Pip Adam’s writing has been described as ‘a kind of post-post modern fiction – nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations – the stories are flatline and searing and real’ (Helen Lehndorf, Palmerston North Library).
Her diverse work has appeared in Sport, Glottis, Turbine, Landfall, Lumière Reader, Hue & Cry, Metro and Overland. She has been runner up for the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition (2007), received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award (2012), and her first collection of short stories, Everything We Hoped For, won the NZ Post Best First Book Award (2011). Pip’s short story collection, Everything We Hoped For, and novels, I’m working on a building and The New Animals are both published by Victoria University Press. Several of Pip’s pieces, responding to visual art, have been published in conjunction with exhibitions. In addition, her words were used by photographer Ann Shelton in her installation House Work.
In 2007, Pip gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Victoria University, followed by a PhD in 2012. Her PhD project explores how engineers describe the built environment.
Pip is a books reviewer on RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan show and she produces Better off Read a podcast where she talks to writers and other artists about reading.
'In the vanguard of emerging New Zealand writers I’d like to gesture in the direction of Pip Adam, who is PoMo, but PoMo like you’ve never seen it before because Adam out-Hemingway’s Hemingway. She strips away all the literary devices – all the pretentious writing about writing, the irony, the character development, figures of speech or satisfyingly predictable narrative arc – leaving the stark bones and raw meat of scorching cold realism. Rather than providing the emotional insights, her writing draws them out of you. Everything We Hoped For (VUP 2010) and the slightly surreal engineering-made-sexy I’m Working on a Building (VUP 2013) are game changing.' - Andrew Paul Wood, 'Beyond an Angel at my Table: Contemporary Writing in Aotearoa' in Sydney Review of Books
Pip Adam's latest novel is a 'love song' to Auckland by Rosabel Tan in Paperboy
The Forces Running Through: A Conversation with Pip Adam by Kiran Dass in The Pantograph Punch
Pip Adam: Hairdressing as a Metaphor for Narrative Form by Jackson Nieuwland
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