Auckland Writers Festival: Recent Episodes
Auckland Writers Festival
There are approximately three million robots working in factories around the world, and another 30 million in people’s homes. Soon robots will outnumber humans. But what happens if an autonomous AI harms or kills a person, deliberately or accidentally? It will happen. In fact, it already has. In Machines Behaving Badly, Professor Toby Walsh – Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW Sydney, and a leading advisor to the UN on lethal autonomous weapons (aka killer robots) discusses a future where machines start to shape society in ways we are not aware of. Described as a ‘rock star of Australia’s digital revolution’ he explores such questions as whether robots can have rights and if Alexa is racist with Toby Manhire.Supported by Platinum Patrons Dame Rosie & Michael Horton.SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 11:30am – 12:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
Pip Williams’ best-selling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words tells the story of motherless Esme who spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers gather words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. Over time she discovers words relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. The novel won numerous awards including the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. In Williams’ latest novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, her talent for historical research and beautiful storytelling shines through in the story of twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. She discusses who gets to make knowledge, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld with Sonya Wilson.SUN, 21 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
The judges for the winning 2022 Booker Prize praised Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida for the ‘ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques’. Set in Sri Lanka during the 25- year civil war, a murdered photographer has seven days to solve the mystery of his own death. It’s a philosophical tale but at the heart of the novel is the horror of a devastating conflict. ‘Sri Lankans specialise in gallows humour. It’s our coping mechanism’, said Karunatilaka. With renewed political and economic crisis in his country, Karunatilaka discusses with Brannavan Gnanalingam how the corruption and race-baiting of the past is still having its ghostly effects on current tumultuous times.Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation / Te Whītau Tūhono.SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
The Book of Roads and Kingdoms brings to life a dazzling culture of science, literature, philosophy and adventure arising out of the flourishing metropolis of Baghdad during Islam’s Golden Age. Australian writer / broadcaster Richard Fidler recounts how medieval Persian and Arab wanderers ventured by camel, horse and boat into the unknown, bringing back tales of wonder, horror and delight. Ever curious, Fidler’s previous bestsellers have also delved entertainingly into the history of worldly places – The Golden Maze (Prague), Ghost Empire (Constantinople) and Saga Land (Iceland). The host of ABC’s Conversations – Australia’s most downloaded podcast – speaks with broadcaster Jack Tame about what he describes as a ‘crazy quilt atlas of a lost world’.Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Joséphine & Ross Green.SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 2:30pm – 3:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
Delightfully inventive and witty, Daniel Lavery (as Mallory Ortberg) was the cofounder of The Toast, the pop-culture platform with literary depth that described its target audience as ‘librarians’. The best-selling author of Texts from Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster, next wrote Something that May Shock and Discredit You, an exhilarating series of essays combining personal revelations with cultural deepdives. With chapter introductions such as ‘When You Were Younger and You Got Home Early and You Were the First One Home and No One Else Was Out on the Street, Did You Ever Worry That the Rapture Had Happened Without You? I Did’, Lavery hilariously toggles between his transition, his religious upbringing, and the evolving relationship with the women in his life, while riffing on the Golden Girls, Lord Byron, Rilke, Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, and the cast of Mean Girls. He chats with Claire Mabey.FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
In the opening paragraphs of Stella Prize shortlisted Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, author Louisa Lim is torn between journalistic neutrality and her love of Hong Kong as she is invited by guerrilla sign painters to grab a brush and help produce pro-democracy banners. An award-winning journalist who reported from China for a decade, Lim’s first book The People’s Republic of Amnesia – Tiananmen Revisited resulted in her being unable to visit the mainland again for years. Bridges burnt, she had nothing to lose. When the Hong Kong protests began over concerns about an extradition treaty, and escalated to a crackdown on freedom of expression, Lim found herself uniquely placed to capture the city’s untold history, just as it was being erased. Lim, a former correspondent for the BBC and NPR, is now a Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne. Lim shares her raw experience of ‘dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong’ with Sam Sachdeva, author of The China Tightrope.Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation / Te Whītau Tūhono.FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 5:30pm – 6:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
With open source AI chatbots capable of generating text that appears increasingly human, will they eventually replace writers altogether? Some claim that AI will never have enough creativity, empathy or originality – but over time could even these qualities be assimilated by robotwriters? Canvas editor Sarah Daniell recently experimented with getting a bot to write her column. Alongside novelist Catherine Chidgey, she will interrogate two experts on whether they could relinquish the empty white page to a bot. Toby Walsh is Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW Sydney and author of Machines Behaving Badly and 2062: The World that AI Made. Te Taka Keegan is a Co-Director at University of Waikato’s Artificial Intelligence Institute, which has developed some of the most popular open-source tools in the world. He works on projects involving the use of te reo Māori and technology. Together they’ll discuss AI’s usefulness and limitations and what the future might look like when it comes to creative writing.Supported by Royal Society Te Apārangi.FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Two-Spirit is a pan-Indigenous expression (FNMI – First Nations, Metis and Inuit) from Turtle Island (North America) reflecting complex understandings of gender roles, spirituality and a long history of diversity. Two-Spirit writer Joshua Whitehead (Oji-Cree member of the Peguis First Nation) took the word Indigenous and braided it with the word queer to create a new kind of worlding for his poetry collection Full Metal Indigiqueer. Next came awardwinning novel Jonny Appleseed with a triumphant main character who finds glittering and gritty indigiqueer ways to live off the reserve. Also an essayist, Whitehead discusses Two-Spirit identity and other Indigenous interpretations of gender with non-binary Mununjali poet and memoirist Ellen van Neerven, author of PERSONAL SCORE: Sport. Culture. Identity; and Indigenous scholar Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, W- SÁNEĆ) whose hybrid collection Tauhou connects Aotearoa with Turtle Island. They speak with Māni Dunlop.First Nations series supported by the High Commission of Canada and the Australia Council for the Arts.SUN, 21 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre.
In Another Day in the Colony, Mununjali and South Sea Islander health activist Chelsea Watego has a chapter called F**k Hope. She urges her mob to be nihilistic because hope is the dream deferred, better to embrace sovereignty and take matters into your own hands. Sharing the conversation is podcaster and author Dr Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou), who has an upcoming memoir There’s a Cure for This, and is an outspoken advocate for including Te Ao Māori within our healthcare system. They speak with Mihingarangi Forbes.First Nations series supported by the High Commission of Canada and the Australia Council for the Arts
How do fiction writers deal with Covid? Full-on or sideways? Stephanie Johnson embraces it with gusto in her new satirical novel Kind, a thriller set in lockdown, with devious plots, social blunders and superyachts. Fiona Farrell’s The Deck is set a little way into the future and borrows a motif of Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron in which a small group gather to avoid contagion and pass the time telling stories. Both provide perspectives on what we have all recently endured, and together they’ll discuss with Anne Kennedy what was on their mind as they were writing.FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Limelight Room, Aotea Centre.
In his book No Excuses Dave ‘the Brown Buttabean’ Letele shares how he overcame poverty, depression and crime to become an award-winning community leader inspiring people to turn their lives around. Willy De Wit was a regular on TV shows such as Funny Business, and a brekkie host on Radio Hauraki. In Drink, Smoke, Snort, Stroke he charts his journey from fame to drug addiction to a life altering debilitating stroke. Together, Letele and De Wit discuss the highs and lows, and what it has taken for them to rise above adversity and find their path in life. In conversation with David Downs.FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Limelight Room, Aotea Centre.
When I hear my father deadI flew 10 hours into the sunnext morning I put black onThe 2023 TS Eliot Prize award-winning Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph was cited by the judges as ‘a luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form’. Born in Trinidad, with calypso, surrealism, jazz and the spiritual Baptist church as early influences, Joseph’s poems wrestle with his father’s intermittent presence in his life. ‘While some remember him with fondness,’ he has said, ‘and try to transpose his spirit, others negotiate a space for disappointment, while trying to clutch his outer garments.’ The author of four previous collections and three novels, Joseph has also released eight acclaimed albums. He now lives in London, is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, and is celebrated for bringing a highly charismatic musicality to his work, alongside a deep honesty and a defining Caribbean worldview. Paired with former NZ Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh for a magical conversation, they explore life and loss, poetry, music, the art of composing and more.Supported by the British Council.SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 8:30pm – 9:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
‘Whatever its subject, when a novel is powerful enough, it transports us readers deep into worlds not our own. That’s true of Moby Dick, and it’s certainly true of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which renders the process of designing a great video game as enthralling as the pursuit of that great white whale.’ Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air.Gabrielle Zevin’s 10th novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was an instant New York Times Bestseller, a Sunday Times Bestseller and a USA Today Bestseller. The story of two friends who come together as creative partners in the world of video game design where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality – it was the subject of a 25-bidder auction for the film rights which were acquired by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios. Born in New York, the daughter of a Korean mother and an Eastern European father, Zevin discusses how rewarding and tender and volatile creative collaboration can be, and what it feels like to truly share one’s work with someone. Chaired by Saraid De Silva.FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 10:00am – 11:00am, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Colson Whitehead is the only writer to win for consecutive books. His best-selling novels 'The Underground Railroad' and 'The Nickel Boys' addressed racial injustice with what has been described as ‘lived wit’. Also the winner of many other prestigious awards, Whitehead’s wide cultural impact was signalled when Time featured him on the cover with the strapline ‘America’s Storyteller’. He has written 11 books of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novel 'Harlem Shuffle' is a crime-heist set in the civil rights era, the first in a trilogy. An undisputed literary genius, he will discuss what inspires him to write with Kim Hill.Supported by the Embassy of the United States of America.AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2023, WAITUHI O TĀMAKI FRIDAY 19 MAY 2023 – 8.30-9.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
The word ‘Powwow’ is often used to refer to a quick impromptu meeting, but in Northern Plains Indigenous cultures, there is nothing quick or casual about their traditional gathering and ceremony. Rejecting misappropriation, where a cultural element is taken out of context and used in another – such as ripping off the Haka, or joking about didgeridoos– writers stand up for the cultural references that are dear to them and should be protected.First Nations series supported by the High Commission of Canada and the Australia Council for the Arts.SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 5:30pm – 6:30pm, Limelight Room, Aotea Centre.
The impacts of climate change are upon us, we know that, and the recent brutal weather events have shown we can’t sit idly by. It’s time for fresh thinking and radical action. Veteran journalist Simon Wilson, the author of several searching newspaper articles on our post-flood, post-cyclone future, will discuss new ways of approaching climate risk and future sustainability with Jade Kake (Ngāti Hau me Te Parawhau/ Ngapuhi, Te Arawa, Te Whakatōhea), Papakāinga architect in Northland and author of 'Rebuilding the Kāinga'; researcher Max Harris, author of 'The New Zealand Project' which aimed to provide a vision for confronting the challenges ahead; Shaun Hendy, Chief Scientist at Toha NZ and author of '#NoFly'; and Dr Carisa Showden, University of Auckland’s sociology department and one of the authors on a new book on youth activism, 'Fierce Hope'.Supported by Royal Society Te Apārangi.AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2023, WAITUHI O TĀMAKI THURSDAY 18 MAY 2022 – 5.30-6.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
Three young fluent te reo speakers producing inspirational work across a variety of genres, talk about the bravery and passion it took to take the unmapped uncharted leap into a creative life. Founding member of award-winning slam poetry group Ngā Hine Pūkōrero Arihia Hall (Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Tūkorehe); the youngest director ever selected for the NZ International Film Festival, Qianna Titore (Ngāti Hau, Ngāti Kaharau); and children's author Brianne Te Paa (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Te Whānau-a- Apanui) talk with acclaimed actress Hariata Moriarty (Ngāti Toarangatira, Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa, Ngā Puhi Hokianga ki te Raki) about the fear and courage of deciding to write, about creating their first pieces, and about the intersection between their culture and their art. Each writer will read, perform or screen part of an early work.Tokotoru ngā arero reo Māori rangatahi nō ētahi rāngai maha ka kōrero mō te māia me te kaingākau, nā konei rātou itakahi ai i te ara motuhake, otirā, i te ara kāhore i āta whakamaheretia, kia whai oranga ai i te ao auaha. Ka kōrero tahi ko te ringatito, rātou ko tētahi o ngā mema tuatahi o te kapa toikupu slam kua whakanuia ki te tohu toa anō hoki, o Ngā Hine Pūkōrero, ko Arihia Hall (Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Tūkorehe), ko te ringatohu tamariki katoa kua pōhiritia ki te taiopenga kiriata NZ International Film Festival, ko Qianna Titore (Ngāti Hau, Ngāti Kaharau); me te kiriwhakaari taiea, me Hariata Moriarty (Ngāti Toarangatira, Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa, Ngā Puhi Hokianga ki te Raki); ko Brianne Te Paa (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Aitangaa- Māhaki, Te Whānau-a-Apanui). Ko ā rātou kaupapa kōrero ko te wehi ki te tuhi, me te māia e tahuri ai rātou ki te tuhi, ko te waihangatanga mai o ā rātou titonga tuatahi, otirā, ko te hāngai o ō rātou ahurea ki ā rātou mahinga toi; mā ia ringatito hoki e pānui, e waiata, e whakaata rānei i tētahi wāhi o ā rātou mahinga toi tōmua.He Ahi Kei Taku Korokoro – My Throat Holds Fire series curated by Michael & Matariki Bennett.Supported by Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori / Māori Language Commission.The session will be mostly in te reo Māori with simultaneous translation by Hemi Kelly.
