Book Launch: Robert Lord Diaries

Location: Allen Hall Theatre, University of Otago, North Dunedin

Otago University Press and Allen Hall Theatre warmly invites you to the launch of Robert Lord Diaries edited by Chris Brickell, Vanessa Manhire and Nonnita Rees. To be launched by Murray Lynch.

All welcome! Kai and beverages provided

Please RSVP to publicity@otago.ac.nz for catering purposes

Event Facebook page: https://fb.me/e/uhvfjqArR

About the book

Robert Lord (1945–1992) is an important figure in the history of literature and theatre in Aotearoa New Zealand. He wrote incisive and often satiric radio and stage plays, experimenting with traditional theatre forms and incorporating queer characters at a time when almost nobody else did. His enduring work includes such audience favourites as Well Hung, Bert and Maisy and Joyful and Triumphant. In 1973, he co-founded Playmarket, New Zealand's playwrights' agency and publisher.

Lord also wrote eight lively, candid and absorbing diaries, now published for the first time in Robert Lord Diaries. From 1974, when he first moved to New York, until his death in Dunedin in 1992, Lord recorded the highs and lows of his writing practice, the theatre world and his social life. His diary entries reveal the dramatic contrast between life as a gay man in 1970s and 80s New York – a world of sex, drugs and socialising – and provincial New Zealand, with its respectable living rooms, fields of carrots and the occasional homoerotic demonstration of sheep shearing. Lord had a complex relationship with his homeland and was never quite sure where he belonged. Witty and incisive, his diary entries tell of torn loyalties and reveal the intense creative momentum Lord forged from his dislocated, outsider status.

Find out more at oup.nz/robert-lord-diaries