In 1951, Janet Frame published her first book The Lagoon and Other Stories, a collection which would win the most prestigious national literary award in New Zealand and launch her fascinating career. The essays collected in this volume examine the motifs at work in Frames short stories and unravel a unique literary world which revisits the realist tradition and grants prose a poetic dimension. As much a reflexion about language, voice, modes of writing and narrative strategies as an analysis of Frames recurrent concerns with identity, childhood, relationships between mothers and daughters, secrecy, marginality, community or death, Chasing Butterflies is a great tribute to one of the most famous New Zealand writers.