Aotearoa’s most anticipated book release of 2023 has been Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, coming ten years after she won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries. A psychological thriller set in the South Island, Shakespearean in scope, a battle between good and evil – it has a complex intellectual core and also a great sense of mischief. Catton now lives in the UK, and between books has adapted both The Luminaries and Jane Austen’s Emma for the screen. She has returned to our shores to talk with Noelle McCarthy about what compelled her to write this epic romp through our national parks, with rareearth mining, deep surveillance, guerrilla gardening and so much more.Supported by Platinum Bold Patron Theresa Gattung.
Is The Axeman’s Carnival the great Kiwi Gothic classic? Plenty of reviewers think so. Catherine Chidgey surprised everybody when she revealed her next book was going to be narrated by a mimicking magpie. Would it work? It sure does. Not only is it funny and magical, it’s also a bird’s-eye view into the very real struggle of farming life, a nuanced portrayal of love and domestic violence, and a 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards finalist. Following on from her 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for The Wish Child and the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlisting for Remote Sympathy, she has become one of our preeminent fiction stylists. She’s definitely on a roll and her coming novel Pet takes a swerve into completely new territory again. She will discuss her writing life and Tama the magpie with Rachael King.Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Betsy & Michael Benjamin.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlisted novel, Kāwai, by Dr Monty Soutar ONZM (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngā Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Kahungunu) has remained on the New Zealand bestseller list ever since it was released. The first in a planned trilogy, it met an appetite to bring to life the pre-colonial history of Māori. Soutar had an epiphany that told him to leave his job, sell his house, and write the series as a takoha – his gift to the nation. A historian with a ONZM for services to Māori and historical research, he has previously published acclaimed books on the Māori Battalion and the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion. For his fictional series he drew on a lifetime of research into the whakapapa and oral traditions of his own ancestors, beginning with the birth of Kai-tanga near Ruatoria. He shares his journey with Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu).
2023 marks the centenary year of Katherine Mansfield’s too-soon demise from pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 34. She is still cherished today in New Zealand and across the world, having played a part in shaping modernism, experimenting with style in a body of work that redefined genre. Some literary critics have called her the best short-story stylist of all time. In the tradition of closing the Festival with an Honoured Writer, we will honour and celebrate her in sparkling fashion with six passionate writers and performers sharing a personal anecdote about what Katherine Mansfield means to them.Supported by the Stout Trust, proudly managed by Perpetual Guardian.
It’s the Oscars of the writing world – winning the Booker Prize supercharges a writer’s career, immediately lifts sales, multiplies overseas deals and opens up opportunities all around the world. But what does this kind of superstardom feel like for the writer on the inside? Three Booker Prize winners, Eleanor Catton, Bernardine Evaristo and Shehan Karunatilaka share their experience of being awarded the world’s most esteemed literary prize with broadcaster and author Karyn Hay.Supported by the British Council and Asia New Zealand Foundation / Te Whītau Tūhono.
In night, suspense, lawlessness, hazard, sensuousness and awe are evoked simply by stepping outside,” says Annette Lees, author of 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted After Dark – in which she walks readers into the nights of Aotearoa, in the company of bats, owls, moths and seabirds, on a fascinating exploration of stories beyond the dusk.Spend a magical lights-dimmed hour with Lees, storyteller Rewi Spraggon and taonga pūoro player Riki Bennett, as they lead you on an evocative journey from Hine-nui-te-pō to the dawn chorus via readings, music and a nature soundscape.
Chris Long, author of 'The Boy From Gorge River', grew up in a remote off-grid corner of the South Island, two days walk from the nearest town; writer, UNICEF goodwill ambassador and philanthropist Jo Morgan, author of 'Dancing With The Machine', lived with her husband Gareth, son Sam (founder of Trade Me) and their three other children on a Bedford house bus, travelling the country and doing everything from picking carrots to gutting fish. Both have taken long-honed resilience and a sense of adventure to the world – across continents, up mountains and through adversity. They discuss all with journalist, back-country adventurer and author of Solo, Hazel Phillips.
SUNDAY 28 AUGUST 2022 – 3.30-4.30PM HEARTLAND FESTIVAL ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
Author Tessa Duder began her adult life as a representative swimmer, winning a silver medal at the 1958 Cardiff Empire Games in the 110 yards butterfly. This incredible achievement would inspire the Alex Quartet, for which she is probably best known. Loved by generations of teenagers, and garnering Duder three New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year awards and three Esther Glen medals, it was adapted in a 1993 movie and has just been re-published in one volume. The acclaimed author of more than 45 books for adults and children, Tessa Duder’s non-fiction has covered such diverse subjects as James Cook’s cartography, early Auckland settler Sarah Mathew and the first Olympics. Her many accolades include the 2020 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement, the 2021-2022 NZ Society of Author’s Presidency of Honour, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, an Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal, as well as OBE and CNZM honours and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Waikato. She has been a tireless champion of other writers through her work with Storylines Children’s Literature Trust Te Whare Waituhi Tamariki o Aotearoa, The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), and the New Zealand Society of Authors. To close the Festival, Duder joins Carole Beu on stage in a free session to celebrate her writing and the immense contribution she has made to the literary landscape.
Supported by The Stout Trust, proudly managed by Perpetual Guardian.
SUNDAY 28 AUGUST 2022 – 5.00-6.00PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
Shaped by the forces of 1970s Ireland and by a mother raging against her hemmed-in life, broadcaster, writer and podcaster Noelle McCarthy escaped Ireland for party town Auckland in the early 2000s – seeking a new world far away from the cultural fabric of her homeland. Many years later, and now a mother herself and a recovering alcoholic, she returns to bid her mother farewell and to reckon with her ghosts. The resulting memoir, 'Grand', is a moving meditation on mothers and daughters, on running away and homecoming, on the generational legacies we each carry. McCarthy speaks with Emma Espiner.
SUNDAY 28 AUGUST 2022 – 12.30-1.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
The traditions of fable and myth – Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the tales of Aesop and Grimm, Homer’s Iliad and the pūrākau of Polynesia, to name a few – have acted as compasses for millennia, exploring human experience and answering timeless questions. Join two contemporary writers at the height of their powers – Commonwealth Prize winner and Man Booker-shortlisted Lloyd Jones ('The Fish') and 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize Fiction winner Whiti Hereaka ('Kurangaituku') – in conversation with Claire Mabey – to interrogate the history and power of these ancient storytelling forms and why each has chosen them for their recent narratives.
SATURDAY 27 AUGUST 2022 – 3.30-4.30PM WAITĀKERE ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
Breathtaking in scope, ambition and artistry, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s’ 2020-2021 survey exhibition of Māori contemporary art from 1950s to present day, Toi Tu- Toi Ora broke all attendance records and forged new ways of presenting and understanding Māori art. It was also the touchpoint for a critical conversation about who should lead and author such projects. Curated by artist and curator Nigel Borell (Pirirākau, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea), the exhibition was framed by the Māori creation narrative, unfolding an artistic journey from Te Kore (The Empty Void) to Te Po (The Great Darkness) through to Te Ao Marama (The World of Light and Life). Now celebrated in the book Toi Tu- Toi Ora, it is a gateway to a Māori lens on knowledge, identity, place and cultural history – highlighting some of the best artists working today, and an essential conversation about cultural practice in this country. Borell speaks with Deidre Brown.
Supported by NZ Contemporary Art Trust.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI SATURDAY 27 AUGUST 2022 – 2.00-3.00PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
In 2010, the National Government signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, joining more than 140 other countries; in 2019 the Labour Government set up a working group tasked with creating a plan to realise that commitment. The result is He Puapua, a discussion document whose title refers to the break between waves and evokes the concept of a disruption to political and legislative norms. Within days, it would become a political football, with some demanding a “national conversation”. So let’s talk. Is this an opportunity or a threat for the country? Working group members, writers and lawyers Claire Charters (Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi, Tainui) and Jacinta Ruru (Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Maniapoto) discuss sovereignty, mātauranga Māori and igniting the imagination with Moana Maniapoto (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa).
Ara Kē, Ao Kē Series curated by Moana Maniapoto.
Supported by Royal Society Te Apārangi.
I te tau 2010, ka waitohu te Kāwanatanga Nāhinara i Te Whakapuakitanga a te Rūnanga Whakakotahi i ngā Iwi o te Ao mō ngā Mōtika o ngā Iwi Taketake, pēnei i ētahi whenua 140 neke atu; i te tau 2019 ka whakarite te Kāwanatanga Reipa i tētahi ohu mahi, ko tāna he waihanga i tētahi mahere e tutuki ai taua oati. Ko te hua, ko He Puapua, he tuhinga matapaki, ko tōna taitara e hāngai ana ki te whatinga o te ngaru, me te aha, nāna i pupū ai he whakaaro mō te whakarerekē i ngā āhuatanga ā-tōrangapū, ā-ture anō o te wā. Mea rawa ake, ka whakamahia hei tao tōrangapū, ko ētahi hoki e auē ana mō tētahi "whakawhitinga kōrero ā-motu." Ā kāti, kia kōrero tātou. He ara whai hua rānei, he kapatau rānei tēnei mō te motu? Ko ngā mema o te ohu mahi, ko ngā ringatuhi, ko ngā rōia anō, ko Claire Charters (Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi, Tainui) rāua ko Jacinta Ruru (Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Maniapoto) ka kōrero mō te tino rangatiratanga, mō te mātauranga Māori, mō te hika anō i te kāpura pohewa, me Moana Maniapoto (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa). He mea tautoko nā Te Apārangi.
Ara Kē, Ao Kē - Nā Moana Maniapoto tēnei kohinga i rauhī.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL, WAITUHI O TĀMAKI SATURDAY 27 AUGUST – 12.30-1.30PM WAITĀKERE ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
Of 2021 Nobel Prize-winning writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s book 'By the Sea', The Times said, “Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair... one scarcely dares breathe while reading it for fear of breaking the enchantment.” It’s a sentiment that could be applied across all his fiction and essays, including Booker-shortlisted 'Paradise' and most recent novel 'Afterlives'. Born in Zanzibar, which is now part of Tanzania, Gurnah arrived in Britain as a refugee in 1967 and has said of his home country, “In my mind, I live there.” Professor Emeritus of English and Post Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent, and the first black writer to receive the Nobel since Toni Morrison in 1993, his citation states that his win is due to “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” He joins Michelle Langstone in conversation to reflect on a life’s work.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Betsy & Michael Benjamin. Livestream in venue.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL, WAITUHI Ō TAMAKI FRIDAY 26 AUGUST 2022 – 6.30-7.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
Russia’s waging of war in Ukraine brings back to Europe scenes of aggression and devastation not seen there for decades. It’s one of the many instances of warfare in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, deploying both traditional and thoroughly modern weapons. David Kilcullen is a former soldier and diplomat, a strategist, counterinsurgency expert and author whose books include The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West and The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan (co-authored with Greg Mills). He sits down with Toby Manhire to discuss current conflicts in the complex global arena – reflecting both back and forwards on how we got to this, what’s happening at the front and behind the scenes, and how tensions might play out in the coming months and years.
