The Mermaid Chronicles

The true tale of how one woman’s lifelong obsession became a midlife mermaid odyssey, from the irrepressibly witty author of Tinderbox and Things I Learned at Art School.

Forty, freckled and facing infertility, writer and disgruntled project manager Megan Dunn hears the siren call that reawakens her lifelong obsession and sets off in pursuit of mermaids. Real mermaids.

From Coney Island and Copenhagen to Courtenay Place, Wellington, New Zealand; from Waterhouse’s clas­sic painting A Mermaid to the 1984 romantic comedy Splash to Skyping the first freelance mermaids of the new millennium, her odyssey takes her fathoms deep to strange and unlikely places, probing the collective unconscious and asking the question that has plagued humans for millennia: What is it about mermaids?

Diving into the caves of her own life, Megan loses the plot but finds her voice and hears the mermaids singing.

Shimmeringly intellectual and devastatingly deadpan, tragicomic and true, The Mermaid Chronicles is an off-the-hook tale about sx and marriage, mothers and daughters, middle age, women’s work, obsession, the stories we tell ourselves and the myths that define us all.
(And Daryl Hannah, too.)

About the Author:
Megan Dunn is the author of two irreverent works of non-fiction Tinderbox (Galley Beggar Press, 2017) and her memoir in essays Things I Learned at Art School (Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2021.) Megan is as an art critic and essayist in New Zealand. She has published columns, reviews, personal essays and features for a wide range of media including the Guardian Australia, The New Zealand Listener, Metro, Newsroom and Art News New Zealand. She was once the visual arts correspondent on Radio New Zealand’s Saturday morning show, with broadcaster Kim Hill. So there. Megan graduated with a master’s in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. In 2006, she won an Escalator award from the New Writing Partnership (now the National Centre for Writing.) In 2022 she was the annual Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters, based at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka. During this residency she worked on the first draft of her mer-moir and also curated an art exhibition The Mermaid Chronicles, based on her journeys to meet the world’s leading professional mermaids. You can watch a short clip of Megan speaking about mermaids on TVNZ. Megan has chaired literary events with national and international authors including Rachel Kushner, Olivia Laing and Noelle McCarthy.
Megan lives and works in Wellington. She is also interested in crocodiles.

Author Biography

Megan Dunn is the author of two irreverent works of non-fiction Tinderbox (Galley Beggar Press, 2017) and her memoir in essays Things I Learned at Art School (Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2021.)

Megan is as an art critic and essayist in New Zealand. She has published columns, reviews, personal essays and features for a wide range of media including the Guardian Australia, The New Zealand Listener, Metro, Newsroom and Art News New Zealand. She was once the visual arts correspondent on Radio New Zealand’s Saturday morning show, with broadcaster Kim Hill. So there.

Megan graduated with a master’s in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. In 2006, she won an Escalator award from the New Writing Partnership (now the National Centre for Writing.) In 2022 she was the annual Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters, based at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka. During this residency she worked on the first draft of her mer-moir and also curated an art exhibition The Mermaid Chronicles, based on her journeys to meet the world’s leading professional mermaids. You can watch a short clip of Megan speaking about mermaids on TVNZ.

Megan has chaired literary events with national and international authors including Rachel Kushner, Olivia Laing and Noelle McCarthy.
Megan lives and works in Wellington. She is also interested in crocodiles.