Āporo Press is bad apple‘s associated micro-press established and run by Damien Levi. We aim to publish works by minority voices in Aotearoa New Zealand and fill gaps in the market left unaddressed by major publishing houses.
Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa (2023) is the first titled published by Āporo Press, edited by Damien Levi and Amber Esau.
Due to the nature of independent publishing, Āporo Press has a limited capability for considering submissions as we have strictly limited funds. If you are interested in publishing with us, however, we are open to considering your work. Please email aporo.press@gmail.com. We thank you for your patience in waiting for our reply.
Our Books
Click below to jump to the title.
- Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa edited by Damien Levi and Amber Esau
- Marrow & Other Stories by Sloane Hong
Forthcoming:
- Overseas Experience by Nicola Andrews
- Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent
- Frisk [working title] by Jo Bragg
Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa
Edited by Damien Levi and Amber Esau
Spoiled Fruit is the debut title from micro press Āporo Press. This collection gathers 20 queer poets from across Aotearoa, compiles work largely first published on bad apple and asks these poets to reflect upon their work to create new pieces. Emerging from this introspection are themes of growth, evolution, change and transition. Like spoiled fruit fallen and left to rot, new growth emerges.
Contributions from Nicola Andrews, kī anthony, kate aschoff, Jo Bragg, Cadence Chung, Rhys Feeney, Ted Greensmith-West, Haukupu, Kyra Lawler, Rex Letoa Paget, Casey Lucas, Ivy Lyden-Hancy, Amy Marguerite, Jackson McCarthy, Hannah Patterson, Ngaio Simmons, sylvan spring, El Spurlock, Fetūolemoana Tamapeau and Laura Vincent.
“The dazzling ensemble of emerging poets in this survey of queer Aotearoa writing peel back the thick, thorny skin of modern life to reveal a subversive flesh below the surface. From pop culture fantasies to the perpetual violence of colonisation, this poetic harvest will leave your fingers sticky and chins coated in sweet and sour juice. This isn’t your typical fruit basket.”
Chris Tse
“How often do we get to see the queer poet develop, to see their fruit rot into beauty? This collection gives us a cornucopia of queer writing that captures us in a state of flux, acts as a showcase of each contributor’s fantastic range. bad apple has been doing the gay lord’s work online and now we have this taonga to hold in our hands. Stinking good writing; may the world be made pungent with these words.”
essa may ranapiri
Spoiled Fruit can be purchased from several independent bookstores in Aotearoa, or purchased online via BookHub.
There is currently no more stock with our distributor, if there becomes a high demand for this title we will look at reprinting.
Media for Spoiled Fruit
‘Ten things creating our first book taught us about independent publishing’, The Spinoff, 9/11/2023
‘The “very capitalistic” way this editor and publisher approaches wellbeing’, The Post, 8/11/2023
‘Juicy Spoiled Fruit!’, The Pantograph Punch, 9/11/2023
‘Poetry Shelf Postcards 2023 by 14 Poets’, NZ Poetry Shelf, 23/11/23
Marrow & Other Stories
By sloane hong
Marrow & Other Stories brings together a collection of short comics by Sloane Hong into print for the first time. Although varied in content, each story explores how we relate to each other and the world around us—through grief, love and our innate curiosity of the unknown.
Plagued with intrigue and often unsettling, these gloriously stylish panels peel back layers of the human psyche, exposing them, throbbing and pulsating, for all to see.
Sloane Hong (she/her) is a Korean tauiwi illustrator, comic artist and tattooer rumoured to lurk somewhere deep within the agonising, suburban sprawl of Aotearoa. The LGBTQIA+ journal, bad apple, claims that she was a founding member of their publication and helped develop their creative direction. Meanwhile, further evidence of her existence has also previously been uncovered in The Spinoff, The New York Times, Death in the Mouth: Original Horror from the Margins and Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa.
Marrow & Other Stories can be purchased from several independent bookstores in Aotearoa or purchased online via BookHub.