Supported by Te Ope Kātua o Aotearoa / New Zealand Defence Force.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL, WAITUHI O TĀMAKI SATURDAY 27 AUGUST – 11.00AM-12.00PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
Three generations of talented poets come together to share work from their new collections, and to talk with each other about the literary influences, inheritances and preoccupations that have informed their practice. What connects them and what separates them? Kevin Ireland brings us Just Like That: New Poems; Anne Kennedy, the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards-shortlisted The Sea Walks into a Wall; and Tayi Tibble, the Ockham Awards-shortlisted Rangikura. A triumph of collections from three astonishing poetry masters.
Supported by Deadly Ponies.
FRIDAY 26 AUGUST – 2.00-3.00PM LIMELIGHT ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
There’s no such thing as a new idea, but what happens when your writing draws on the people in your life – and what happens when they don’t want to be written about? Taking as inspiration the ‘Bad Art Friend’ tussle over telling someone else’s story that dominated literary conversations in the US last October, join: Madeleine Chapman, editor of 'The Spinoff' and author of books on Jacinda Ardern and Steven Adams; Rebecca K. Reilly, winner of the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards Best First Book of Fiction for 'Greta and Valdin'; and Himali McInnes, author of essay collection 'The Unexpected Patient'; for an exploration of where their boundaries lie when it comes to writing their own and other people’s lives into their work. Chaired by Mohamed Hassan.
Constellations Series curated by Rosabel Tan.
FRIDAY 26 AUGUST 2022 – 12.30-1.30PM LIMELIGHT ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
Clementine Ford is one of Australia’s most fearless feminists, and possibly one of its most provocative. The author of the best-selling 'Fight Like A Girl' and 'Boys Will Be Boys' has been an ardent champion for girls and women, a fierce critic of toxic masculinity, and the target of extraordinary vitriol – which, from time to time, has elicited incendiary responses that she has later regretted. Her new book, 'How We Love: Notes on a Life', is an exploration of how love makes its home in our heart, and the act of faith and bravery required to surrender ourselves to it. She joins us in person for this special session to reflect on her work past, present and future, in conversation with Madeleine Chapman.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patron Theresa Gattung.
WEDNESDAY 24 AUGUST 2022 – 8.15-9.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
From the pen of historical fiction doyenne Jenny Pattrick, one of this country’s bestselling novelists with books including 'The Denniston Rose' and 'Heart of Coal', comes this year’s 'Harbouring'. The story begins in 1839 as Welsh foundry worker Huw Pengellin embarks with his family on a journey of hope, enticed by Colonel Wakefield’s plans to take settlers to the distant shores of New Zealand. On the other side of the world, Hineroa yearns for escape from servitude and to be reunited with her people. Their entwined lives chart a changing landscape of colonial Wellington – political, social and geographical – in another feat of masterful storytelling. She discusses her writing and research revelations with author and journalist Nicky Pellegrino.
FRIDAY 26 AUGUST 2022 – 11.00AM-12.00PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
“A gripping study of the collateral damage caused by government decision making in war... an expertly researched study of government duplicity,” said The Australian of Stephen Davis’ book Operation Trojan Horse. In 1990 British Airways Flight 149 departed Heathrow airport, destined for Kuala Lumpur. Instead it stopped to refuel in Kuwait as Iraqi troops amassed on the border – despite intelligence of an imminent invasion – delivering the 400 passengers and crew into the hands of Saddam Hussein to be used as ‘human shields’. How this came to pass is allegedly a tale of ‘deniable’ intelligence operations, with dramatic consequences for the civilians caught up in it, and no one held accountable. Crafted with the cooperation of survivors and input from a senior intelligence source, Davis, an award-winning journalist or editor for outlets including The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Times and The New Statesman brings the story to light. In conversation with Moana Maniapoto.
FRIDAY 26 AUGUST 2022 – 11.00AM-12.00PM HEARTLAND BANK ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
Meet the disruptors: Māori journalists helping to lead and shape more nuanced conversation on the issues of the day through a Māori lens. Exploring questions of media power and influence, our line-up includes long-time Radio Waatea host and 'E-Tangata' writer Dale Husband (Ngāti Maru) alongside three fearless wāhine broadcasters and writers: Mihingarangi Forbes (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Paoa), the award-winning host of 'The Hui' (voted Best Current Affairs at NZTV Awards); author and co-presenter for TVNZ’s bilingual current affairs show Marae Miriama Kamo (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mutunga); and Moana Maniapoto (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa), musician and journalist for Te Ao with Moana. Expect lively kōrero... and perhaps a waiata!
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL, WAITUHI O TĀMAKI
FRIDAY 26 AUGUST2022 – 6.30-7.30PM, WAITĀKERE ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
In A.C. Grayling’s view, three of the biggest challenges facing the world today are climate change, the rate of development in high-impact technologies and the global deficit of social and economic justice. He contends that our problems and our technologies are currently outstripping our moral and political capacity to deal with them. In this talk Grayling, whose latest book is 'For the Good of the World', asks whether it’s possible for human beings to agree on a set of values that will enable us to confront the threats facing the planet, or will we simply continue with disagreements and antipathies? He argues that to survive, we must urgently find a positive answer to the question, “Is global agreement on global challenges possible?”
Mohamed Hassan’s life has taken him from Cairo to New Zealand and on to Istanbul and London, covering the Middle East, Turkey and Asia Pacific as a journalist. Through it all he has developed a keen eye for questions of identity and culture, which he beautifully brings to bear in his non-fiction essay collection 'How to Be a Bad Muslim'. Ranging across surveillance, migration, language, Islamophobia and the Christchurch attacks, it is a compelling account of growing up Muslim in a post- 9/11 world, told with humour and astute observation. A former slam poetry champion and prize-winning podcaster, Hassan joins Mike McRoberts in conversation.
In the gladiatorial arena of film direction, where women have often been treated as invisible, New Zealand auteur Jane Campion has blazed a pioneering trail. The first woman to win the Palme d’Or for The Piano, and the second to ever be nominated for a directing Oscar, Campion’s latest triumph is The Power of the Dog, inspired by Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name. Winning her a legion of awards, including a Venice Silver Lion, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an Academy Award and a Critics Choice Award, it’s a powerful exploration of toxic masculinity, and of love, grief and sexuality – all themes that she has explored in a potent body of work that also includes Sweetie, Holy Smoke, An Angel at My Table, Top of the Lake, Bright Star and In the Cut. Returning home, she joins Noelle McCarthy in conversation to discuss her artistic inheritances, guiding principles and preoccupations.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Pip Muir & Kit Toogood.
Sociologist Joanna Kidman (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Raukawa) and historian Vincent O’Malley make a formidable team, as partners in life and scholarship. They both contributed to the recently published 'Fragments from a Contested Past: Remembrance, Denial and New Zealand History', and co-lead the Marsden Fund project – 'He Taonga te Wareware?: Remembering and Forgetting Difficult Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand' – a three-year study into how the 19th-century NZ Wars have shaped memory, identity and history. O’Malley is a founding partner of History Works and the author of the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards General Non-Fiction winner 'Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa'. Kidman is a Professor of Sociology with a particular interest in youth movements and higher education. They speak with Chris Wikaira about their writing, passions and collaborations.
Supported by Heartland Bank.
Raised in the projects of Washington DC by a father born 35 years after the abolition of slavery and who was barred from school, Harold Hillman is an author and international business and leadership coach whose family legacy is just one of the experiences that have shaped his life. Attending college, where he first encountered white people, he obtained a PhD in Psychology, married, had two children and served in the military, all whilst harbouring the secret that he was gay. Eventually outing himself, he took up a position on Clinton’s taskforce to undo the military’s homosexual ban. Hillman is the author of five books, including 'The Impostor Syndrome',' Fitting In Standing Out' and his latest 'EM-PA-THY', in which he argues that authenticity, logic and empathy are essential for true leadership in business and in life. He speaks with Andrew Whiteside.
Supported by the Embassy of the United States of America.
She’s a global sensation – the bestselling Australian author of ten engaging novels including 'Big Little Lies' and 'Nine Perfect Strangers', both of which attracted Nicole Kidman’s interest and have been made into smash-hit television series. Liane Moriarty has sold more than 20 million copies of her books, the latest of which is Apples Never Fall. It’s a witty and substantive study of family dynamics, as well as a mystery revealed in snippets and whispers, bearing all the hallmarks of her deft skills as an observer and a storyteller. Sydneysider Moriarty, who is the eldest of six siblings, joins us in person for a lively hour canvassing her stellar career, the stories that inspire her stories, and the never ending fascinations of contemporary human behaviour. In conversation with Michèle A’Court.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Susan & Gavin Walker.
Expect the unexpected from a sparkling showcase of talented writers in our much-loved Festival Gala storytelling event, now into its 12th iteration and still serving up surprise and delight. Eight writers each take to the stage to share a seven-minute true and personal tale, without prop or script, inspired by this year’s evocative prompt – Across The Divide. Braving the spotlight is: ex-military leadership coach and business writer Harold Hillman, the boy from Gorge River Chris Long, GP and essayist Dr Himali McInnes, rising fiction star Rebecca Reilly, Tampa survivor and strategic studies master Abbas Nazari, the queen of historical fiction Jenny Pattrick, The Allusionist podcaster Helen Zaltzman, and Irish physicist and science communicator Laurie Winkless.
Supported by Craigs Investment Partners.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI
25 AUGUST 2022 – 7.00-8.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
Wāhine toa Lana Lopesi and Coco Solid aka Jessica Hansell (Ngāpuhi) join forces for a proudly strident hour of conversation on their latest books and preoccupations. 'How to Loiter in a Turf War' is a genre-bending work of fiction from Solid, one of Aotearoa’s fiercest and most versatile artists across rap, art, film, performance and writing. The 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards-longlisted 'Bloody Woman' is an eloquent and provocative essay collection by author, art critic and editor Lopesi, dissecting the experiences of being a Pasifika woman.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI FRIDAY 26 AUGUST 2022 – 5.00-6.00PM WAITĀKERE ROOM, AOTEA CENTRE
Abbas Nazari was just seven when his family, fearing Taliban persecution, fled Afghanistan, embarking on a desperate and dangerous journey that ultimately lead him to New Zealand. Crammed with more than 400 other asylum seekers on a sinking fishing boat in the Indian Ocean, they were saved by cargo ship Tampa in a dramatic rescue. After being rejected by Australia, some of the group including Nazari’s family and were offered asylum here. He has gone on to become a Fulbright Scholar, completing a Master in Security Studies from Georgetown University in Washington DC, and authoring the moving memoir 'After the Tampa'. As the rise of the Taliban once again haunts the people of his homeland, Nazari reflects on questions of home and security, challenge and hope, opportunity and resilience. In conversation with Nikki Mandow.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI FRIDAY 26 AUGUST 2022 – 12.30-1.30PM KIRI TE KANAWA THEATRE, AOTEA CENTRE
What is the job of a Poet Laureate, and is it more complicated for those that “walk in and out of several worlds each day” as the United States’ Laureate of Native American descent Joy Harjo so eloquently puts it? Aotearoa’s first Pasifika Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh, joins the current and second Pasifika writer to hold the tokotoko, David Eggleton, for a discussion on poetry and power, private and public writing, and his new collection 'The Wilder Years'.
SAP SE ʻḀI TOK HE TA (TOKOTOKO): EGGLETON MA MARSH
Ka tes ta garue ʻon famorit ne sap se fuḁg teʻis Poet Laureate ka te ka la noanoa seʻ se iris ne ʻmåürʻåk ʻe ta kḁinag måür tūtū his ʻe teʻ ne terḁniʻ - teʻis fäeag ʻon Joy Harjo, leʻet ʻe tör ʻon kakḁi mumuḁ ne Mereke ne pō tapeʻ ma ʻe fuḁg teʻis United States Laureate. Leʻ Pasefiḁk mumuet ne pō ʻe fuḁg teʻis Poet Laureate ʻe Niu Sirḁgi Selina Tusitala Marsh, la teagʻesea ma leʻet ne teʻis sap se fuḁg ta ʻe ʻon ʻi heteʻ, ka täe ʻon ruḁ ne leʻet ʻe famör Pasefika ne sap se fuḁg teʻis, David Eggleton, la hḁifäegag ʻe rēko ʻamnåk teʻis "poetry and power", fåʻ tē ne hünʻåk se ʻot mḁuri ne fåʻ ʻe rēko måür ofrḁu, ma la iofʻåk tapeʻ ma se ʻon garue foʻou teʻis The Wilder Years.
