Toby Buck is a writer and editor working at the intersection of ideas, place, and material life.
His essays, journalism, and criticism have appeared in publications including North & South, Jancis Robinson, and The Spinoff, and he has made work for National Geographic, the Tate Modern, Bloomberg, Magnum Photography, and others. He has won the Katherine Mansfield Prize, the Landfall Essay Prize, and a D&AD Silver Pen.
Based in Amsterdam, he works with international publications and brands on writing and editorial projects that require both intellectual rigour and a strong sense of voice. He is also EMEA Director for Te Mata Estate, one of New Zealand's oldest and most acclaimed wineries.
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↓ Featured Essays & Longform
Culture, identity, work, and meaning.
Herman & The Serpent
The extraordinary story of a friend’s encounter with a serial killer. Character and form bend at the edge of crime writing.
Happiness?
A critical exploration of the UN World Happiness Report. Can global wellbeing really be quantified? Or do current metrics obscure more than they reveal.
Gabrielle
A human-centred feature on Pacific cyclone Gabrielle.
Front line reporting where empathy has to come first.
‘Profound writing - full of persuasive visual detail, with an incredible ear for everyday speech.’
Emma Kneale, Landfall Journal Editor
‘Brash, unapologetic and completely confident writing. It takes a series of risks, almost sinks itself, and somehow gets away with it. I kept returning to it.’
Charlotte Grimshaw, Mansfield Award Judge
↓ Profiles, Interviews & Reportage
People, practice, voice, and context.
Oceania in Venice
A profile conversation with Yuki Kihara on Paradise Camp.
Performance and the politics of representation at the Venice Biennale.
Portable Miracles
A look at the inception of the New Zealand Poet Laureate programme.
Illuminating the cultural logic behind national literature platforms.
Out of the Box
A cultural portrait of a beachside DIY Coffin Club reveals community, mortality and happiness intertwined in local ritual.
↓ Wine, Food & Material Culture
Food not as lifestyle, but as social practice.
How taste, labour and tradition shape the way we live.
Big Red
A speculative essay on how New Zealand winemakers might be re-imagining a new “big red” identity. What does that say about changes in category, value and tradition?
Harvesters
A vivid portrayal of seasonal harvest workers in Hawke’s Bay - labour, landscape, and the often invisible hands behind food production.
A Jurassic Art
An interview with Sam Neill that goes beyond celebrity to interrogate lifelong craft, family and the sensory poetics of viniculture.
Regeneration
An essay-style exploration, “A World Upside Down” celebrates wine, soil, and culture in a piece that resists easy categorisation.
JR Prize Winner
↓ Commentary / Short Form
Provisional, responsive, exploratory.
The Walls & The Garden
Memoir that lets personal details ripple into larger questions of memory and belonging.
jancisrobinson.com
Fresh Claret
An ode to Cabernet Sauvignon.
Notes of home, place, and strawberries.
From the most collaborative of varietals.