A founding member of the Graham Downs community in the Motueka Valley, Olive Jones was a teenager when she began a communal living experiment as part of the countercultural movement that swept through Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s. Her Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted memoir Commune: Chasing a Utopian Dream in Aotearoa captures the ups and downs of her experiences of these years and incorporates knowledge gained from Olive’s subsequent study of community cultures around the globe.

Journalist and author of Cult Trip: Inside the World of Coercion and Control Anke Richter has spent the last decade investigating the darker side of group living through exploring the worlds and minds of cults. Together with Adam Dudding they discuss the range of experiences that group living can encompass: from the utopian off-grid dream to the darker side.