Talanoa series curated by Gina Cole. Supported by Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
After fleeing from Iran in 2013, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani became a political prisoner, detained indefinitely in legal limbo in the Australian-run Manus Regional Processing Centre, Papua New Guinea. On a smuggled mobile phone, he chronicled six years of survival and witness, tapped out in Farsi in a series of single messages, and subsequently translated into English by Omid Tofighian. The result, Boochani’s against-all-odds 'No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison', has been much feted, winning Australia’s richest literary prize – the Victorian Prize for Literature – as well as a host of other awards. The Age called it an “...intense, lyrical and psychologically perceptive prose-poetry masterpiece”. Now resident in New Zealand, Boochani speaks with Julie Hill.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Carol & Gerard Curry.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Every biographical portrait is a singular take on its subject, and Ockham NZ Book Award shortlisted 'Ralph Hotere: The Dark Is Light Enough' is writer Vincent O’Sullivan’s unique homage to his friend and fellow cultural traveller Ralph Hotere (Te Aupouri, Te Rarawa). Written at the invitation of the artist and crafted through personal conversations, as well as access to whānau and papers, the book outlines the remarkable story of the small boy, Hone Papita Raukura Hotere – born in the Hokianga in 1931 – who becomes Rau, then Ralph and, eventually, the stand-alone signature HOTERE. It is a loving but “incomplete” portrait, as O’Sullivan describes it, ending with the artist in his 70s when personal contact ceased. He shares his experiences of the man with Hannah August.
Supported by Heartland Bank.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Oceanic women have always been creators – weaving lives into pandanus mats, printing knowledge onto masi and tapa, bearing tatau memory on skin, weaving words in boundless talanoa. A triumph of preeminent Pasifika women – Ockham NZ Book Awards winner Tusiata Avia ('The Savage Coloniser Book'), Selina Tusitala Marsh ('Mophead Tu') and Ockham longlisted Karlo Mila ('Goddess Muscle') – come together to discuss the preoccupations that infuse their incredible new books. Grace Iwashita-Taylor leads this conversation on whakapapa, culture and Te-Moana-nui-a-Kiwa as its threaded through their pages.
Talu mei tuai ‘a e nima mea‘a ‘a e kakai fefine ‘o e ‘Ōseni Pasifikí – ‘I he‘enau lālanga ‘o e mo‘uí ki ha ngaahi fala lou‘akau, tā ‘a e kupesi ‘o e ‘iló ki he masí mo e ngatú, hilifaki ‘i he kilí ha ngaahi tātatau ‘o e manatú, lālanga ‘o e ngaahi leá ki ha talanoa tuputupu‘a. Ko ha ikuna ‘eni ma‘á e kakai fefine ‘iloa ‘o e Pasifikí – ‘oku fakatahataha mai ai ‘a Tusiata Avia ('The Savage Coloniser Book'), Selina Tusitala Marsh ('Mophead Tu') pea mo Karlo Mila ('Goddess Muscle') – ke talatalanoa‘i ‘a e ngaahi fakalaulaulotoa ‘oku tuifio atu ‘i he‘enau ngaahi tohi laulōtaha fo‘oú. ‘Oku tataki ‘e Grace Iwashita-Taylor ‘a e talanoá ni fekau‘aki mo e whakapapa, ngaahi ‘ulungāanga fakafonuá mo e Te-Moana-nui-a-Kiwa ‘o hangē ko ia kuo filohi atu ‘i he ngaahi peesi ‘o ‘enau fa‘u tohí.
Talanoa series curated by Gina Cole. Supported by Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND FREE LECTURE
Twenty-two years ago the Auckland Writers Festival burst into literary life, propelled by the ambitious advocacy of writers Stephanie Johnson and the late Peter Wells who wanted to showcase our talent to our people. Johnson takes stock of how the New Zealand literary landscape has changed across the era. Have we grown up, grown out, grown at all? Or are we still trying to find our place? Expect a spirited assessment of the state of play and some provocative suggestions for the future.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
A heartfelt artistic collaboration, The 33, brings together award-winning poet Anne Kennedy and leading New Zealand pianist and Juilliard graduate Sarah Watkins in a tribute to life, grief, writing and music. In 1973, after the death of her brother Philip, the then 14-year-old Kennedy consoled herself lying on a red rug in the family living room listening to Beethoven’s Thirty-three Variations on a Theme of Diabelli Opus 120. Now, almost 50 years later, comes the stunning 2020 Ockham NZ Book Award shortlisted collection 'Moth Hour', 33 variations on a poem by Philip. Kennedy reads, interspersed with 16 of the musical variations, in an exquisite hour of words and performance.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Writer and filmmaker Barbara Sumner, author of 'Tree of Strangers', argues that adoption laws, which continue to deny adopted people access to their own information, treat mothers as dispensable and children as interchangeable. Introduced by Christine O'Brien.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Ordinary men living through extraordinary times, New Zealand soldiers Harold Robinson, Ralph Dyer and Douglas Morison shared a queer identity and a love of performance, living as gay men within the military forces during World War II, and boosting troop morale as female impersonators in wartime concert parties. In the Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted 'Crossing the Lines', Brent Coutts brings to light their previously untold story, unfolding a tale of strong friendships, the search for love and belonging as homosexuals within the military and civilian worlds, and the impact on the queer community today. In conversation with Chris Szekely.
Supported by the Friends of the Turnbull Library.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Many ancestral currents, past and present, carried Pasifika peoples from Te-Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa to Aotearoa. Whilst each Pacific identity is unique, experiences of migration, colonialism, and courage are shared, and vividly expressed in a thriving performance scene. Pasifika playwrights Oscar Kightley and Victor Rodger are just two of the many whose work reflect the Pasifika migrant spirit and the relationships with Māori as tangata whenua. How are the multiple waka of Pasifika theatre navigating current global storms, and what does the future hold? They share their thoughts with Lana Lopesi.
O le tele o folauga i vaitaimi ua tuanai e oo mai i le asō, na folau mai ai tagata Pasifika mai le Te-Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa seia taunuu mai i Aotearoa. E tofu lava atumotu o le Pasifika ma lona faasinomaga, ma e ui i le eseese o nei faasinomaga, o talaaga i femalagaiga, faiga faakolone, ma le loto toa o tagata Pasifika, ua mafai ona faasoa ma faamatala manino i se faaaliga maoa‘e ma matagofie. O tusitala i faaaliga faa- Pasifika, le susuga Oscar Kightley ma Victor Rodger o nisi o tomai mai le toatele o tusitala, ma o loo atagia i a la galuega le agaga o tagata folau mai le Pasifika ma le sootaga ma Māori o tagata o le laueleele. O faapefea i le tele o sā o le Pasifika ona faatautaia folauga i matagi malolosi i le taimi nei, ma o le ā se taunuuga o loo agai atu i ai i le lumanai? Na faasoa o la manatu ma Lana Lopesi.
Talanoa series curated by Gina Cole.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Lawyer and writer Brannavan Gnanalingam is the author of the Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted 'Sprigs', a searing interrogation of sexual assault and masculinity. He argues that current cultural norms about being male come at others’ expense, and men must urgently find a new approach. Introduced by Christine O'Brien.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
In the Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted 'This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir', Alison Jones contests that being Pākehā requires us to live in a state of “permanently lively discomfort with no single resolution...”, a challenge both difficult and wonderful. She puts her case. Introduced by Christine O'Brien.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
An exceptional evening performance brings together celebrated writers and taonga pūoro practitioners in a lyrical weaving of language and song. Arihia Latham, Anahera Gildea, Becky Manawatu, essa may ranapiri and Tusiata Avia take you on a journey of sound and words, from the distant past to the distant future. Featuring live taonga pūoro from composer, musician and poet Ruby Solly and Arts Laureate Ariana Tikao, as well as pre-recorded compositions from artists Rob Thorne, Horomona Horo, Richard Nunns and Al Fraser.
He whakaaturanga pō, he inati hoki, e whakatōpū ana i ētahi ringatuhi me ētahi kaiwhakatangi taonga pūoro rangatira ki tētahi kaupapa whatu ā-kupu i te reo me te waiata. Mā Arihia Latham rātou ko Anahera Gildea, ko Becky Manawatu, ko essa may ranapiri, ko Tusiata Avia koe e ārahi ki tētahi haerenga ā-oro, ā-kupu anō, i inamata noa atu, ki anamata noa atu. He taonga pūoro ka whakatangi mataoratia e te ringatito, e te ringa pūoru, e te ringa toikupu hoki, e Ruby Solly rāua ko te rau kahurangi toi, ko Ariana Tikao. Ka rangona hoki he titonga nā ngā ringatoi, nā Rob Thorne rātou ko Horomona Horo, ko Richard Nunns, ko Al Fraser kua oti kē te rekoatahia.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Writing an honest and deeply personal memoir takes a certain degree of courage, and the journey can be fraught. In Lil O’Brien’s 'Not That I’d Kiss a Girl', she movingly recounts the fallout from her parents’ accidental discovery of her sexual orientation; literary star Charlotte Grimshaw embarks on a search for familial truth and a parental accounting in 'The Mirror Book'; and prizewinning children’s author Kyle Mewburn charts her lifelong feeling of being somehow wrong – like “strawberry jam in a spinach can” – and her remarkable transformation from husband to woman in 'Faking It'. Join these three brave writers for a discussion of stories told, lives exposed, and the dynamics of revealing the personal, in these remarkable works. Chaired by Claire Mabey.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
“A lyrical love letter to the land” is how reviewer Linda Burgess describes Manawatu farmer, poet and performer Tim Saunders’ debut memoir 'This Farming Life'. Further south in Central Otago, novelist, memoirist, poet and essayist Jillian Sullivan walks the hills and mountains of the Ida Valley that surround her home, conjuring her perceptive essay collection 'Map for the Heart'. Both books provide beautifully rendered portraits of lives lived close to the land and exposed to the seasons and shine a light on the ways in which geography shapes connection. Saunders and Sullivan share stories in conversation with Mary de Ruyter.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Walking can be both a physical and a mental undertaking – a time for gathering thoughts and centering ourselves. For Catharina van Bohemen, her 1998 Camino de Santiago journey, so beautifully depicted in the Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted 'Towards Compostela: Walking the Camino de Santiago', is a pilgrimage away from a crisis in her marriage towards a greater understanding of self and family; for actor and writer Michelle Langstone, in her moving essay collection 'Times Like These', walking the slopes of Maungawhau is a salve as she bids her father goodbye and strives to conceive. They speak with Carole Beu about journeys taken and wisdom gained.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
MICHAEL KING MEMORIAL LECTURE AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Can we blame Cook for everything that followed? Is it the fault of the Englishman who met his early end in 1779 that Māori are statistically likely to meet an early end in 21st century New Zealand? This is not a biographical or historical lecture about Captain James Cook; nor is it a morbid tale of indigenous destruction. Instead, Indigenous Studies scholar and author of 'Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania and Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay About Captain Cook', Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki), leads an examination of past, present and future, reflecting on the many stories we tell about Cook and his legacy and what they suggest about the different futures imagined for Aotearoa.
