Barbara Ewing
One Minute Crying Time
This book, my tenth, (and the only non-fiction book I have ever written), was published by Massey University Press, New Zealand, in May 2020. It is an account of 1950s New Zealand: a country that perhaps saw itself rather differently from the picture portrayed in the diaries of an earnest teenager (me) of the time.
Publication was delayed by the Covid 19 Pandemic. Newspapers and magazines closed down, or were sold by their foreign owners, or appeared only online.
The Auckland Writers Festival was cancelled, and then resurrected in a series of episodes on Zoom while the lockdown was still in place. Below is a link to Episode One, that I was in with Booker Prize winner Bernadine Evaristo and former governor of the NZ Reserve Bank Alan Bollard.
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One Minute Crying Time
Then the book was finally launched on May 14th, the day the New Zealand government allowed ten people to be – socially distanced – in an indoors public space, and so bookshops were allowed to open again. The launch video below was made live at the Women’s Bookshop in Auckland:
One Minute Crying Time - Virtual Book Launch
Reaction, discussion, reviews of the book were still online:
Two reviews of One Minute Crying Time, featured on The Spinoff
Or on the radio: (with Kim Hill):
Radio New Zealand interview with Kim Hill
And lastly, one photograph from an independent bookshop the month the book was finally, virtually, launched.
This book can be ordered from New Zealand by contacting:
Massey University Press website or Auckland Women’s Bookshop website
It is also available as an ebook or as an audiobook.