Cassandra Barnett

Cassandra Barnett (Raukawa ki Te Kaokaoroa o Pātetere, Ngāti Huri, Pākehā) is a writer, artist, mama and educator. She writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry about indigenous and diasporic aesthetics, environmental personhood and other futures. Her poetry chapbook How | Hao, about forests and AI, was published in 2021. A second (in collaboration with Kelly Joseph) is out late 2023, both with The Chronicle of <---> Press. Ki Mua, Ki Muri, a co-edited book (with Kura Te Waru-Rewiri) about Toioho ki Āpiti school of Māori visual art was published by Massey University Press in 2023. Cassandra has presented at national and international festivals, symposia and conferences, but finds the greatest joy in kitchen table publishing - from zines to handmade books to collective presses. In 2022 Cassandra was a guest on the Hikurangi whenua of Te Kawerau ā Maki as the Auckland Regional Parks Artist in Residence. She created a series of constraint-based poems, paintings and zines about kauri dieback, rāhui (customary protections), manuhiritanga (visitor-ness), naming and the singularity/sovereignty of place. She is currently turning these works into a full-length poetry book, while also compiling a collection of her gaze-shifting, fictocritical art essays of the last fifteen years.