Helen Kelly lived and died a fighter. The daughter of prominent unionist Pat Kelly and Vietnam activist Catherine Eichelbaum, Kelly was destined for a life of political engagement. She held senior positions in a labour movement that was dominated by men, including serving as the president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions for many years. Diagnosed with lung cancer, she campaigned for both the right to use medicinal cannabis and the right to die with dignity, before her untimely death at the age of 52. Award-winning journalist Rebecca Macfie, whose previous work includes 'Tragedy at Pike River Mine: How and Why 29 Men Died' now delivers 'Helen Kelly: Her Life', a biography of one of New Zealand’s political legends, whom she describes as “a fireball of charm, grit, humour and piercing analysis”. Macfie speaks with Toby Manhire.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
The first essay of filmmaker Ghazaleh Golbakhsh’s collection, 'The Girl From Revolution Road', transports readers to her childhood in Iran and an illicit party where family and friends are drinking and dancing to the Bee Gees before being swooped upon by armed police, detained and, for her father, sentenced to 60 lashes. It’s a collection juxtaposing the riches and challenges of Iranian life alongside poignant observations of resettlement in New Zealand. Infused with a gentle humour Golbakhsh provides a fresh perspective on being torn between her immigrant roots and her desire to be like everybody else, and dispels the simplistic notion of “Iran bad, New Zealand good”. In a timely celebration and examination of the overlapping of two cultures, she speaks with Dan Salmon.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
A highlight of 2020 was the publication of 'How to Be Happy Though Human', a collection of new and previous work by virtuoso poet Kate Camp, which was published in New Zealand, the United States and Canada. Admired by Poet Laureate Dave Eggleton for its “smouldering slow burn, curdled idealism, the salvation army assembly of humorous perceptions” it ranges across eclectic subject matter “like a bumper ride in a fairground, crashing into obstacles, at once jarring and exhilarating”. Wry and deadpan, Camp’s collected works exhibit all of the technical control, musicality and close observational skills for which she has become internationally renowned.
In conversation with poet Bill Manhire, she shares the influences and preoccupations that charge her creativity, reads from her work, and leads some inter-poem banter with Manhire’s Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted collection 'Wow'.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Mary & Peter Biggs.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Kaituhi Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu-Ngāti Whaoa) argues that story sovereignty, especially for Māori, cannot be maintained by outsider perspectives which use historical rhetoric to solidify harmful stereotypes about Māori lives in the minds of everyday readers. Introduced by Christine O’Brien.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Three exceptional writers join chair Paula Morris on screen, for a live-in venue audience, to talk about and read from their latest work and answer your questions.
Today’s line-up includes Irish actor and memoirist Gabriel Byrne with 'Walking With Ghosts'; Melbourne-based Māori crime writer JP Pomare with latest thriller 'Tell Me Lies'; and the London-based Caribbean Costa Book of the Year author Monique Roffey with 'The Mermaid of Black Conch'.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Three exceptional writers join consummate chair Paula Morris on screen, for a live-in-venue audience, to talk about and read from their latest work and answer your questions.
Today’s line-up includes expat Miro Bilbrough with her memoir of a 1970s childhood in a Marlborough Sounds commune 'In The Time of the Manaroans'; US fiction doyenne Marilynne Robinson with latest novel 'Jack'; and Booker-prize-winning Glaswegian novelist Douglas Stuart with 'Shuggie Bain'.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Three exceptional writers join consummate chair Paula Morris on screen, for a live-in-venue audience, to talk about and read from their latest work and answer your questions.
Today’s line-up includes Chilean literary legend Isabel Allende with 'The Soul of a Woman', a meditation on power and feminism; UK-based Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted poet Mohamed Hassan with his debut collection 'National Anthem'; and Chinese-American writer and teacher Yiyun Li with her brilliant new novel 'Must I Go'.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
From Pop-art influences to landscape, through advertising and the contested area of Appropriation, much-loved and truly versatile artist Dick Frizzell has always immersed himself in the art around him. In 'Me, According To The History of Art, a journey from cave art through Rubens and Tintoretto to Cezanne and Lichtenstein', Frizzell sets out to track the historical threads that sit within his DNA as a 21st- century artist. It’s a fun romp, sitting on a bedrock of serious scholarship and reverence for the painters of the past, with masterful re-imaginings of key work. In conversation with Finlay Macdonald, the art history lesson you’ve been waiting for unfolds in all its colourful glory.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
In 2019, Time magazine named Monique Fiso’s (Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Ruanui) Wellington restaurant Hiakai as one of the ‘100 Greatest Places’ in the world – a long way from an after-school job in Porirua as a sandwich hand. Fiso’s incomparable talent has led to work in Michelin-star restaurants, featuring on Netflix’s The Final Table, and receiving praise from publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic and Forbes. A visionary modern-day food warrior, taking Māori cuisine to the world, Fiso has now produced the stunning Ockham NZ Book Awards winning book 'Hiakai'. This story of kai Māori charts her personal journey, ranging across history, tradition and tikanga, and serves up foraging and usage notes, an illustrated ingredient directory, and over 30 recipes. In a session to savour she speaks with Kim Knight.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Writer, singer, musician and lyricist Amanda Palmer has garnered a vibrant cult following for her creative outputs which include New York Times best-selling memoir and manifesto 'The Art of Asking'. She is supported by a circle of almost 15,000 patrons across the globe who micro-fund her writing and work through the Patreon platform. Slated to finish up an 80-date international tour of her third solo studio album, the searingly stark There Will Be No Intermission, in Wellington in 2020 as Covid struck, she is currently working from the Antipodes In a conversation with writer and friend Catherine Robertson she canvasses widely around the importance of telling our stories and speaking our truths, writing through grief and discomfort, and the juggle of whānau, community and expression, and offers up some ukulele interludes.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
“In your atlas two islands not in narrow seas, like a child’s kite anchored in the indifferent blue” are the opening lines to Allen Curnow’s 1939 poem 'Not in Narrow Seas'. Over 80 years later the renowned NZ economist and commentator Brian Easton borrows it for the title of his Ockham NZ Book Award longlisted wide-ranging history of New Zealand, viewed through the lens of economic markers. With a strong emphasis on social and environmental impacts, he delves into everything from the geological foundation of New Zealand 650 million years ago to the evolution of the welfare state and the impacts of globalisation and deregulation. This impressive work, both accessible and comprehensive, takes its place in the canon of New Zealand history. Easton speaks with Nikki Mandow.
Former Washington Post Beijing bureau chief and 2018 winner of Stanford University’s Shorenstein Journalism Award for outstanding reporting on Asia issues, Anna Fifield, returned home in 2020 to become the editor of Wellington’s Dominion Post. She reflects on her years reporting across eight Asian countries, her insights into North Korea’s leader in her critically acclaimed book 'The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un', and her take on where the continent is headed over the next decade, in conversation with Simon Wilson.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
As a rising tide of indigenous literary voices sweep across Aotearoa and the wider world, the literary barriers of mainstream publishing are becoming ever more apparent. Writers and editors Patricia Grace, Anahera Gildea andessa may ranapiri deliver a powerful dissection on the current state of play, discussing alternative methods of publishing in te ao Māori, and the ways writers and activists are re-indigenising the sharing of Māori stories to provide historical and cultural context to current issues. Chaired by Emma Espiner.
I te tai reo tuhi taketake e pari ana huri i Aotearoa, otirā, i te ao whānui,e mārama haere ana ngātauāraiā-tuhi o te rāngai tāauraki. Ko ngā ringatuhi, ko ngā kanohi hihira hoki,ko Patricia Grace rātou koAnahera Gildea, ko essa may ranapiri ka noho ki te āta whakatewhatewha i ngā āhuatanga o te wā. Ka wānangahia ētahi ara kē e tāngia ai he kōrero i te ao Māori, ā, ka kōrerohia hoki ngā ara e whāia ana e ngāi ringatuhi, e ngāi whakatūtū anō, e noho taketake anō ai te tukuhanga o ngā pūrākau Māori,e whai horopaki ā-hītori, ā-ahurea anō ai ētahi o ngā take o te wā. Ko Emma Espiner te kaiwhakahaere.
Oro series curated by Ruby Solly.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
From her ancestral lands, in Hongoeka Bay, Patricia Grace (Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Ati Awa) brings us her new memoir. She reveals the experiences that have shaped her life, books and distinctive voice: “I decided to sit myself in the middle of the story and move it back and forth around me... placing myself at the centre, keeping characters and ideas close, and from the centre reaching to the outer circles, in any direction, for what I need in order to bring everything together”. Author of a multitude of beloved books, including 'Potiki', 'Cousins' (now a major film) and 'Tu', Grace will be in conversation with Nic Low.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
To read Brian Turner “is to enter a world where natural things stand starkly, and emotions are felt as directly as the rock and streams and mountains to which he constantly returns,” says fellow poet and 2016 Festival Honoured Writer Vincent O’Sullivan.
Lyric poet and keen environmentalist Turner is a man of both sporting and literary talents: rabbiter, fisherman, cricketer, cyclist, mountaineer, and former international hockey representative, as well as an award-winning writer of 12 poetry collections, memoir, sport biography (Meads and Kronfeld), essays, reviews and more.
He won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize with his first collection Ladders of Rain and has gone on to further accolades including the Robert Burns Fellow at Otago University, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry, and the 2005 Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate.
His most recent book, Landmarks (2020), celebrates the places and people of his beloved Central Otago, continuing the kaupapa of companion work Timeless Land (1995), written with friends and collaborators Owen Marshall and Grahame Sydney.
To open the 2021 Festival, Turner joins John Campbell on stage in a free celebratory session of his life and work.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
In 1971, only 11 women in New Zealand had taken seats as Members of Parliament, women were not entitled to matrimonial property, there was no state help for women leaving a violent partner, and no childcare available for those that worked. That year, young feminists Sue Kedgley and Ngahuia te Awekotuku (Ngāti Whakaue, Tamakaimoana) led a procession, complete with coffin, into Auckland’s Albert Park to protest the lack of progress in women’s rights. Fifty years on much has been achieved but full equality remains elusive, and the movement continues to navigate its way through challenges from within and without. Kedgley and Awekotuku take the stage to mark the publication of the former’s new memoir 'Fifty Years A Feminist', and to reflect on the journey so far and the ways forward. Chaired by Alison Mau.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patron Theresa Gattung.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
Distinguished historian Dame Claudia Orange has dedicated a lifetime to the study of Aotearoa’s founding documents, ensuring that current and future generations can have a wider understanding of our bicultural history. Her landmark book 'The Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi: An Illustrated History' has just been comprehensively updated to bring the Treaty narrative up to the present day. She joins Hirini Kaa in conversation to talk about her early days, her immersion in the study and honouring of the Treaty, and how ground-breaking settlements are setting the course for our future.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
According to police figures, 900 New Zealanders joined a gang in 2020, with a growing number of gang leaders and affiliates deported from Australia also bolstering those numbers. It comes as no surprise, then, that New Zealand is now one of the most lucrative illicit drug markets in the world, with dealers graduating from not only the motorcycle gangs of 20 years ago, but also Asian crime syndicates and the most dangerous drug lords in the world – the Mexican cartels. New Zealand Herald investigative reporter Jared Savage, who has twice been named Reporter of the Year, is the author of 'Gangland: New Zealand’s Underworld of Organised Crime', in which he shines a light into this dark arena. He discusses the state of play with Sonya Wilson.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
The late acclaimed songwriter Leonard Cohen once said, “If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. Being a songwriter is like being a nun. You’re married to a mystery.”
In an effort to interrogate the proposition, an incredible line-up of New Zealand songwriters – Reb Fountain, Tom Scott and Marlon Williams – join fellow artist Moana Maniapoto for a discussion about their artistry, their inspirations, the good days and the bad, with acoustic performances to round out the conversation.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL WAITUHI O TĀMAKI 2021
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 13 features:
MAGGIE O'FARRELL (Ireland / Scotland) Acclaimed Irish-British novelist Maggie O'Farrell has won numerous awards for her books including the Betty Trask, the Somerset Maugham and the Costa Book Awards. Her latest novel 'Hamnet', a recreation of the story of the death of Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son, has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her memoir 'I am, I am, I am' reached number one in the Sunday Times bestseller list.
COLIN THUBRON (England) Travel writer Colin Thubron is considered one of Britain’s finest wordsmiths and was ranked by The Times as one of the 50 greatest post-war British writers. Colin has written 15 travel books, largely focussed on Russia, Central Asia and China, including 'Mirror to Damascus', 'Shadow of the Silk Road', and 'To A Mountain in Tibet’ He is also an accomplished novelist.
ROSE LU (Aotearoa New Zealand) Rose Lu has a master’s in creative writing from Victoria University of Wellington, winning her year’s creative non-fiction prize. Her work has been published in Sport, Pantograph Punch, Turbine Kapohau, and Mimicry and she has recently published the essay collection 'All Who Live on Islands'.
