Anthony Lapwood
| Website | https://anthonylapwood.com |
Anthony Lapwood (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Pākehā) is a writer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, in Aotearoa New Zealand.
His first book, Home Theatre (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022) won the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction in the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Home Theatre was also a finalist in the 2023 Sir Julius Vogel Awards for Best Collected Work and three stories from the collection were finalists for Best Novelette.
Anthony's fiction has been published widely, including by At The Bay | I Te Kokoru, Newsroom, Sport, takahē, Turbine | Kapohau, Capital magazine, NZ Listener, Radio New Zealand and The London Reader. His stories have been anthologised in Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand, and Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy.
His first novel, Mincemeat, is forthcoming from Āporo Press in 2026. Anthony was awarded the Louis Johnson New Writer's Bursary in 2023 to work on Mincemeat.
Anthony teaches creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, from which he holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Distinction and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Film. He was a fiction judge for the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Visit www.anthonylapwood.com or @antzlapwood on Instagram and @antzlapwood.bsky.social on Bluesky.
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Home Theatre
Welcome to the Repertory Apartments—where scenes of tenderness and trouble, music and magic, the uncanny and the macabre play out on intimate stages.
A mother and her young son battle an infestation of ants. A bass player is beset by equine hallucinations. A widow seeks a new home with a spare room for guests. A radio factory foreman intercepts queer broadcasts from the future.
And a time-traveller stranded in a distant corner of the multiverse tries to find his way home.
Moving between the early 20th century and the modern day, this genre-bending collection, spanning the fantastical and the keenly real, introduces an ensemble of remarkable characters—and the fateful building that connects them all.
Mincemeat
In the years after his disastrous coming out, Lewis kept his old neighbourhood—and his mum and dad, Madeleine and David—at a safe distance. But tragedy has been drawing him back: first his parents separated, and now they’ve vanished.
Tucked away in his family home with Doggo the ageing Labrador, Lewis is plagued by troubles both past and present. Confronted with the inner lives of his parents—discovered on audio tape recordings and scribbled in journals—their voices feed his imagination as he delves into the mystery of their disappearance.
When speculation gives way to paranoia, and his investigations drive him deeper into perilous territory, Lewis is compelled to take control of the narrative.
He’s a writer; he can’t help himself.
Mincemeat, the enthralling debut novel from Ockham award-winning author Anthony Lapwood, is a wry suburban noir with real bite.
ISBN: 9780473799168
Format: Paperback
Release: 5 November 2026