User Profile

Writer and critic Amy Brooke has been involved in socio-political analysis, commentary and critiques for over two decades. Contributing regular feature articles for New Zealand and Australian publications, she wrote for seven years as a Dominion columnist, achieving runner-up to the Sydney Morning Herald in the Fletcher Challenge Commonwealth Media Awards as Best Columnist, Government, Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs.

A former National Radio and Press book reviewer, she provided regular weekly comment for Canterbury on Air, was an occasional television commentator, founded, edited and previously published a precursor of the blog - The Best Underground Press - Critical Review (www.ts.co.nz/thebest ) - and launched and has run for a decade a highly successful annual conference in the Marlborough Sounds. The Summer Sounds Symposium - www.summersounds.tasman.net - attended by outstanding speakers from across the spectrum, includes leading academics, senior media, members of parliament and business leaders in New Zealand and overseas, and has become a fixture on the political/academic landscape.

Amy initiated and ran the now annual Founders Park Book Fair in Nelson, to save and recycle formerly abandoned books. She has established The Medlar Press, and to date published twelve books for children and young adults - her most satisfying and favourite activity - see www.amybrooke.tasman.net

However, she remains concerned about the effect of the lowering of educational and intellectual standards in this country, the lack of rigorous, substantial debate on important issues, and the resulting brain drain of those transferring overseas to escape an increasingly dumbed-down society.

New Zealand is now recognized as showing the damaging effects of a long-standing, Left-socialist government steadily invading and controlling what should be our democratic institutions. Amy’s new on-line Critical Review is her current contribution to debate.