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New Zealand Listener
|May 23-29 2026
LUCKY CREATURES (THWUP) is Wellington-based Filipino Kiwi Joseph Trinidad's debut essay collection.
It opens with the demise of a chicken at his grandmother's farm ("Her blood takes longer to drain than anticipated; her tiny engine requires so much gas to run"), and moves through a potpourri of subjects: frantic sleepwalking, the roles of an expat, the joys of his home country, Wellington Grindr, partnering up and potential parenting. Trinidad's touch is light, his storytelling skilled. He's alert to metaphor and pace, and knows how to end an essay.
This story is from the May 23-29 2026 edition of New Zealand Listener.
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