Snapshot: MICHAEL ANDREW

PAST: Michael grew up in West Auckland and spent the first years of his career trialing different occupations with varying levels of enthusiasm. He’s worked as an auditor, a fundraiser, a music teacher, a salesman, a groundskeeper, a bartender, an actor, and a New Zealand Post mail sorter. But a lifelong obsession with words, poetry and journaling meant the writing was always there, emerging in the quiet, still moments. It wasn’t until he started writing a regular column about the outdoors for a small community magazine that journalism began to unfold as a viable vocation. Since then, he’s worked for various media outlets, specializing in business journalism and feature writing, for which he received a Voyager Media Award in 2021. One of his poems was featured on a mural in downtown Auckland, which technically makes him a “published” poet. PRESENT: Michael is now the editor of NZ Lifestyle Block magazine, a sister publication to NZ Life & Leisure. Describing it as his “dream job”, he spends his days writing and editing stories about trees, goats, tiny homes, growing vegetables and all the wonderful things people are doing with the land. He, his wife Shaz and young baby Ava live near Raglan in an off- grid cottage, which they rent while planning to build a house on their land nearby.

FUTURE: Michael has the audacious aspiration of turning NZ Lifestyle Block into a journal of record, a chronicle of the physical and spiritual movement of people back to the land and sustainable ways of living, using his own experience as a case study. With a hectare of bare coastal land, Michael and his family have a blank canvas on which to create their future. They hope to live a self-sufficient, low-impact lifestyle, growing as much food as possible to feed themselves and share with others.