DAN
KEANE
I’m an American writer and journalist in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I write the newsletter american.nz.
I’m getting a PhD in Substack.
I run great writing workshops.
My work has featured in The Washington Post, Harper’s, Newsroom, The Spinoff, North & South, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, The Austin Chronicle, ArtForum, ChinaFile, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. I’ve been an Associated Press correspondent in Bolivia, and I’ve taught writing at NYU Shanghai, NYU Abu Dhabi, and the University of Michigan. I hold an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, and I’m now a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. I live with my family in Greytown, NZ.
Recent Writing
__”We Were Guaranteed a Haka.” A letter to my daughter & Speaker Gerry Brownlee.
__“Expat Life is a Hell of a Drug.” On NZ carrots & turning immigrant.
__“New Zealand is a Translation.” On the Hikoi for NZ’s founding Treaty of Waitangi.
__“Book of the Week: How to Argue A Bird.” On Ellen Rykers’ Bird of the Year for Newsroom.
__“Lights at a hut are like togs in a sauna.” For The Spinoff.
__“A poet’s ground-level account of the collapse of Uyghur society.” On a memoir by Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil, for The Washington Post.
__“It’s Not an Airbnb. It’s a Bach.” When the internet eats tradition.
__“The Yanks Ain’t Coming.” NZ at the end of the Pax Americana.
Recent Video, Podcasts, & Talks
__I interviewed Antonia Murphy about Madam, her memoir-turned-TV show about running a legal brothel in northern New Zealand.
__My video postcard from small-town NZ rugby, Greytown vs. Eketahuna.
__My exclusive recording of Barry Saunders playing “Letter to America.”
__My hymn to Anzac Day as seen through American eyes.
__I hunted kiwi in the dark on Kāpiti Island.
__I interviewed Selina Tusitala Marsh for the New Zealand Book Awards.
__“The Diaspora on Day One.” Narratives of American migration to New Zealand in the wake of the 2024 election, for the University of Otago’s Global Migrations Conference.
__“Will We Die as Americans?” A Substack live chat with Gregory Garretson.
__How to Tell a Story / Part 2
__How to Make Blackout Poems
__’Upon the upland road / Ride easy, stranger’
Recent Workshops
__How to Write a Newsletter, a Substack workshop for Mrs. Blackwell’s Bookshop
__The Magic of Writing it Down, a journaling workshop Mrs. Blackwell’s Bookshop
__I hosted a poetry workshop with Chris Tse for the Wairarapa Library Service.
__I founded the WLS Evening Book Club (now sadly disbanded!)
__I Interviewed Dame Joy Cowley for Featherston Booktown.
Past Clips & Etc.
__Played futbol with Bolivian President Evo Morales
__Spent a night in the shadow of the US-Mexico border wall
__My leg was in the Venice Biennale (Harper’s)
__My head was in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog (The Atlantic)
__Reviewed James Salter’s lust for nostalgia (Fiction Writers Review)
__Found Roberto Bolaño’s novel in a drawer (Fiction Writers Review)
__Read a bunch of poems online during NZ’s 2021 lockdown
__How to get an A at NYU Shanghai
__Bolivia en camino / en letrero
__上海 White Noise
__‘Like Sauron opened a La Quinta Inn’
__‘What am I doing here alone with 3000 sheep?’
Contact
dan@american.nz | Substack | LinkedIn | Bluesky | Instagram
Messages in bottles please address to the beach at Ngawi. //