"Only an animal or a child will run after something that has just mown it down." — Things with faces.
Zoë Meager is a writer and editor from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her short fiction and prose poems have been commended at home and abroad, including winning the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific Region, 2013.
Her work has appeared in Granta, Landfall, and Overland, among many others. She’s a 2024 Sargeson Fellow.
"Ava doesn’t say anything, because all the words have already been used by somebody else." — A mother’s touch
news
APRIL 2024
‘How to build everything you hoped for’ published with Spanish subtitles.
march 2024
Collage works ‘Closeness’ and ‘Ready’ included in Our Story Is One.
December 2023
Awarded the 2024 Sargeson Fellowship.
"Death actually just climbed into the cannon himself, so that was pretty profound and everything." — Death confetti
some publications
Because there is a war on – Cheap Pop
Come a gusta – Mascara Literary Review
Doing brewing – Splonk
The most novelist – Overland
Things with faces – Granta
"Then I was born and at first I loved my mother." — THIS WAY UP
the others
collaboration
Abstract Composition I – In Collusion
Abstract Composition II – In Collusion
Heartworm (letterpress print by Makyla Curtis), in He Whakaritenga Hou – A New Setting exhibition at MOTAT.
How to build everything you hoped for, in Impossible Instructions: a collaboration between writers & artists (chapbook), Gigantic Sequins
Water Weight, with Helena Pantsis – The Offing
in translation
Punctum Magazine – Būtnes ar sejām translated by Anastasija Mežecka
editing/curating
takahē Fiction Editor and Comics Co-editor
Supervising editor, The Quick Brown Dog, Issue 4: The Home Issue and Issue 5: Identity/Tuakiri
Co-editor, Overland 240.5 and 234.5
Guest Curator, Action, Spectacle, Winter 2021, Issue 2, Vol. 1
poetry films
interviews
People in our Pages: Zoë Meager, with Sam Averis, in Flash Frontier, July 2018
Extras: Interview with Zoë Meager, by Allan Drew, in Headland, September 2016
In Conversation: Zoë Meager, in Granta, May 2013
audio
Zoë reads Yolk Folk on Bookenz (reading starts at 22 mins 32 seconds)
Zoë reads The Situation on Bookenz (reading starts at 1 minute 30 seconds)
"She’s got a tea towel that wants a stubborn sigh removed, and a politician in the attic who wants listening to, for one hour, two. " — First dispatch from the front
contact
zoe[dot]meager[at]gmail[dot]com