that Nemo the cartoon fish has been more impactful than the UN in terms of protecting the oceans, she sets her sights on Facebook.  

The company is in its infancy, and she is starry-eyed about its ability to inform and connect. “Like an evangelist,” she writes, “I saw Facebook’s power confirmed in every part of everyday life. Whatever Facebook decided to do – what it did with the voices that were gathering there – would change the course of human events. I was sure of it. This was a revolution.”  

She invents a job that doesn’t exist – global policy director – and spends two years convincing Facebook’s bosses that they urgently need her diplomacy skills. They very much disagree. But then the Arab Spring happens, and they start to see her point. One calls her to ask her how to respond. “We’re seeing calls for Mark to take some credit and we’re trying to figure out if he should.”  

When the Christchurch earthquakes strike in 2011, Wynn-Williams’ reporter sister survives being trapped in a building near Cathedral Square. Wynn-Williams uses the opportunity to again approach Facebook, to let them know how well it provided resources and information, and a lifeline when her sister was missing. Finally, she gets the gig. 

Next minute, Wynn-Williams is running through archeological ruins in Panama into the path of incoming galloping horses while wearing high heels, flying around on Zuckerberg’s private jet, being mobbed in Mumbai. 

This is long before Zuckerberg becomes a blue belt in jujitsu or takes his place among the herd of tech bros given front row seats to Donald Trump’s second inauguration. This is back in his hoodie era, when all his meetings had to be held after midday.  

The Social Network has just come out, with Jesse Eisenberg depicting Zuckerberg as less of a supervillain and more of a loveable dork. IRL, according to Wynn-Williams, he would play Settlers of Catan with his colleagues (who would let him win) and do Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want it That Way’ at karaoke.  

“Most days,” Wynn-Williams writes, “working on policy was less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of 14-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them.”  

In a toe-curling early moment of her tenure, Wynn-Williams is charged with greeting none other than New Zealand’s prime minister John Key. Unlike a recent trip by a German minister, who was as unimpressed by the building’s exposed air ducts as the company’s ethics, the New Zealand leader is raring to go and jazzed to get a selfie with the man himself. There’s just one problem: Zuck isn’t keen.      

After establishing their one degree of separation (Key knows Wynn-Williams’s sister), they run into Zuckerberg. “Hi Mark – did you want to meet the New Zealand prime minister?” asks Wynn-Williams, to which Zuckerberg replies, “No. I already said I definitely didn’t want to do that.”  

Once he becomes aware that Key is in fact standing right there, Zuckerberg shakes his hand and makes “what could generously be called polite conversation… if he weren’t so transparently annoyed”, writes Wynn-Williams. “The effort is felt by everyone.” But the man who unintentionally made Laser Kiwi a thing seems unfazed. When he meets the other bosses, he barely mentions policy. Everyone is there for the photo opportunity. 

While Wynn-Williams paints a younger Zuckerberg with a vague pong, his chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is very much his foil. Where he is disheveled, informal, pale to the point of transparent, she is charismatic, shiny, poised. Her 2013 book Lean In, a New York Times bestseller, expounds her view that, with just a few tweaks of our schedules and attitudes, women can be winners both at home and at work. It’s bullshit of course, and the emptiness of her philosophy is soon laid bare.    

Even grimmer, while the pair are on a work trip, Sandberg blatantly asks Wynn-Williams, twice, to come to bed with her. She has the same conversation with other junior employees. “Celebrity is the mask that eats into your face,” Wynn-Williams observes, and it appears Sandberg is past being eaten.  

Another colleague is Joel Kaplan, formerly a policy adviser to George W Bush, who has since risen through Meta’s ranks to now being “Zuckerberg’s most trusted political fixer” according to a recent profile in the Australian Financial Review. Wynn-Williams writes that Kaplan makes a number of creepy comments, including asking her repeatedly “where she’s bleeding out of” when she suffers complications after giving birth.  

Her heavily filtered dream of a Facebook where democracy and transparency would prevail is far from the truth. As a company it’s unethical, illegal, casually dishonest, and it dawns on her that its actions are harming children, taking a wrecking ball to journalism and allowing misinformation to flourish.  

Wynn-Williams is on a private jet with Zuckerberg “the day he finally understood that Facebook probably did put Trump in the White House”. The catharsis comes only after a patient staff member explains it to him and, far from appearing dismayed, he starts to form his own presidential aspirations. 

Eventually Wynn-Williams turns whistle blower, filing a complaint alleging that Meta has misled investors by failing to reveal the extent of its dealings with China and its Communist Party. For its part, Meta states that she left the company eight years ago after being “fired for poor performance and toxic behaviour, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment”. 

This week, the company successfully banned Wynn-Williams from promoting her book, including on RNZ’s Nine to Noon, after convincing the American Arbitration Association that it would face “immediate loss in the absence of immediate relief”.  

All of which has sent sales into the stratosphere. Earlier in the month, she snuck in a chat with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis of the iconic Prince Andrew “Woking Pizza Express” interview. And her publisher, Pan Macmillan, says it is “committed to upholding freedom of speech and her right to tell her story”.  

At a time when an unelected social media boss merrily leads a purge on the US federal workforce, Wynn-Williams gives us pause to reflect on the degree of power we’ve willingly bequeathed to a tiny group of weird billionaires. As a headline on The Guardian recently put it: “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.” 

Just like that first shark encounter, working with Facebook was darker and more painful than Wynn-Williams could possibly have imagined. On the plus side, she got a bloody good story out of it. 

Careless People: The Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams ($40, Macmillan) is available to order from Unity Books, or browse BookHub to see which indie bookshop has got it in stock near you.