Following the departure of Stacey to pastures new, we’re delighted to welcome Elizabeth (Libby) Kirkby-McLeod to the role of Manager at the Coalition for Books. Before taking up this role, she’s been writing and producing for RNZ as their Waikato based reporter. Early birds might have heard her giving her final wrap up of the region’s news on First Up yesterday.

She’s a New Zealand author whose poetry and writing have appeared in a range of publications. She has also had several books published.

She is looking forward to joining the Coalition for Books and getting to know Kete readers and contributors. To start out with this, we’ve asked her to give us her reading pile! Here’s what she says:

‘Over summer I read Leading Under Pressure by Ian Foster. He’s a Waikato lad so the region is probably a bit biased about him. He sneeringly described a scene of having a bunch of non-sports reporters turn up to a media conference. I winced - that’s been me.

I also flew through Northbound by Naomi Arnold. Thank goodness she walked the trail so I can dispel any romantic notions of doing it (the mud! The mud!). Excellent.

I love a collection of poetry which allows you to scan the poet's career-long preoccupations. I hope to add James Norcliffe's A Day Like No Other: Selected Poems to my shelf this month.

Sometimes I spot a Ngaio Marsh and always grab it – most recently I read Colour Scheme published in 1943. Will someone please tell Netflix that instead of doing Agatha Christie deep cuts they should turn to Marsh as her writing is so cinematic already (hang on… maybe I’m that ‘somebody’ now?)