Keep your eyes peeled! Backlit 2025 will be appearing on the streets and in the cafes of Raglan this week.
Backlit is the annual magazine of Raglan Inkspillers Writers’ Collective, and is distributed free each year to give residents and visitors to Raglan a little reading pleasure with their morning coffee.
Backlit contains an eclectic mix of poetry, prose, musings, essays and observations – whatever Inkspillers members are working on and ready to share at the time it goes to print.
But this year we’re thrilled to be able to share a broader range of pieces from writers living in the Whāingaroa rohe. Thanks to funding received from Waikato District Council through the Creative Communities scheme, Backlit was able to open its pages to other writers, with a community call for submissions made in June this year.
The response was exciting and as a result Backlit 2025 contains selections from eight additional local writers. Work by Annie Chapman, Justine Van Rooijen, Donna Palmer, Robert Rhinehart, Claire Notman, Daniel Molesworth, Ste’en Webster and Helene Evan graces the pages, alongside an excerpt from Ephemera, a novel by award-winning author Tina Shaw, who moved to Raglan a couple of years back. Tina is our invited guest writer for the 2025 edition of Backlit.
So buy a coffee, grab a free copy of Backlit 2025, and kick back and relax. You’ll find copies of the magazine on stands and in cafes around town, as well as in the library, iHub and Old School Arts Centre.
Happy reading!
