Mess, Magic and Monthering in new book out for Mother's Day

Mum is indeed the word for critically acclaimed writers Michele Powles and Renee Liang, whose new book WHEN WE REMEMBER TO BREATHE is published on May 1 in time for Mother’s Day. Two courageous Kiwi women, one an author and the other a paediatrician, lay bare the raw joy, beauty, discomfort and humour of modern motherhood. The result is uplifting and fearless.

Some days it’s poetry, other days it’s potty training. When they were both pregnant with their second child, Powles and Liang made a pledge to write a paragraph a week to each other. They wrote between loads of washing, on laptops balanced precariously during breastfeeds, at 3am. And the result is a remarkable exchange about the small moments, the disasters, the guilt trips and the glory, the first steps, the wonderment of watching their kids grow into real little people. It’s powerful and poignant Kiwi writing which gives voice to the modern woman, shooting straight from the hip and direct from the heart.

The book is the first released by Magpie Pulp, an innovative new publisher led by Lisette du Plessis that connects authors to readers in a way that fast-tracks the publishing process. Following a successful crowd-publishing campaign, the book will next be available on-line and in good book stores for Mother’s Day, and is the first in Magpie’s Sisters, we got this! collection, celebrating and supporting strong women of action.

Making good on this promise, a share of the publisher’s profits from WHEN WE REMEMBER TO BREATHE will go to Good Bitches Baking, a network of people who bake for those in their communities having a tough time.

Renee Liang is a second-generation Chinese Kiwi. Poet, playwright, paediatrician, medical researcher and fiction writer, she has collaborated on visual arts works, film, produced and directed theater works. A staunch advocate of teaching and skill-sharing, Renee organises community arts events such as The Kitchen, a neighbourhood food and storytelling event. In 2017, the Auckland Arts Festival and NZ Opera presented her commissioned work with composer Gareth Farr, The Bone Feeder. Last year, she was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to the arts.

Michele Powles has been a dancer, producer and writer across the globe, from Indian to Bosnia, Brazil to Edinburgh. Her fiction and non-fiction have been published widely and broadcast for radio both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Michele was New Zealand’s 2010 Robert Burns Fellow and after being selected for the 2018 Film Up programme, her first screenplay Tenderwood is currently in development.

“Must reading for parents and parents to be… Wise and clever, always funny and sometimes sad, this collection goes deep to the heart of what it means to be a mother, and a friend.”
Sonja De Friez

WHEN WE REMEMBER TO BREATHE is uplifting testimony to what gives life its meaning: the people we love, the challenges we face and the life we give.

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