The Queen of Kō

My book is about my dead father, Ans Westra's images, being haunted by a tricky ghost, the Musket Wars and the bones at the Wairau Bar.

Who Am I?

Talia Marshall (Ngāti Kuia/Rangitāne o Wairau/Ngāti Rārua/Ngāti Takihiku) is a Dunedin based writer who is currently working on a book of essays. In February 2018 her essay was quoted on the cover of the American Poetry Aotearoa issue.

In 2020 she was the inaugural Emerging Māori Writer in Residence at the IIML and she has recently won the Newsroom Surrey Hotel Writers Residency which will enable her to complete her manuscript.

She is unsteady living the dream.

What am crowdfunding for?

I have a completed manuscript under contract with Te Herenga Waka University Press, FKA Victoria University Press.

You can read a sample from the book online HERE

I am having trouble raising the funds to complete this project as the travel I needed to do was Covid interrupted and marred by events outside my control. I have yet to take up a week long residency at The Surrey Hotel where I will be doing substantive rewrites.

I also need to travel to Pōrangahau for whakapapa reasons and to write about the role of the Kaikaranga. I also have to cross between the North Island and the South Island on the ferry with my car and dog in tow.

This sounds indulgent I suppose but it was my ancestors favoured method of travel, the waka, and even kurī would have been onboard and survived the journey from Hawaiki better than the pigs.