Toni Nealie

In her debut essay collection, New Zealand native Toni Nealie examines journeys, homelands, family, and motherhood. She details humiliating confrontations with airport security, muses on the color brown, and intimately investigates her grandfather's complicated and criminal past, all while hearkening home—wherever and whatever that is. Toni Nealie is a writer, journalist, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Guernica , the Offing , the Rumpus , and the Prague Review . She worked in magazines, politics and public relations in the United Kingdom and her native New Zealand before moving to the United States—two weeks before 9/11.