‘Megan Dunn is the perfect antidote to the literary sad-girl industrial complex. She has the best deadpan of the southern hemisphere.’ Hera Lindsay Bird.
My third book The Mermaid Chronicles is available in bookstores in New Zealand and Australia from August 13, 2024. That’s now!
MEDIA for The Mermaid Chronicles
Read Guy Somerset review The Mermaid Chronicles for Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books
I wrote about why I wrote The Mermaid Chronicles for The Spinoff here.
Read The Spinoff review of The Mermaid Chronicles here.
Read the Kete review of The Mermaid Chronicles here.
Listen to my feature interview with Kathryn Ryan on RNZ Nine to Noon.
On Loose Reads BFM Jenna Todd reviews The Mermaid Chronicles.
Listen to author and critic Claire Mabey review The Mermaid Chronicles on Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan on RNZ.
Listen to my interview with Morrin Rout on Bookenz, Plains FM.
For those who can get behind the paywall my essay on varicose veins and mothering is on The Herald here.
Immersed: Theo Macdonald interviews me on The Mermaid Chronicles for North & South magazine
Inside Writers Diaries: an article on the Bad Diaries Salon I was part of for WORD Christchurch 2024. P.S I don’t keep a diary. I should start.
2024 Upcoming Literary Events
27 October, 1-5.30pm, I am in this year’s lineup for the fabulous Ladies Litera-Tea in Auckland. I will be on at 3.50pm. Last time I did this event my Mum was in the audience. Sadly this time she won’t be, so do come.
26 October, 6-7pm, at Unity Auckland I will be in conversation with Chloe Blades about The Mermaid Chronicles. Book your ticket here.
1 October, 6pm, at Unity Wellington, attend my belated book launch for The Mermaid Chronicles. Myself and fellow lady memoirist Noelle McCarthy will celebrate with chit chat, conversation about our mothers, merpeople etc. Come and be entertained by my refusal to age gracefully.
August 2024
30 August, 8pm, The Bad Diaries Salon, WORD Christchurch
31 August, 12.30pm The Stirrings, I will chaired this session with award winning memoirist Catherine Taylor.
31 August 3pm, The Mermaid Chronicles, WORD Christchurch…I spoke to author and reviewer Claire Mabey about everything to do with my mermaid odyssey.
MEDIA: Art School book and Mermaid exhibition
My second book Things I Learned At Art School is as honest as Karl Ove Knausgård, as intellectual as Adrian Mole and as sassy as Sweet Valley High.
P.S. Artist Yvonne Todd did the cover.
December 2022
I interviewed NYC based artist Olivia Erlanger on her sculpture featured in The Mermaid Chronicles for The Art Paper. Read here.
November 2022
I was on 7 Sharp in my show talking mermaids to Julian Lee. You can watch here.
October 2022
On October 22, I spoke to Kim Hill on RNZ about the meaning of mermaids and my art exhibition The Mermaid Chronicles, which charters my interest in professional mermaids. Yes, people who are paid to work as mermaids.
On October 20, I had a lovely chat to Maggie on RadioActive about mermaids and my show. I refuse to talk unless I can talk about mermaids!
On October 10, I had a brief chat with Jesse Mulligan about The Mermaid Chronicles.
Mermaids are in Wellington!
Megan Dunn: The Mermaid Chronicles, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 21 October – 18 December 2022
with artworks by Andrew Brusso, Olivia Erlanger, Julia Holden, Alexis Hunter, Suzanne Husky, Brett Stanley, Lena Maria Thüring, and featuring Annette Kellerman, MeduSirena, Hannah Mermaid, Merman Jax, and Julie Atlas Muz
I curated an art exhibition showcasing my interest in the rise of the professional mermaid. The show brings together vintage artefacts with painting, sculpture, underwater photographs, and videos by artists and professional photographers, and features several high-profile mermaid performers. Find out more here or on the Adam Art Gallery website here.
September 2022
On Saturday 3rd September I gave a masterclass on writing from life at WORD Christchurch.
On Friday 2nd September at WORD Christchurch I interviewed Rachel Kushner about her book The Hard Crowd.
On Friday 2nd September at WORD Christchurch I was on the panel: Whose life is it anyway? discussing memoir, alongside Clementine Ford, Ruth Shaw and chair, Victor Rodger. It was EMOTIONAL.
August 2022
On Saturday 27th August I was in Speakers’ Corner at the Auckland Writers Festival. I addressed the topic ‘Art for Arts Sake’ and discussed a pickle, a hinge and a piece of screwed up paper. The crowd went wild.
On Friday 26th August in the evening I read something ‘steamy’ in a sauna on Beresford Street as part of Auckland Writers Festival.
PAST STUFF
On August 17/18th I did a creative writing workshop and then a talk ‘Home for Beginners‘ for Wintec School of Media Arts Ramp Festival.
March 2022
I interviewed Olivia Laing on Everybody: A Book about Freedom for the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts. You can watch that conversation here.
This is easily the most comprehensive review I have received and it has a great title, ‘Of Smurfs and Men’ by David McCooey for Sydney Review of Books. Read it here. McCooey takes the time to consider the mettle of my voice and my various approach to essays-memoir.
November 2021
For VERB Literary Festival I was in conversation with the one and only KIM HILL on Sunday 7 November. It was comic.
October 2021
At the Adam Art Gallery, on October 21st at 6pm I was in conversation with award winning author Pip Adam about our terrible youth in Auckland in the 1990s and creativity. See events programme here.
September 2021
I did a Zoom Book launch in conversation with artist Yvonne Todd for Time Out Books on Saturday 25th September at 6pm. We talked shit and I showed a shonky Powerpoint. Laughter was shared. Watch here.
My video Obsession (1998) is currently in the group exhibition Image Processors: Artists in the Medium, A Short History 1968-2020 at the Adam Art Gallery. The show is on until November 11, 2021.
MEDIA
Listen to my discussion about Things I Learned at Art School with Simon Sweetman on his podcast here.
Listen to my RNZ Saturday morning interview on Things I Learned at Art School with Colin Peacock here.
For those who can sneak behind the paywall my Canvas interview with Eleanor Black is here.
On the Guardian read an extract from my essay Nine Months in a Massage Parlour called Belle Du Jour.
On The Spinoff read my short essay about author Jean M Auel’s bestselling Clan of the Cave Bear series here.
On New Writing, the UEA alumni website, read my essay The Difficult Father, this one is especially for Donald Barthelme fans.
Pip Adam reviews Things I Learned at Art School on RNZ here. (at approx: 4.53m)
Unity Books Auckland did a short online interview with me here.
Find a review on librarian Alyson’s Blog here.
MORE MEDIA ON THIS PAGE LOOKIE LOOK!
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My first book Tinderbox was published by Galley Beggar Press in November 2017.
It is about the end of Borders bookstores, Julie Christie and me – but not necessarily in that order.
The publisher says, “Riffing on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel about the end of reading, Tinderbox is one of the most interesting books in decades about literary culture and its place in the world. More than that, it’s about how every one of us fits into that bigger picture – and the struggle to make sense of life in the twenty-first century.”
Read the first chapter here.
