You Are Here

A unique collaboration in words and art

The sixth book in the remarkable kōrero series, edited by Lloyd Jones, features Jann Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and the acclaimed artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa, in a collaboration based on the Fibonacci number sequence.

In a feat of managed imagining, Hereaka’s words spiral out to the centre of the book and then back in on themselves to end with the same words with which the text began. As the pattern spools out and then folds back, Peata Larkin’s meticulous drawings of tāniko and whakairo and her lush works on silk weave their own entrancing pattern.

‘It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,’ Hereaka says.

You Are Here is a beguiling and important addition to the kōrero series.

To look inside, click here.

‘This is beautiful. A beautiful production, a beautiful concept, and it’s beautifully executed’ — Stella Chrysostomou, RNZ

‘The sensitive design, the meticulous crafting, the cadenced patterning of word and image driving the story back to that initial three-word statement build a compelling and haunting experience of finding a way back home’ — Sally Blundell, NZ Listener

‘Good ideas never get old and how wonderful it is that this pairing of classical mathematical theory with te ao Māori should work together so well. Having unfurled to show you its glory You Are Here contracts and curls up on itself again. Back at the beginning. Expanding and contracting. Breathing in and breathing out.’ — Kelly Ana Morey, Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books

‘You are Here, in both its format and content, manages to achieve something remarkable — it is abstract enough for us, as readers, to be able to insert ourselves into the narrative, but specific enough to say something meaningful. You are here. Kei konei koe.’ — Jade Kake, Kete Books