Jeremy Hansen meets three writers exploring the complexities of Tāmaki Makaurau, and evoking life in the city across eras and forms.

In Dominic Hoey’s 1985, 12-year-old Obi comes of age in the multicultural Grey Lynn of the 1980s; the stories in Alex Scott’s long-form comic Episodes move through the 90s and 2000s with nostalgic Auckland references peppered throughout, and Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Te Ata, Ngāti Maniapoto) interrogates the experience of living in a gentrified and often hostile Tāmaki Makaurau through her wāhine Māori protagonist Māreikura.

Together they discuss the points of connections and departures of their fictionalised Aucklands and examine the craft of writing about place.