Laura Vincent (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Māhanga) is a writer from Waiuku living in Tāmaki Makaurau. She has been writing one way or another since she was in kindergarten, all of which has culminated in her debut novel, Hoods Landing, published in October 2025 by Āporo Press and currently shortlisted for the biggest Ockham New Zealand Book Award, the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.
Standing behind this novel is Laura’s nineteen-year-old food blog, hungryandfrozen.com, where she shares original recipes while celebrating those created by others. She also has a number of poems published locally and internationally, online and in print. Hoods Landing is a “Southern Gothic via rural South Auckland Lynchian anti-tragedy,” and her food blog kind of is, too. Laura’s work defies posture, sleep cycles and SEO best practice, and it will not stop.
Here is Laura’s Shameless Plug.
My closest collaborator is currently my Āporo Press publisher and pal Damien Levi who is laminated into all Hoods Landing activity like butter in croissant dough. But also, I’m lucky to be part of a wonderful writing group called Shot, Sappho, which brings together some of the wisest and coolest artistic minds in Tāmaki Makaurau. We feast on each other’s new work, embellish ideas, share books, break bread at solstice picnics, and occasionally lock in. When one of us achieves, we all do. Which is not hard when they’re all so talented – the words “Shot, Sappho takeover” appear with frequency in the group chat. Shot, Sappho keeps my writing practice buoyant, but it’s also amazing for creative wellbeing, solidarity and friendship. Everyone, go get a writing group now!
My personal motto is: “I’d rather be nine people’s favourite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favourite thing.” It’s a line sung in the musical [Title of Show] and a personal whakataukī that has seen me through fallow periods and flurries of rejections and blog readership rollercoasters and it’s bolstering when making art of any kind. The work is good if it resonates with someone. If it only resonates back to you alone, that’s good too. There’s also this moment in The Wire where Avon Barksdale mocks Proposition Joe for wearing a full business suit in the blazing sun to the Eastside/Westside basketball game. It’s the first time we meet Prop Joe. He says – holding an empty clipboard – “look the part, be the part, motherfucker.” That quote has walked me into more or less every opportunity (and outfit) I’ve had since.
I’m always ready to absorb a new motto, though! Just yesterday I read a Martyn Pepperell profile on Maxine Funke, where he spoke of “the creative value of detaching yourself from the outcome and truly revelling in the process.” Hell yeah.
My guilty pleasure is…I mean, my food blog and socials are still named for a line from the musical RENT. The only thing I feel true guilt about – and not a lot of pleasure – is scrolling. The problem is, you have to scroll through everything to find the information you want, too. I used to live in Wellington and in 2007 I found out about a production of The Last Five Years at BATS theatre the day after it finished. Since then, I've been perpetually pre-haunted by missing something incredible because I didn’t look hard enough. And so, on I scroll. That being said, I also missed the recent PumpHouse production of this show because I was recovering from dental surgery, if any theatre companies want to make it a third-time-lucky thing.
The one Aotearoa arts event I never miss is Same Same But Different. Their annual poetry speakeasy was my first ever utterance of a poem (ACTIVITIES) on Tāmaki Makaurau soil back in 2021. I was living in Waiuku with my family and got the rail bus and train up to town with nothing but an AT card and a portentously good feeling. The immediate aroha from this one open mic set into motion the cogs and threads that bring me right to where I am today, now living in Auckland. I also adore their annual festival programme day. You go into the Ellen Melville Centre in the morning and emerge hours later as if having stepped outside of time to let the panel discussions and readings wash over you. I guess I need very little nudging for a space to become liminal and dreamy around me.
The moment I knew I wanted to be an artist was at the amniotic level.
An artwork everyone should experience at least once in their life is Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room, the ballet Swan Lake and Puti’s Maunga by Kōtiro. All three pluck you out of your body in different ways. It’s antithetical – or perhaps maybe entirely appropriate – to the irrevocable quality of the piece but I’d love to relive and share R & D at the End of the World, which was held at Basement and created by Izzy Robinson. To sit once more in its wet glow, hyper-aware of time and our place in it, and what we were witnessing and what we were losing. In a way, by missing it, everyone has still experienced it.
I keep myself accountable by making the most of my insomnia and by showing up for other people’s Shameless Plugs. I could be more productive at 3am, and I could show up more! But I try. It’s a relief when people engage with or attend your own creative stuff, and it’s nice to both feel that relief and be a source of it for someone else.
My all-time favourite album is impossible to say, but impossible to let the question pass by! I’m naming five albums very quickly so it feels like one answer: loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Trouble is a Man by Judy Holliday, Arular by M.I.A., Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water by Limp Bizkit, “i” by A.R. Kane. If forced to pack lightly to go to a desert island though, I’d take Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.
The best thing about being in the arts is that art IS the real world! Shareholders and KPIs and economics aren’t real. And the weirder and fresher art gets, the more that line shifts and perhaps one day we’ll swallow it all up and create even more art about the experience. I mean, creative superiority also doesn’t pay the rent, so I guess the economy is real for now (real stupid, that is) but it’s somewhat heartening to know we’re all cooler and better, at least.
My hot take on writing is that AI has no place in it or near it. AI is diametrically opposed to creativity. It’s bland violence, which subjugates our environment and our brains and gorges out skills where they once flourished, and… this is, admittedly, a tepid and uncarbonated take at this point! One of the few things that brings me comfort in this brutal world is witnessing the increase of objectively accurate AI hostility, so I’m always ready to add to the noise where I can.
I’m also sick of what I call ‘slim wrist lit’. I don’t personally need any more wispy waifish characters who feel mildly oppressed because they’re brunette, avoidant, and forgot to eat breakfast.
My shameless plug is Hoods Landing. I am so proud of my debut novel and to represent Āporo Press. You can find it in independent bookstores only (or in ebook form here), BUT I fully encourage people to get it out of the library, too. Times are tough, and I don’t want to add to that!
You can also read my large adult food blog, hungryandfrozen.com, and – following some back-room discourse disparaging the forcible meeting point of arts and commerce – I’ve recently launched lit4lit, a haphazard fortnightly by-us-for-us lit event email where you can promo book launches, open mics, author talks and other such happenings across the motu, and supportive audiences can avoid missing out on cool events.
