Upcoming ‘Dad, You’ve Got Dementia’ Book Reading

Join us for a book reading and Q&A with Wellington author, Kristen Phillips.

‘Lyrical, honest, unfailingly loving: a portrait of the power of connection, even when there are no more words.’
—Charity Norman, author of Remember Me

When Kristen’s father, Don, was diagnosed with dementia the signs had been there for five years. He’d gone out less and less, given up driving and table tennis and relied increasingly on his wife, Penny. Conversations went in circles.

Kristen started trying different ways to get her dad back – not the dad who could recall what was said or retain facts about his family, but the one who was patient, curious and funny. Who said, ‘I could talk with you for hours.’

She realised as he searched for words that weren’t there and reached for new ones, that the words he was finding and how he fitted them together felt like poetry. And Kristen, a poet, began writing it down.

Dad, You’ve Got Dementia is not about what is being lost on a daily basis but what there is still to find. It shows people living with dementia and their whānau that it’s possible to stay connected with those they love.

Author Profile:

Kristen Phillips is the author of Dad You’ve Got Dementia: Conversations with my father (The Cuba Press, July 2023). She grew up in Te Awa Kairangi / Lower Hutt and is tangata Tiriti, with ancestors from Scotland and England. At the end of 1987 she went travelling ‘for a year’ and returned to Aotearoa after thirty years based in London. During her time in London, she completed courses at the Poetry School and was part of a writing group for over ten years.  Her father, Don, showed signs of memory-loss in 2011, was diagnosed with dementia in 2016, and died in 2019. She currently lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara with her partner, the writer Mia Farlane. As well as working on her second book and writing reviews of dementia books for the New Zealand Dementia Foundation, she works part-time for Dementia Wellington and Dementia New Zealand.