ANN PATCHETT (United States) Beloved American author Ann Patchett has written three non-fiction titles and seven novels, including the Orange-Prize winning 'Bel Canto' and her latest 'The Dutch House'. She is the co-founder of indie bookstore Parnassus Books and in 2012 was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 12 features:
PATRICK GALE (England) Patrick Gale is the author of the award-winning BBC drama 'Man in an Orange Shirt' as well as 16 novels, including bestsellers 'Notes From An Exhibition', ‘Perfectly Good Man' and the Costa shortlisted 'A Place Called Winter'. His latest novel is 'Take Nothing With You', an elegiac story of coming of age and the transformative power of music.
JULIA EBNER (Austria) Julia Ebner is a research fellow at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a consultant on counter-terrorism to the UN. For her latest book ‘Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists', Julia went undercover for two years, investigating the online lives of extremists; hanging out in the alt-right networks.
MICHELE LEGGOTT (Aotearoa New Zealand) NZ’s inaugural Poet Laureate, Michele Leggott, has been the recipient of a Prime Minister’s Literary Award and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ. She coordinates the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) and has recently published 'Mezzaluna: Selected Poems'.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 11 features:
KOLOKESA U MĀHINA-TUAI (Aotearoa New Zealand) author and curator Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, is the founder of the cultural consultancy Lagi-Maama, and coedited the encyclopaedic three-century spanning 'Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania'.
LEANNE SHAPTON (Canada) Leanne is a writer, artist, former Olympic swimming triallist, New York Times design editor, and publisher. She is the author of the award-winning 'Swimming Studies', co-author of 'Women in Clothes' and her latest offering, 'Guestbook: Ghost Stories', uses artefacts – ephemera, photos, architectural plans, and her own watercolours in 33 tales of guests, ghosts and other lingering presences.
NEIL GAIMAN (England) The award-winning Neil Gaiman is author of over 30 acclaimed books and graphic novels for adults and children, including ‘American Gods’, ‘The Sandman’ series, ‘Coraline’ and ‘The Graveyard Book’. The renowned storyteller’s work has been adapted for film, radio and television – including scripts for Doctor Who. Neil will be discussing his latest work, an illustrated edition of his highly acclaimed novel for adults, ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature. This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 10 showcases guests from our 2020 Onāianei series:
RENÉE: Playwright, novelist, poet, memoirist, and blogger Renée (Ngāti Kahungunu), has documented NZ’s social history in work that includes Wednesday To Come, Setting The Table, and memoir These Two Hands. She has recently written her first crime novel, The Wild Card.
JOSHUA WHITEHEAD: Two-spirit Canadian First Nations poet and novelist Joshua Whitehead, is the author of the poetry collection Full-Metal Indigiqueer and the novel Jonny Appleseed, which won a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. He is currently working towards a doctorate in Indigenous literatures and cultures.
RUBY MAE HINEPUNUI SOLLY:Writer and musician, Ruby Mae Hinepunui Solly (Kāi Tahu) has been published in journals such as Landfall, Minarets, and Starling. She recently released her debut album Pōneke, featuring cello, nga taonga puoro and accompanying poems. Her debut poetry collection Tōku Pāpā, will be published in 2021.
HOSTED BY TINA MAKERETI: Tina Makereti is the Onāianei Series programmer for our 2020 Festival. Her work includes the novel The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, and 2016 Commonwealth Pacific Prizewinning short story Black Milk. She co-edited Black Marks on the White Page with Witi Ihimaera and was a contributor to Pūrākau – Māori Myths Retold
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 9 features:
SELINA TUSITALA MARSH (Aotearoa New Zealand) Former Poet Laureate, performer and teacher Selina Tusitala Marsh has published three collections of poetry, including the 2010 Best First Book Award winner 'Fast Talking PI', and the 2018 Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted 'Tightrope'. Her latest book is the inspirational graphic memoir 'Mophead' which she also illustrated. It tells the true story of a New Zealand woman realising how her difference can make a difference.
CASS SUNSTEIN (United States) Cass Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor and served in the Obama administration. His latest book 'How Change Happens', looks at how, when and why, social movements such as #metoo and nationalism suddenly take off. He co-wrote the influential 'Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness', a revelatory examination of how people make decisions and how governments might persuade their citizens to act in socially beneficial ways while curbing government over-reaching, and the very timely 'Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide'.
SAMANTHA POWER (Ireland / United States) Pulitzer Prize-winning author, diplomat and war correspondent Samantha Power served in the Obama administration and as US ambassador to the UN. Twice named as one of Time’s ‘100 Most Influential People’, her best-selling memoir 'The Education of an Idealist', is a unique blend of expert storytelling and shrewd political insight, tracing her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential cabinet official. At a time of upheaval and division, Power’s memoir – named one of the best books of 2019 by The New York Times and The Economist – offers an urgent response to the question “What can one person do?”
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The inspirational Haben Girma was to appear at the 2020 Auckland Writers Festival to discuss her memoir 'Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law'. Following our cancellation this conversation with ABC's Nas Campanella was recorded via Skype in April.
We are publishing it today, 27 June, to coincide with what would have been the 140th birthday of Helen Keller.
Podcast: https://tinyurl.com/girma2020 including transcripts.
The title of Haben Girma’s “profoundly important” memoir 'Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law' says it all. Girma is the child of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees. Her career choice was informed, in part, by her wish to help those with disabilities access digital information and technology. She was on the National Federation of the Blind’s legal team when they sued the online document service Scribd for failing to make content fully accessible, and she developed a braille communication system in which typing on a keyboard is pulsed into her fingers.
President Obama named her a White House Champion of Change, Forbes magazine gave her a spot on its list of North American under 30 trailblazers, and she has been the face of a connective technology advertising campaign. She also occasionally surfs, mountain climbs, kayaks and goes horseriding. Haben’s story is a testament to one woman’s determination to show the world the benefits of choosing inclusion.
This podcast is presented by the UNSW Centre for Ideas in partnership with the UNSW Disability Innovation Institute and Auckland Writers Festival
Note that throughout the recording, you will hear the sound of typing which is Haben's Braille computer. Nas asked the questions which are typed into a keyboard and then converted to Braille for Haben to read.
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 8 features:
PHILIPPA SWAN Philippa Swan’s time-travelling novel The Night of All Souls blends a contemporary tale with the secrets of the 1921 Pulitzer-prizewinner Edith Wharton.So Swan trained as a landscape architect and wrote the critically acclaimed non-fiction book, Life (and Death) In A Small City Garden. She is a freelance writer for NZ Gardener and Cuisine, and has won awards for her short-stories.
FREYA DALY SADGROVE Writer, performer and theatre maker Freya Daly Sadgrove recently published her first poetry collection, Head Girl. Her work is described as profoundly funny, surprising and moving, and ruthless in its interrogation of human behaviour. She has a Master's in Poetry from Victoria University of Wellington, and her work has appeared in various publications in Aotearoa, Australia and the US.
HELON HABILA Nigerian US-based journalist, poet, and author Helon Habila is considered one of Africa’s finest literary voices. He writes about identity, exile and the many kinds of travellers now crisscrossing Africa and Europe. Habila’s fourth, novel Travellers has it all, reviews The Guardian, “intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion, and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute concerns of our age – the refugee crisis”. Habila has won numerous awards including the Caine Prize, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and Windham-Campbell Literature Prize.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 7 features:
AN YU (China) An Yu's debut novel Braised Pork captures contemporary life in a dizzyingly changing China. The Guardian described it as “Poised between silliness and high seriousness, contrasting narrative wildness with cool prose, the novel ignores the conventional advice “tell a dream, lose a reader.” An Yu has returned to live in Beijing after graduating from New York University, and stints in Paris and Hong Kong.
ANTHONY BYRT (Aotearoa New Zealand) Art critic Anthony Byrt's latest book, The Mirror Steamed Over, takes us back to London’s art scene in the late 50's and early 60's focussing on the artists Billy Apple, David Hockney and the writer Ann Quin. His first book This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art was 2017 Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted.
CHRISTINE FERNYHOUGH (Aotearoa / New Zealand) For the last 30 years Christine Fernyhough has amassed a collection of 4000 mid-century NZ objects. Her curatorial policy is loose – toys, tableware, furniture, and ephemera have all made the cut, as have royal family merchandise and Crown Lynn ware. Mid-Century Living: The Butterfly House Collection is her book showcasing the collection, housed in her Northland bach. Philanthropist Fernyhough co-founded Books in Homes with Alan Duff, wrote the best-selling memoir The Road to Castle Hill about the high-country station she ran and set up the online catalogue of domestic objects The NZ Museum of the Everyday.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand)Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 6 features:
OLIVIA HAYFIELD (England / Aotearoa New Zealand) Writer and editor Sue Copsey has released her first adult novel under the pseudonym Olivia Hayfield. Wife After Wife is a humorous modern take on the life and marriages of Henry VIII - in this version, Harry Rose, a 21st century womanising media mogul.
PETER STANFORD (England) Journalist Peter Stanford’s latest book, Angels: A Visible and Invisible Mystery, is a thought-provoking and entertaining look at the origins of angels in religion, history, psychology and wider culture. previous books include biographies of Pope Joan, Judas, the devil, and Martin Luther, he regularly writes on religion and ethics for newspapers and the BBC.
ELIZABETH KNOX (Aotearoa New Zealand) Elizabeth Knox is the author of 13 novels, three novellas and a collection of essays. Her latest, The Absolute Book, is a widely acclaimed epic novel that moves between real and fantasy worlds. She won several major Book Awards for The Vintner’s Luck and Dreamquake, and was granted an ONZM in this year's Queen’s Birthday Honours.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand)Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 5 features:
RICHARD FORD (United States) Leading American novelist and short story writer Richard Ford is the author of seven novels and several collections, among them The Sportswriter, Let Me Be Frank With You and Independence Day, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN Faulkner Award. In 2019 he was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction – a lifetime achievement award. The Library described him as a “luminous storyteller – one of the most eloquent writers of his generation”. He is currently a professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and his latest collection is Sorry for your Trouble.
AMY McDAID (Aotearoa New Zealand) The winner of the James Wallace Prize for the first draft of her debut novel Fake Baby, Amy McDaid has a master’s of creative writing from The University of Auckland and has had work published in The Spinoff and Three Lamps Journal. She works as a neonatal intensive care nurse.
YASMIN KHAN (England) Food writer and broadcaster Yasmin Khan is the author of The Saffron Tales and Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen and counts Yotam Ottolenghi and Nigella Lawson as fans. Yasmin is passionate about sharing people's stories through food. Prior to her food career, she was a human rights campaigner for NGOs.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand)Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 4 features:
DEBORAH EISENBERG (United States) A master of the short story – with the requisite skills of observation, pacing, and economy – Deborah Eisenberg is dubbed a “chronicler of American insanity” by The New York Times. Her five collections include the recent Your Duck is My Duck. She teaches writing at New York’s Columbia University.
WALLACE SHAWN (United States) Writer and actor Wallace Shawn’s plays have been performed at New York’s Public Theater and the National Theatre in London with The Designated Mourner, The Fever and Marie and Bruce also made into films. Shawn’s many acting credits include Toy Story, The Princess Bride, Manhattan and My Dinner with Andre.
CAROLINE BARRON (Aotearoa New Zealand) Caroline Barron is a writer, manuscript assessor, book reviewer, and trustee of the Michael King Writers Centre. She has a master’s in creative writing from The University of Auckland, and won a NZ Society of Authors Complete MS award for her memoir Ripiro Beach: A Memoir of Life After Near Death.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand)Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 3 features:
BECKY MANAWATU (Aotearoa New Zealand) Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu) is the winner of both the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and the Best First Book Award Fiction at the 2020 Ockham NZ Book Awards with her debut novel Auē. The judges wrote, “Auē is a mere pounamu: raw life polished to a sheen that’s beautiful and warm but at the same time a blade with a keen edge". A journalist and writer, Becky works as a reporter for The News in Westport. Her story ‘Abalone’ was longlisted for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
ROBERT MACFARLANE (England) Writer Robert Macfarlane is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language. Described by The Wall Street Journal as “the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation,” his many books include the award-winning Landmarks, The Old Ways, and The Lost Words, with several adapted for TV by the BBC. A Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2017 he received The EM Forster Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Underland: A Deep Time Journey is his most recent book.
