WRITING
I have versatile writing skills, with experience in writing for the web (NZ Parliament), technical writing (the Waitangi Tribunal and UK Ministry of Health), and journalism.
I also write fiction, with my third book, Have this Heart, out now from Te Herenga Waka University Press.
Have This Heart
From acclaimed author Lawrence Patchett, Have This Heart (2026) is a compulsively readable story collection about people who are striving for more. For connection, for humour, for a way back into the world.
Stories from this collection were shortlisted for the Sargeson Prize and the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize.
Cover design: Todd Atticus. Cover Illustration: Euan McLeod.
Reviews
'Ten new stories, every one of them a winner . . . They are stories full of heart . . . They're fantastically compelling.' Harry Ricketts on RNZ
‘Disarmingly natural on first encounter, these are finely judged stories, packed with interior life and a precise sense of character and setting.’
Sam Finnemore, The Listener
‘Patchett is a precise and steady writer and each story feels well cared for, perfectly shaped and honed.’ Claire Mabey, The Spinoff
I Got His Blood On Me
I Got His Blood On Me (2012) won the NZSA Hubert Church Award for Best First Book of Fiction at the NZ Post Book Awards. My short fiction has also appeared in Sport, Landfall, Overland, and on RNZ.
Cover design: Michael Lewis. Cover Illustration: Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall.
“There's a Cormac McCarthy-esque concision to the language, and Patchett's heroes share a similar outback fortitude and silence, and a respect for the momentousness of the landscape.”
A Game of Two Halves
Edited by Fergus Barrowman, featuring my long-short story, ‘The Road to Tokomairiro’, which won the Long and the Short of It prize (long section) in 2011.
A Game of Two Halves: The Best of Sport, 2005–2019
My story ‘The Tenth Meet’ was also included in Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Burning River
My novel published in 2019. Cover design: Turi Park.
'The Burning River suggests we are inseparable from each other, even when we don’t know it.' — Ben Brown, Landfall Review Online
Catherine Woulfe review: Welcome to the jungle: The Burning River | The Spinoff
A look back at the writing of The Burning River, and what I learnt from it: Q & A with Philip Steer
Journalism and technical writing
I’ve used my writing skills to help organisations like the Waitangi Tribunal, NZ Parliament, and media outlets get their message across.
Recent journalism appears in The Guardian, New Zealand Geographic and the Academy of New Zealand Literature. Earlier, I worked as a journalist for a regional newspaper, covering issues like local democracy, education, and sport.
As part of a web-writing team at Parliament, I helped explain what happens in Parliament and elsewhere in our democracy, including What it's Like to Work in the House.