american.nz

In which the failure to afford a cucumber makes an expat dad kick the habit. What is a new country but a life sentence for your kids? Get full access to american.nz at www.american.nz/subscribe

Antonia Murphy has one of the wildest US/NZ stories I’ve heard yet. The San Francisco native founded and ran The Bach, a self-consciously ethical brothel in the small North Island city of Whangārei. (This is 100 percent legal in New Zealand!) Her memoir of those years, Madam , is an admirably frank depiction of sex work as work —joyful and frustrating, honorable and complicated—and it’s now an int...

Thanks to everyone who joined my live chat this morning with Gregory Garretson of Living Elsewhere ! We had a great turnout. This was the first livestream for us both—wow, what cool energy out there! Gregory and I had a blast haggling through some big questions: the flexibility of national identity, the search for home, and the complicated Americanness of leaving America. With shoutouts to fellow...

A letter from Anzac Day. How do Americans mourn this country's honored dead? With biplanes, suppressed tears, Benedict Anderson, and a pint down at the Workies. Read the letter at american.nz . Get full access to american.nz at www.american.nz/subscribe

Hey y’all! Thought I’d read last week’s letter aloud and fire it off as a podcast, just for kicks. I plan to do more in this space in the days ahead—call this a soft launch as I figure out all the tricks. Click the button above to listen, or find it on Spotify . Hope you enjoy! I welcome any feedback. Big thanks to the NZ Department of Conservation for the birdsong intro. They’ve got a great libra...

When it’s sunny in New Zealand, it’s hard to imagine living anywhere else. Today, in fact, is one of those days: every window open, the wild summer light, fat birds stealing ripe plums in the yard. When it rains, though—and reader, it rains a lot—my sense of geographical destiny blows clean away. There’s rain on my windowsill , I sing on those wet July days. There’s a storm blowing past my door ,...