
Tokyo is a humming backdrop to an array of outsiders: a young woman arrives to work as a stripper, the manager of a love hotel hatches a sleazy plan, a spirit wanders Harajuku, and a mother embarks on a sad journey.
Linked through recurring characters and themes, these haunting stories hurtle us into the streets of Tokyo and small-town New Zealand. The secular city of salarymen, sex workers and schoolgirls is juxtaposed with rongoā healers, lone men and rural matriarchs of Aotearoa.
Colleen Maria Lenihan; Colleen (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is a fiction writer, screenwriter and photographer, and a graduate of Te Papa Tupu and The Creative Hub. Her writing has appeared in Reading Room and The Pantograph Punch, and Kōhine is her first book. Colleen has been awarded a number of residencies: Michael King Writers' Centre Emerging Māori Writer (2019); Newroom/Surrey Hotel Winner (2019); and the Dan Davin Literary Foundation (2021). After fifteen years in Tokyo and a year in New York City, Colleen returned to Tāmaki Makaurau in 2016 where she is now based. Colleen is currently screenwriting for Ahikāroa, a drama on Māori TV.
Fiction: Short stories
Paperback
Colleen Maria Lenihan
232 pages
H: 210mm W: 138mm