In the Hollow of the Wave

Nina Mingya Powles is a writer and poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of several books including Slipstitch, a pamphlet of poems and collages (2024), Magnolia 木蘭 (2020), Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai (2020) and a collection of essays, Small Bodies of Water (2021). She writes a monthly substack on food and memory called Crispy Noodles. She has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Ondaatje Prize, and she was awarded the Women Poet's Prize in 2018 and the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing in 2019. In the Hollow of the Wave is her second collection of poems published by Nine Arches Press.

"Nina Mingya Powles's In the Hollow of the Wave is lyrical, cloud-like, alight, fraying, and frayed. These poems are trying to trace memory, family, and history through a correspondence with what's still here, what remains, or the art and writing in the world. In the Hollow of the Wave grapples with the paradox, as stated in the poem, "Snow Fragment," it is "impossible to look" yet it is also "impossible to look away," and because of this paradox, what remains is beautiful art, like this book." - Victoria Chang