Ko Michelle Duff tōku ingoa. I’m a writer and journalist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, Aotearoa.
Surplus Women out now with Te Herenga Waka University Press
Survival, friendship, love, desire, pain, freedom.
Jess is the only one in her group who hasn’t lost her virginity. Genevieve is being held captive in a dug-out with her gymnastics nemesis from 40 years ago. At night, Jade absorbs catcalls like Mario powering up on mushrooms. From heaven, the Dream Team data-analyses human destinies while worrying about their job security. As Whetū and Sia race to the hospital in the rain, Whetū remembers another night that changed everything.
This is a collection of stories about women in past, present and future Aotearoa. Michelle Duff’s cast of hungry teenage girls, top detectives who forget to buy milk, frustrated archivists, duplicitous real estate agents, and ‘surplus women’ are all as vivid as wafts of Impulse from a backpack in the 90s. These stories move nimbly from realism to comic overdrive, from the outlandish to the simply true, with characters reappearing from new angles. As they meditate on power and patriarchy, love and bad decisions, these stories remind us of the sweet dreams we used to have and how it feels to wake up from them.
Reviews of Surplus Women
‘Vibrant, eclectic, sharp as hell. We’re in the presence of a writer who is acutely aware of the way each story whispers to another – especially, crucially, around what girls and women leave chronically unsaid, the surplus silence in our lives.’ — Tracey Slaughter, author of The Girls in the Red House Are Singing
‘The characters are unforgettable. This is a voice I am happy to spend time with, a voice that is offering something new.’ —Tina Makereti, author of The Mires
“Duff's stories deal with big issues, but they never lose their focus on the characters - this is about people and their communities. There is a lightness of touch and a clarity of language that enables the characters to speak for themselves while acknowledging the structures of power that are constraining them.” - Rebecca Styles, The Listener
“This collection isn't the typically earnest and literary stuff you might imagine, but rather a chemistry lab of storytelling where a slightly mad chemist is seeing what happens if you add this to that. A book that proves the value of the short story form, as a place to play, to experiment and to weave together the threads of disparate lives into one satisfying, surprising collection.” - Laura Borrowdale, Takahē magazine
