Welcome to american.nz!
I’m Dan Keane, an American writer in Aotearoa New Zealand. If you love either country as I do—if either drives you mad the way only family can—then you’ll find a home here. My work comes in three main flavours:
Letters to Aotearoa. On kapa haka as a national hug, back country huts as church, the bach vs Airbnb, and our handy shadow currency of Tip Top tubs.
Letters to America. On chicken fingers at midnight, the death wish of Black Rifle Coffee, the soft power of country music, and fear & loathing & Lewis & Clark.
Letters of Transit. On our escape from Shanghai, the true cost of living abroad, the easy life of a WADA, and quitting the addictive expat high.
If you enjoy what you read, consider a paid subscription! It’s cheap, about the price of a coffee each month, and goes straight to groceries, rent, and writerly swagger. To my paid subscribers in NZ, the US, and beyond—thank you more than I can say!
Who am I?
I’m a writer, journalist, and PhD candidate in creative writing at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, and I run great writing workshops here in Greytown. Here’s my personal website.
My work has appeared in Newsroom, The Spinoff, North & South, The Washington Post, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, ChinaFile, Zoetrope, The Austin Chronicle, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among many others. I’ve presented at Featherston Booktown and the New Zealand Book Awards, run online campaigns for the Wairarapa Library Service, and I write copy for my mates at the Wairarapa Grains Collective.
I’m a former Bolivia correspondent for The Associated Press, and I’ve also covered the U.S.-Mexico border for The Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa, Texas. I’ve taught writing at NYU Shanghai, NYU Abu Dhabi, and the Universtiy of Michigan. I grew up in Tempe, Arizona, which is sister city to NZ’s own Lower Hutt. My family now live just over the hill in the Wairarapa. Maybe New Zealand was always my fate.
What’s with Superman?
The logo is drawn from Superman and Wanganui Hills (1994), by NZ artist Graham Kirk, borrowed with his generous permission. Kirk’s done a whole wonderfully uncanny series of American icons superimposed on Kiwi landmarks, with the familiar heroes lost and dreaming but determined to struggle on. They’ve been my daemon for these letters from the jump. Thanks, Graham! //
