michaela keeble
Kia ora! I'm Michaela, a lover of birds, fish and social justice. I descend from UK, Austrian and German immigrants, and grew up on Wurundjeri country in Naarm. I'm now lucky to live in Aotearoa with my partner and kids, on their ancestral whenua.
Along with my son Kerehi Grace, and the incredible illustrator Tokerau Brown, we recently published a children's book, Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai (Gecko Press, 2023)! To our collective delight, the book won Best Picture Book at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2024.
My first full-length collection of poetry, surrender, was published by Taraheke in May 2022, and long-listed for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. And a little origami chapbook intertidal, about change underway in our oceans, was published by our selves at Anemone Press in early 2020.
The first novel I wrote was inspired by the young white US activist Rachel Corrie, killed in 2003 defending Gazan homes from Israeli Occupying Force bulldozers. The novel tried to consider settler colonial legacies in so-called Australia and in Palestine. I knew that novel was not up to the task and chickened out; something Rachel Corrie did not do.
Still, I remain a hopeless anticolonial love poet, lucky to be published in hopeful places, including in Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Intimate Relations: Communicating in the Anthropocene (Lexington Press), and No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press). Other poetry, essays & fiction have appeared in Aotearoa, Australian and US journals.
Along with my son Kerehi Grace, and the incredible illustrator Tokerau Brown, we recently published a children's book, Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai (Gecko Press, 2023)! To our collective delight, the book won Best Picture Book at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2024.
My first full-length collection of poetry, surrender, was published by Taraheke in May 2022, and long-listed for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. And a little origami chapbook intertidal, about change underway in our oceans, was published by our selves at Anemone Press in early 2020.
The first novel I wrote was inspired by the young white US activist Rachel Corrie, killed in 2003 defending Gazan homes from Israeli Occupying Force bulldozers. The novel tried to consider settler colonial legacies in so-called Australia and in Palestine. I knew that novel was not up to the task and chickened out; something Rachel Corrie did not do.
Still, I remain a hopeless anticolonial love poet, lucky to be published in hopeful places, including in Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Intimate Relations: Communicating in the Anthropocene (Lexington Press), and No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press). Other poetry, essays & fiction have appeared in Aotearoa, Australian and US journals.