CHANEL MILLER (United States) 2019 Time Next 100 honoree and literature graduate Chanel Miller (pseudonym Emily Doe) is a writer and artist. Her New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir, Know My Name sparked a nation-wide discussion in the US about the treatment of sexual assault survivors by both colleges and the court system. It was listed as a 2019 notable book by New York Times Book Review, Time and the Washington Post, and won best memoir in that year's National Book Critics Circle Awards.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand)Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 2 features:
PHILIPPE SANDS (France/England) Philippe Sands' latest book 'The Ratline' is a unique glimpse into the life of a senior Nazi official and his wife before, during, and on the run after the war. Already a best seller in the UK just one week after its release, it’s been described as reading like a John le Carre thriller. His previous book 'East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide' has won numerous prizes, including the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a barrister and Professor of Law at University College London.
IAN WEDDE (Aotearoa New Zealand) Ian Wedde has written 15 poetry collections, eight novels, two collections of essays, and a number of anthologies and art monographs. A former NZ Poet Laureate, he has received numerous awards, fellowships and grants, and has recently published the historical novel 'The Reed Warbler'.
LISA TADDEO (United States) Lisa Taddeo has an MFA in fiction and has won Pushcart Prizes for her short stories. She is the author of the non-fiction 2019 bestseller on female desire 'Three Women'. Her debut novel, 'Animal', will be out next summer, with her collection of stories to follow.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books.
The Festival thanks its presentation partner Auckland Live, and all its generous sponsors, funders, patrons and friends whose support has enabled us to continue our work during these extraordinary times.
awfwinterseries
The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.
Episode 1 features:
BARBARA EWING (Aotearoa New Zealand) Writer and actress Barbara Ewing trained at RADA and has starred on stage and on screen including in the award-winning series Brass. She is the author of nine novels, published in 12 languages, including Orange Prize longlisted A Dangerous Vine, and the memoir One Minute Crying Time.
BERNARDINE EVARISTO (England) Bernardine Evaristo is the author of eight books exploring the African diaspora, including the Booker prizewinning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, and the recipient of many honours including an MBE. She is professor of creative writing at Brunel University London, and vice chair of the Royal Society of Literature.
ALAN BOLLARD (Aotearoa New Zealand) Alan Bollard was governor of the Reserve Bank, Treasury secretary, chair of the Commerce Commission and Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat in Singapore. Currently an economics professor at Victoria University of Wellington, he is the author of several books including Economists at War.
HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.
This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books.
The Festival thanks its presentation partner Auckland Live, and all its generous sponsors, funders, patrons and friends whose support has enabled us to continue our work during these extraordinary times.
awfwinterseries
English food writer and journalist Nigella Lawson started work as a book reviewer and restaurant critic, going on to become the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times before embarking on a career as a freelance journalist. She has now become one of the world’s most loved food writers and broadcasters and is the author of numerous award-winning books including How to Eat, How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Bites and most recently At My Table. Chaired by Paula Morris.
Supported by Penguin Random House
Join master of suspense and bestselling crime writer Lee Child in conversation with broadcaster Jim Mora, to celebrate Past Tense and the return of Jack Reacher.
Child’s books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world, with one Jack Reacher novel reportedly sold every nine seconds somewhere on the planet. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger for a writer of an outstanding body of crime fiction, the International Thriller Writers’ Thriller Master Award, and the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award.
Presented by Auckland Writers Festival with the support of Penguin Random House NZ.
A special event with internationally acclaimed Indian writer Arundhati Roy.
Arundhati Roy catapulted to fame with her debut novel The God of Small Things which won the 1997 Booker Prize. Since then she has published more than 18 books including Booker-longlisted second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) and major works of non-fiction such as Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, The End of Imagination and, now, My Seditious Heart, an upcoming single volume collection of her political essay writing over 20 years.
Chaired by Paula Morris.
Sarah J. Maas is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Throne of Glass series and A Court of Thorns and Roses series, as well as an international bestselling YA author. Sarah wrote the first incarnation of the Throne of Glass series when she was just 16, and it has now sold in 35 languages.
Celebrate her latest novel "Kingdom of Ash", the epic finale of the Throne of Glass series with Sarah and fellow readers. This is an exclusive New Zealand event presented by Auckland Writers Festival and Bloomsbury Publishing.
The daughter of a South African freedom fighter and an accountant, the writer Sisonke Msimang was born in exile, and has lived on three continents. She has called the dream of freedom a kind of home for her, an idea beautifully expanded upon in her memoir Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home. Now based in Perth and working as an oral storyteller, Msimang has also published The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela, which charts the not-always-ascendant trajectory of one of South Africa’s most famous women. She speaks with Dan Salmon.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Carol & Gerard Curry.
Despite an unwritten rule that authors shouldn’t install writers as characters in their work, in recent times a surfeit of writers as protagonists has appeared. Irishman John Boyne (A Ladder to the Sky), Pulitzer prize-winner Andrew Sean Greer (Less), Chilean Carla Guelfenbein (In The Distance With You) and Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted Anne Kennedy (The Ice Shelf) come together to discuss writing as story, and what’s behind the trend.
Alexander Chee is variously described as “masterful” (Roxane Gay), “incendiary” (The New York Times) and “brilliant” (The Washington Post). Author of the novels Edinburgh and Queen of the Night, he has now written the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel – shortlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Vogel Prize for the Art of the Essay. In it he scrutinises the emotional and psychological events of his life, and examines the versions of himself – son, subject of sexual abuse, gay man, Korean-American, artist, activist, lover, and friend. He also gives advice on keeping the rent low and the employment flexible. In conversation with Sasha de Buyl.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Peter Macky & Yuri Opeshko.
The Canadian novelist and screenwriter Patrick deWitt is an amusing stylist of the highest order who credits his liking for “inane comedic dialogue” to early and sustained exposure to Monty Python. He has written four novels: Ablutions; The Sisters Brothers, which was made into a film; Undermajordomo Minor; and his latest French Exit, at times “a miniaturist work of howling nihilism” (The New Yorker). DeWitt satirises the wealthy 1%, specifically a Manhattan socialite – infamous for finding the body of her husband in their bedroom and promptly heading to the ski fields for R&R – and her adult son Malcolm as they up sticks for Paris, in relatively impoverished circumstances. deWitt discusses his work and motivations with Paula Morris.
Supported by Canada Council for the Arts.
Eight writers, eight seven-minute true stories, no scripts, no props. Toiling for your entertainment and edification this year, and addressing the loose theme of “At The Crossroads”, are John Boyne (Ireland), Roger Hall (NZ), Chessie Henry (NZ), Mika (NZ), Sisonke Msimang (South Africa/AU), Mary Norris (US), Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan/UK) and Jeff Tweedy (US).
Supported by Craigs Investment Partners.
From driverless cars to digital assistants, it seems the world of work is on the cusp of a technological revolution that is generating hopes and fears alike. But are the robots really knocking at the door? And what does all this mean for Aotearoa? New Zealand economist Kinley Salmon, a graduate of Cambridge and Harvard universities now working in the United States, tackles these questions in his new book Jobs, Robots and Us. He presents his arguments that New Zealand can and should shape its own future, before an onstage conversation with Vincent Heeringa
At a time when economic disparity continues to widen and the health of the planet is under severe threat, many question the tenet that growth is the appropriate measure of economic sustainability and success. British economist Kate Raworth is one such inquisitor. In her book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist – longlisted for the 2017 Financial Times McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award—Raworth issues a clarion call to act creatively and to reframe the economy, by “meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet”. She presents her thesis in conversation with Rod Oram.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Dame Rosie & Michael Horton.
The creative force behind the genre-defying Chicago alt-rock band Wilco, Jeff Tweedy has recently released his first memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). Tweedy opens up about his creative process and the people and places that have shaped him. A musical explorer from his early years listening to siblings’ records and playing in bands in high school, Tweedy formed the legendary country-punk band Uncle Tupelo in 1987 – its first album No Depression is now considered a blue print for alt-country. Then came the worship-worthy Wilco, and 25 years of collaboration, including with Billy Bragg, Mavis Staples and, posthumously, Woody Guthrie. Tweedy chats with Alex Behan and ends the session with musical performance.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Pip Muir & Kit Toogood.
More than ever these days, writers’ festivals and literary interviews encourage readers to interest themselves in the lives and thought processes of the novelists and poets whose work they read. Recently, for example, the first volume of a biography of Maurice Shadbolt had been published (Life as a Novel: A Biography of Maurice Shadbolt: Volume One 1932-1973). Most of the information contained within could be considered gossip, but at what point does gossip become literary history? Karl Stead doesn’t have a definitive answer, but he likes the question.
I te tai nui o hiakai ki te reo Māori e pari mai ana, arā tētahi kāhui toka tū moana kua roa e oke ana kia ora ai ko te reo, otirā , ko te ahurea Māori. He mea whakatupu ki te reo Māori, e whitu tau te pakeke o Tā Tīmoti Kāretu nōna ka ako i te reo Pākehā. I āianei nā e matatau ana tē nei toki ki ētahi reo e whā, ā, ko te whānuitanga o ngā rā o tōna ao kua pau i āna whakahekenga tōtā nui kia whakarauoratia ai tōna reo taketake. He hautupua kua hau hoki te rongo mōte koi o Arero, o Hirikapo anō, i nāini nei a Tā Tīmoti rāua ko Ahorangi Wharehuia Milroy ka piri anō i te tuhinga o He Kupu Tuku Iho, o tā rāua pukapuka e aro nei ki te mātauranga tuku iho Māori, he mea tā hoki ki te reo Māori nahenahe. Rarau mai kia rangona ai a Tā Tīmoti e kōrero tahi ana ki tōna hoa kaitaunaki i te reo Māori, otirā, ki te kaipāpāho anō, ki a Scotty (Te Manahau) Morrison. He tuatahitanga tēnei ki tēnei hui ahurei, ka mutu, he kupu Pākehā ruarua noa ka rere i tēnei wāhanga, ko te reo Māori te matua.
He mea tautoko nā Te Puni Kōkiri.
Behind the current surge of interest in learning te reo Māori, there stand warriors who have fought long and hard to keep the language and culture alive. Sir Tīmoti Kāretu was raised speaking te reo Māori, learning English when he was seven. Now fluent in four languages, he has devoted much of his life to the revitalisation of his first language. Formidable and opinionated Kāretu recently combined forces with Professor Wharehuia Milroy to write He Kupu Tuku Iho, a book which examines Māori cultural knowledge, published only in te reo Māori. Join Kāretu in kōrero with fellow language advocate and broadcaster Scotty Morrison for a Festival-first, primarily in te reo Māori with a smattering of English.
Supported by Te Puni Kōkiri.
The pre-eminent military historian Antony Beevor attended Sandhurst and served in the 11th Hussars before writing four novels and twelve books of non-fiction (including the gripping Stalingrad and Berlin). In his latest work – Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges 1944 – he has mined Dutch, British, Polish, German, and American archives, and previously overlooked sources, to vividly document heroism and incompetence in the biggest ever airborne battle. The military disaster saw colossal casualties and resulted in brutal Nazi reprisals against Dutch citizens. Beevor, a master of integrating sources with stories, is in conversation with Michael Williams.
Supported by Heartland Bank.
The Filipino poet and labour organiser Carlos Bulosan, whose family immigrated to America in the Great Depression, entitled his autobiographic novel America Is in the Heart. Elaine Castillo’s fine debut novel “America Is Not the Heart” is a portrait of Filipino diaspora, specifically the migration of three-generations of women to San Francisco’s Bay area – the not so picturesque part. Tender and funny, and marked by a kind of declamatory vernacular (and a smattering of the native Philippine languages of Tagalog, Ilocano and Pangasinan), Castillo ranges across civil strife and torture, social inequity, mystery, romance, and bisexuality. She joins Kiran Dass in conversation.
Last year the film writer and director Taika Waititi sparked debate when he declared New Zealand "racist as f***" and recounted being racially profiled as a teenager. The Human Rights Commission also reports that local instances of racism are on the increase. How do those who have never been subject to racism begin to understand the experiences of those who have? And is there an expectation that those who are the targets of casual and/or explicit racism must explain the indignities and implications of being perceived as other. Four eloquent writers bring their experiences and stories to the stage for a nuanced exploration of racism. Join David Chariandy (Canada), Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), Nida Fiazi (Afghanistan/Aotearoa New Zealand), Leonie Hayden (Aotearoa New Zealand) and Victor Rodger (Aotearoa New Zealand), chaired by Carol Hirschfeld.
