Book launch | Lucky Creatures
Schedule
Mon, 11 May, 2026 at 08:00 am
UTC+12:00Location
Unity Books Wellington | Wellington, WG
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Join us to launch Lucky Creatures, a brilliant debut essay collection by Joseph Trinidad.The book will be launched by Mikee Sto Domingo.
🌟 Monday 11 May, 6pm
🌟 Unity Books Wellington
🌟 Free entry — all welcome!
In his debut essay collection, award-winning Filipino-Kiwi essayist Joseph Trinidad explores the lessons of his grandmother’s chicken farm and his grandfather’s lucky golden fish; the vibrancy of his home country and its rites of passage such as tuli, beauty pageants and national Boy Scout jamborees; the contradictions of Aotearoa, which welcomes his family’s labour but insists they leave their mother tongues at the border; and his own journey of coming out, along with the hard work of actualisation that follows as he and his partner grapple with the desire to have a baby.
Inspired by the creatures of Filipino folktales and migrant touchstones such as FaceTime and 'that one cousin from the States', Lucky Creatures seeks to answer the eternal question: 'Was the move worth it?' Each resulting essay is an unforgettable exploration of life as a queer, Brown, transnational hybrid – filled with the warmth, grace and humour of the lucky creatures who can hear the call of home.
'There’s an entirely original voice in these essays that seems to me created out of a tremendous intimacy. Trinidad is making space on the page for the people in the stories he is telling, their languages, their lives, the money they earned and the money they didn’t, the heartbreak and the connections both.' —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
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Where is it happening?
Unity Books Wellington, 57 Willis Street,Wellington, New ZealandEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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