Three Books from Āporo Press

This campaign aims to supplement the financial cost of publishing three books by kaituhi Māori via Āporo Press. In the next 12 months, Āporo Press will publish a debut full-length poetry collection from Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Pāoa), a debut novel by Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi) and a mixed poetry and photography collection by Jo Bragg (Ngāti Porou). 

Āporo Press is bad apple‘s associated micro-press established and run by Damien Levi. We aim to publish works by minority voices in Aotearoa New Zealand and fill gaps in the market left unaddressed by major publishing houses.

Publisher: Damien Levi

Damien Levi (Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi) is a publisher, editor and arts facilitator based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He is the lead editor of the online arts and literature journal bad apple, founder of Āporo Press and co-editor of the poetry anthology Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa (2023) alongside Amber Esau. His poetry and essays have been published online and in print.

Authors: Nicola Andrews, Laura Vincent and Jo Bragg

Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Paoa, Pākehā) grew up in Waitākere, and currently works as a librarian in San Francisco. Their poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies; and they are the grateful winner of the 2023 AAALS Indigenous Writer's Prize in Poetry. Their craft has grown in writing communities including the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Tin House Workshop. Most of their poems were written in the company of a very spoilt Siamese cat. https://nicolaandrews.neocities.org/

Self-described hopeless romantic Jo Bragg (He/Him) (Ngāti Porou) is a Tāmaki Makaurau born and based art writer, poet, researcher and still/moving image-based visual-artist. Bragg holds an MFA by Research (First Class Honours) awarded in 2021 from Monash University (Naarm, Melbourne) majoring in contemporary art, gender and trans-feminist theory. https://badapple.gay/tag/jo-bragg/

Laura Vincent is a writer from Waiuku, with poetry and fiction published in The Spinoff, Peach, and the Queer Life, Queer Love; No Other Place to Stand; and Spoiled Fruit anthologies, amongst others. Her poem ‘ACTIVITIES’ was part of an installation at Britomart for the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tāmaki. She is completing several novel manuscripts and has written the food blog hungryandfrozen.com since 2007. https://badapple.gay/author/laura/

While we have received some financial support from CLNZ for Overseas Experience and are partnering with Whitireia Publishing for Hoods Landing, these funds will help make up the shortfall and allow us to embark whole-heartedly on improving the quality of all three projects and allow us to begin work on Playbook.

The funding will support:

• Editing and proofing
• Internal and cover design
• Typesetting
• Printing and distribution
• Marketing and publicity

The work for these aspects of the project will largely be done by commissioned publishing professionals and designers—focusing on queer and POC practitioners where possible.

Āporo Press is working on three upcoming publishing projects for release in the next 12 months. The press focuses on publishing work from minority voices often overlooked by mainstream publishing. The three titles this campaign supports are all debuts of some sort from queer, Māori writers previously published in Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa. 

Overseas Experience is the debut full-length poetry collection by Nicola Andrews. It compiles work from her USA-published chapbooks Māori Maid Difficult and Hinting at Decolonization, as well as a variety of other poems, for an Aotearoa release. This collection will feature a cover design by award-winning designer Kaan Hiini (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa). Copyright Licensing New Zealand has supported this book with $3,500 of funding.

Hoods Landing is the debut novel by Laura Vincent, who describes the novel as:

"A Southern Gothic-via-rural South Auckland anti-tragedy inspired by the works of Robert Altman and David Lynch featuring elderly lesbians, twins who aren’t twins, a 102-year-old tarot reader, people dropping like flies from cancer, several dogs named Roger, and a sexy baptism."

Hoods Landing is being published with the support of Whitireia Publishing students, who will be working on this title throughout 2025. 

Playbook is the debut poetry collection by Jo Bragg. Tracking ten years of the poet's life, Playbook is a diaristic and documentative collection that reflects a human experience through love, art and pop culture. Interspersed throughout the collection are photographs from Jo's image-based practice. 

It is becoming increasingly difficult for queer and Māori writers to be published in Aotearoa outside of independent presses. Although there are no clearly defined and accessible statistics for ethnic diversity in publishing, in 2023 Janis Freegard conducted an independent study and noted only 10% of poetry books published in 2021 were by Māori authors. (This is in contrast to only 2% in 2019.) There are currently no up-to-date statistics for fiction titles.

Additionally, as noted by Always Becominging in "Why Aren't Aotearoa Publishers Releasing More Trans-Authored Books?" for Hurt Books, only five books by trans authors were published in New Zealand in 2024—one of which was published by Āporo Press. Your support helps us improve this abysmal showing from NZ publishers through publishing Jo Bragg's collection.

Your support allows us to add three new queer Māori books to the world—two poetry collections and one novel—allowing these communities to access work that represents their own lived experiences. You will also be supporting an independent press contracting a range of freelance professionals in a challenging financial environment for the arts.