Bad Archive

Bold, beautiful and constantly surprising essays about life, loss, joy and the fabric of memory. In this deftly woven work Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother’s house, a marriage counsellor’s office, the tip and New World. She takes us on a frenzied bender in Croatia, learns tapestry and meets romance novelists, all while wondering how families and relationships absorb the past, given everything we don’t say about grief, mental illness or even love. Most importantly, she asks, how do you write about a life honestly - when there are so many flaws in the way we record history and, more confrontingly, in the way we remember? Bad Archive is a lucid, continually surprising, funny and at times bracingly personal essay collection by the winner of the Letteri Family Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 2021.

Flora Feltham is a writer and weaver from Poneke. She has an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka-- Victoria University of Wellington. Her work has appeared in Turbine Kapohau, ArtNow and The Guardian. Bad Archive is her first book.