Win a literary bathrobe

There are various ways you can get a sense of the mood of our small island nation. One of those is by wandering into a flagship designer store in Auckland to see what’s being flogged off. “What’s the vibe in Auckland right now?” I asked a store manager recently as he adjusted the silk necktie on a mannequin.
“Everyone’s angry,” he responded, along with anecdotes about how people aren’t buying his expensive trinkets anymore because they can shop on Temu. I told him I was from Wellington, to which he replied, “Oh you have it 100 times worse then, everyone fucking hates each other down there right now.”
New Zealand, 2024, where the only thing rising faster than public sector job cuts is political division. And it’s into this pressure cooker that on November 8 we’re launching issue 002 of Folly, the journal I edit, along with a giveaway which is exclusive to ReadingRoom and as exquisite and utterly unnecessary as our publication: The Folly-endorsed Literary Bath Robe.
Like the mood of the nation, the latest issue of Folly is tinged in noir and fuelled by melancholy. It pairs beautifully with our Literary Bath Robe, which has been handstitched with the tears of rejected authors and has pockets deep enough to hold your ego, a flask of absinthe and a notepad. It also has short sleeves in a custom handblocked print designed just for Folly. 
Folly was created as a home for fun and sexy stories. One board member of a literary establishment looked at me over her Earl Grey at a Wellington cafe and remarked, “It sounds like a literary gossip rag. A la Bridgerton.” And in Issue 002 we may have lived up to this assumption. It occasionally feels like a gossip rag. Good. Folly stands for fun.
Of the 1200 submissions, we eventually accepted the standard two percent of entries. Not without a lot of soul-searching and literary handwringing. “More details,” we requested of one steamy story submitted by an anonymous tax lawyer. To a poet, “Too literary. No one will understand it. Have you considered Landfall?”
Our ethos is simple. Why choose intellectual stimulation and mindless entertainment when you can have both?
Issue 002 is eclectic. Curious about the wastage in our public sector that would make your tax dollars cry? Sounds like it made the author cry too. Wanting to know the bedroom antics of a regional business network CEO? Networking events will never feel clean again. Want to know which famous broadcaster left his Calvin Kleins in a girl’s bed the morning after? At least they were clean.
Publishing doesn’t come cheap. Especially when we are printing onshore to avoid the Chinese censors in Hong Kong who take exception to our content. But the best things in life are free or will be to the person who wins the special and exclusive giveaway of 1 X literary bathrobe and 1 X latest issue of Folly. To enter the contest, guess which broadcaster you think the Calvin Kleins belonged to and email it to [email protected] with the subject line in screaming caps OKAY SO IT WASN’T JOHN CAMPBELL. Entries close at midnight, Sunday October 27.
Folly Issue 002 (Wellington Writers Studio, $35) is available in selected stockists, or online alongside a $140 custom handblocked print literary bathrobe from the Folly site. A launch party will be held this Friday, November 8, in Wellington, entirely separate to whatever has been programmed at the 2024 Verb writers festival staged this weekend in the capital.