The Words for Her

Hold up your phone to take a photo and some people wont be there. Look for them in older images and their bodies are gaps, the rest of the photo still busy around them. People have stopped appearing in photographs. First a handful, then many more. Does this new, troubling group pose a threat?

From their home in Whakatane, Jodie Pascoe and her daughter Jade watch as the number of gaps grows. While protecting Jade, Jodie searches for a friend from the past, Miri, who will help her navigate the collapsing present.

The Words for Her is an arresting story about how photographs bind us together and what happens when those binds fall away.

About the author:

Thomasin Sleigh is a writer and editor living in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington. She has a background in art history and her essays and art criticism have been published widely by galleries, newspapers, and magazines. She has published two previous novels with Lawrence & Gibson, Ad Lib (2014), and Women in the Field, One and Two (2018), both of which look at the way images reflect and contest wider hierarchies and power structures, particularly how women are depicted and understood through art and film.