If you wish to stock Marrow & Other Stories, please contact Expensive Hobby at hello@expensivehobby.org or through their website.
Media for Marrow & Other Stories
‘Book Critic: Pip Adam’, RNZ, 11/6/2024
‘The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 14’, The Spinoff, 14/06/2024
‘Why Aren’t Aotearoa Publishers Releasing More Trans-Authored Books?’, HuRT Books, 20/01/25
Overseas Experience
by Nicola Andrews
Overseas Experience, will compile work from Andrews’s USA-published chapbooks Māori Maid Difficult and Hinting at Decolonization, as well as a variety of other poems, for an Aotearoa release.
Publisher Damien Levi says, “This collection will speak to all Māori who have lived away from their whenua as well as those who live on it. It knows when to get serious and when to pull back and share the laughter.”
This collection will also feature cover design by award-winning designer Kaan Hiini (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa). Overseas Experience is expected to be released in May 2025. On her upcoming release, Andrews says:
“Āporo Press is an inclusive, independent Māori press that knows when we need to take a principled stand for our communities, and when we just need to have a laugh or get a little weird—and I’m chuffed to be included on their roster of upcoming titles.”
Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Paoa, Pākehā) grew up in Waitākere and currently works as a librarian in San Francisco. Their poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies; and they are the grateful winner of the 2023 AAALS Indigenous Writer’s Prize in Poetry. Their craft has grown in writing communities including the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Tin House Workshop. Most of their poems were written in the company of a very spoilt Siamese cat.
Hoods Landing
by Laura Vincent
Through a publishing partnership with Whitireia Publishing, Āporo Press will publish Hoods Landing, the debut novel from Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi), in October 2025.
Vincent describes the novel as “a Southern Gothic-via-rural South Auckland anti-tragedy inspired by the works of Robert Altman and David Lynch featuring elderly lesbians, twins who aren’t twins, a 102-year-old tarot reader, people dropping like flies from cancer, several dogs named Roger, and a sexy baptism.”
On working with Āporo Press she says,
“This is the place my novel has been waiting for and I’m honoured to have my inaugural novel be yours/theirs too. Āporo Press and bad apple’s community building has been central to my experience as a writer in Tāmaki Makaurau and I have so much trust in their mahi. It’s meaningful to me to be working with a Māori-owned/led press but also one that’s really cool and there are no cooler hands to put my writing in.”
Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi) is a writer from Waiuku, with poetry and fiction published locally and internationally, including in The Spinoff, PŪHIA, and the No Other Place to Stand and Spoiled Fruit anthologies, amongst others. Her poem ‘ACTIVITIES’ was part of an installation at Britomart for the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tāmaki. Laura has written the food blog hungryandfrozen.com since 2007. Her first novel, Hoods Landing, is forthcoming from Āporo Press, a darkly wry and cinematically dreamy Aotearoa Gothic tale. The novel is prickling with heat and decay and buzzing with wasps as it moves through time, life, and death with an idiosyncratic family of rural women.
Frisk [working title]
by Jo Bragg
In early 2026, Āporo Press will release the debut poetry and photography collection, Frisk [working title], from poet, researcher and still/moving image-based visual artist Jo Bragg (Ngāti Porou).
This collection spans 10 years of poetic work from 2015–2025 and chronicles the life of Bragg through this period. From art school to the club, to the gender clinic; to the ‘corporate-artworld’ this collection is irreverently queer.
Bragg describes the work as “Starting out just like any gay person who aspires to greatness: a misaligned over-identification with Lana Del Rey.”
Self-described hopeless romantic Jo Bragg (he/him) (Ngāti Porou) is a Tāmaki Makaurau born and based art writer, poet, researcher and still/moving image-based visual artist. Bragg holds an MFA by Research (First Class Honours) awarded in 2021 from Monash University (Naarm, Melbourne) majoring in contemporary art, gender and trans-feminist theory.
