‘First catch your Weka’: A tasting plate of recent New Zealand food writing

This article surveys a range of recent food-related books and food writers from New Zealand, in order to identify and describe a variety of sub-genres, content and writing styles. Coming from a range of backgrounds, including culinary, literary, scholarly, journalistic and other areas, these contemporary New Zealand food writers range across a diverse variety of subject matter from all aspects of culinary matters to politics and environmental sustainability, history and human relationships as well as the many other aspects of social and cultural life that can be addressed under the broad umbrella of food as a topic. Although cookbooks are not included in this investigation, many of these books include recipes. It also identifies and describes a number of associations, institutions and publishers that support this sector of the writing and publishing industry in New Zealand.