In a valley along a highway, four consecutive towns,
as if someone had once skipped a stone.
Each town takes its English name after a British man
of the 1800s and offers free Wi-Fi.
Sunned dry mountains to the east, clouds clinging
to damp ones in the west. Are we safe in the
middle? Are we bored?

Welcome to Town, fifty stories and fifty images by writer and photographer Madeleine Slavick, who lived in Hong Kong for almost twenty-five years before moving to a Wairarapa country road that runs from state highway to bush.

Madeleine Slavick was born and educated in USA, lived in Hong Kong for almost twenty-five
years and now lives in Wairarapa, Aotearoa. She is the author of Something Beautiful Might Happen, Fifty Stories Fifty Images, delicate access 微妙之途 and Round: Poems and Photographs of Asia. Town is her first book published in New Zealand.
Photo by Wong Yankwai 黃仁逵