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
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.