The border zone between history and fiction can be dangerous territory. When, if ever, is speculation acceptable? Is invention justified? Can fictionalising history advance the understanding of truth? Pre-eminent British historian Antony Beevor takes on local creative non-fiction writer Joanna Grochowicz and historical fiction novelist Rosetta Allan in a light-hearted consideration of the pros and cons of monkeying with the historical record. Chaired by Hannah August.
Famed for his 1991 international bestselling novel Generation X which popularised the titular term, the Canadian Douglas Coupland is celebrated both as a writer and an artist. He is often preoccupied with our relationship to work. He has published 13 novels, two short stories collections, seven works of nonfiction (including a biography of the philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who coined the expression “the medium is the message”), and is currently a Financial Times columnist. In his art he has investigated pop culture and the military, in various media. He has been an artist in residence at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris. His 2018 installation Vortex, at the Vancouver Aquarium, invited visitors to “take an imaginative journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and immerse yourself in the ocean plastic pollution crisis”. The big thinker speaks with Vincent Heeringa.
Supported by NZ Contemporary Art Trust and Canada Council for the Arts.
The novel Fugitive Pieces is a work of art. It brought author Anne Michaels accolades, and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Michaels has not rested on her laurels, however. She is currently Toronto’s Poet Laureate, and her latest collection of poems All We Saw has garnered rave reviews. Her non-fictional Infinite Gradations is a meditation on art and death. She discusses her life’s writing with Michael Williams.
Supported by Sarah Broom Poetry Trust and Canada Council for the Arts.
A giant of New Zealand music, Shayne Carter writes of the people, places and social forces that have shaped him in his autobiography Dead People I Have Known. From the death of a band member, to the halted progress of Straitjacket Fits – the band that was expected to conquer the world with numbers such as “She Speeds”– and his dazzling come-back with the band Dimmer, Carter’s story is a hike through our cultural landscape, notably taking in that ‘Dunedin Sound’. Carter is in conversation with John Campbell.
A line-up of Māori writers join forces with multi-instrumentalist Kingsley Melhuish for a night of storytelling interwoven with music, inspired by the new book Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold. Imagine a sensual retelling of Tāne’s creation of Hine, Māui as a beleaguered sports star, or an Aotearoa where whakapapa is downloaded via app. Join Whiti Hereaka (who edited Pūrākau with Witi Ihimaera), Kelly Joseph, Nic Low, Tina Makereti, Paula Morris, and Regan Taylor (reading for Vancouver-based David Geary) for an hour of mythic magic.
Peter Godfrey-Smith believes that encountering an octopus is the closest we might ever come to meeting an intelligent alien, with its eight tentacles so packed with neurons that they virtually think for themselves. His book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness has been hailed by Talking Heads musician David Byrne as his best read of 2018 and as “entrancing and profound” by the Financial Times. Join the Australian scuba-diving philosopher of science for a discussion of the evolutionary journey of cephalopods, and what it teaches us about the human mind, in conversation with Dr Siouxsie Wiles.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Frances & Bill Bell.
Eugenia Cheng’s mission is to rid the world of maths phobia. She holds a doctorate in pure maths from the University of Cambridge University, teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is a concert pianist, founded Liederstube (a non-profit organisation aimed at bringing classical music to a wider audience) and has written three books in which she proselytises the beauty of mathematics. They are How To Bake Pi – in which she posits that the béchamel in a lasagne resembles the number five; Beyond Infinity; and The Art of Logic – in which she links Euclid’s axiomatisation of geometry with sexual harassment. Cheng speaks and argues deftly with Tanya Evans.
Supported by Te Pūnaha Matatini.
Former Samoan Head of State (2007- 2017) and Samoan Prime Minister (1976-1982) Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi is a statesman and philosopher and is widely acknowledged in the Pacific as a leading cultural custodian. In several books, including Su’esu’e Manogi: In Search of Fragrance, he has explored and advocated for Samoan indigenous knowledge. He discusses his life and vital scholarship with Oscar Kightley.
Charles Graeber’s critically acclaimed The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, chronicles the path to what the 2018 Nobel Prize committee recognised as our “penicillin moment” against cancer when they awarded the Medicine prize to James P. Allison and Tasuku. Variously reviewed as “fascinating and artful” (New York Times) and “deft, detailed, fascinating”(Nature) Graeber’s medical thriller,interlaces personal stories of patients and researchers as he tracks the journey to the cure and demystifies the science.
Supported by The University of Auckland Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.
In 1975 Marilyn Waring was elected to the New Zealand Parliament as the MP for Raglan. Aged just 23 and only the fifteenth woman to enter Parliament, she served through the turbulent years of Muldoon’s government, including as chair of the Public Expenditure Committee, before crossing the floor to support nuclear-free legislation which ultimately led to the fall of the National government. The Political Years is an autobiographical account of her time at the forefront of male-dominated public life and sits alongside other books including Counting for Nothing and Still Counting. The talented and determined Waring speaks with Jennifer Curtin.
Firmly situated in the canon of Canadian literature, David Chariandy has written three eloquent books. His first two – Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting and Brother draw on his Trinidadian heritage, and centre on the fragility of human ties. In Soucouyant a man returns home to care for his mother who has dementia; in Brother two siblings and their mother battle as working-class immigrants in Toronto. Chariandy’s first work of nonfiction is I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You, a letter to his 13-year-old daughter about growing up a black in Canada, and about living out the politics of race. He speaks with Michelle Langstone.
Supported by Canada Council for the Arts.
A master of moral complexity, Sarah Perry spent her childhood in a strict Baptist community, removed from contemporary culture and steeped in Old English literature and the King James Bible. The upbringing has unsurprisingly deeply influenced her writing style, described as making the reader “alive to the strangeness of the world and of our history” (The DailyTelegraph). The author of three novels, including the bestselling 2017 British Book Awards Book of the Year The Essex Serpent, and Melmoth, Perry talks with Noelle McCarthy on harnessing the power of myth, religion and mystery.
As the power struggle between China and the United States intensifies and questions of Chinese interference in New Zealand and the Pacific are raised in academic and political circles, journalist Richard McGregor fathoms the geo-political climate and the balance of power in our region. McGregor has worked as a Financial Times correspondent in China, wrote The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers, and Asia’s Reckoning: The Struggle for Global Dominance, and has a short book about Xi Jinping’s China about to be published. In conversation with Corin Dann.
Supported by Hobson Leavy Executive Search.
Mary Norris’ New York Times bestseller Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen gives an account of the author’s years in The New Yorker’s copy department. Now she returns with Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, a witty romp around language, love, and the crystalline Greek coast, along which she adventured. She speaks with Adam Dudding.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Josephine & Ross Green.
“It’s a terrible thing being a biographer,” Artemis Cooper has said. “One is such a rat.” A consummate inquisitor of the talented, Cooper’s subjects have included food guru Elizabeth David,novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, and travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose last book she co-edited with Colin Thubron. She is also the author of Cairo in the War, 1939-1945, co-author with her husband Antony Beevor of Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, and editor of two collections of her grandmother Lady Diana Cooper’s letters, to her husband Duff and to her friend Evelyn Waugh. Cooper delivers an hour of conversation with Owen Scott discussing the concept of memory, and telling tales of the 20th-century.
Supported by Heartland Bank.
THE MICHAEL KING MEMORIAL LECTURE 2019 Although the New Zealand Wars (1845-1872) have profoundly shaped our country they have been little acknowledged, taught and understood. Historian Vincent O’Malley presents an introduction to the causes, course and consequences of these defining conflicts fought between groups of Māori and the Crown in his book The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga O Aotearoa. He delivers the 2019 Michael King Lecture.
The results of the 2017 New Zealand election campaign reverberated around the world, changing the course of this country’s politics and ringing in generational change. Political scientist Stephen Levine’s book Stardust & Substance is an examination of legacy, politics and promise, recounting perspectives from key campaign players including now Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who joins Toby Manhire for an early morning insider’s conversation on these remarkable weeks in our history.
Markus Zusak is one of Australia’s most successful exports, a six-time novelist best known for The Book Thief, an international smash hit also adapted for the screen. Ten years on, his highly anticipated follow-up arrives – the ambitious, suburban epic, Bridge of Clay, described by The Guardian as ”brilliantly illuminated… affirmatively full of life”. The book celebrates both the ordinary and the outrageous, and the journeys that make us. Zusak talks writing, discipline and inspiration with Catriona Ferguson.
Supported by Australian High Commission.
Andrew Sean Greer’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning novel Less has amassed a legion of fans, among them Ann Patchett, David Sedaris, and Armistead Maupin. The judges declared it “A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.”The same could be said of Greer’s five other works of fiction: tales that joust playfully with time, loss, love and family, and with notions of escape and confinement. He speaks with Noelle McCarthy about his work, and the wisdom to be found in the fabric of a life.
Supported by Platinum Patron Sir James Wallace.
Convulsive changes in journalism following the advent of the Internet have exposed the editorial/business divide, and spawned ethical dilemmas. Navigating these choppy seas is the first female executive editor of The New York Times, Jill Abramson, who was fired in 2014 after less than three years in the job. In her new book Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts she investigates reporting at four news organisations. Two have towering reputations (The New York Times and The Washington Post); two are relatively new entrants (BuzzFeed and Vice) of whom Abramson said they, along with other digital media, “were giving the old guard serious competition – and heartburn”. Following publication of Merchants of Truth Abramson herself now stands accused of factual errors and unethical behaviour, namely plagiarism – a charge which she refutes. She joins Toby Manhire to discuss the controversy, the Fourth Estate, and whether cat videos are all we can expect.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patron Theresa Gattung.
Superstar neuroscientist David Eagleman’s latest book, co-authored with composer Anthony Brandt, is The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes The World. In it, the pair weave together the sciences and the arts to explore human inventiveness, and put the case for novelty. Join Eagleman, Creative Fellow of the Creative Thinking Project based at The University of Auckland, in this one-off lecture and tour of human creativity, from Picasso to concept cars, umbrellas to lunar travel, as he discusses the cognitive software that makes it all possible.
Supported by The Creative Thinking Project.
Legendary musician, documentary maker and feature writer Moana Maniapoto (Ngāti Tūwharetoa/Tu hourangi-Ngāti Wahiao) joins Tama Waipara in the Heartland Festival Room for an hour of chat and music. With her band Moana & the Tribe she has performed around the world, sharing her “blend of traditional and contemporary styles without compromising either” (The New Zealand Herald) with lyrics rooted in the NZ landscape, culture and experience. Maniapoto is an Arts Foundation Laureate, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for International Songwriting, was inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame in 2016, and her album Rima was a finalist for all three major music awards in 2015. She is currently in production for her sixth studio album ONO.
The divine Muriel Spark is one of Scotland’s most revered writers, with legions of fans that include such luminaries as Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. On the occasion of the hundred-year anniversary of her death, literary editor and friend Alan Taylor delivers Appointment in Arezzo, an intimate, fond and funny memoir – full of colour and indiscretion – of one of the great novelists of the last century. Taylor, founding editor of the Scottish Review of Books, reveals his Muriel, in conversation with Michael Williams.
Supported by Heartland Bank.
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by NZ expat-Bulgarian Kapka Kassabova is described by the LA Review of Books as “that rarest of things: a travel book with a conscience that is also a compendium of wonders”. It has won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year, the Scottish Book of the Year, and been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Award. An accomplished writer of nonfiction, fiction and poetry, Kassabova explored the borderlands of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, a region shaped by forces of history, and in so doing has produced a meditation on interstices – those areas between countries, cultures, others and ourselves. In discussion with Lloyd Jones.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Mary Biggs & Peter Biggs CNZM.
Best-selling author Karen Joy Fowler is a maverick, with novels and short stories spanning science fiction, fantasy and literary fiction, including the Man Booker Prize finalist We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, The New York Times bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club, and the PEN/Faulkner fiction finalist Sister Noon. She is the co-founder of the James Tiptree Jr. Award – given to works which increase understanding of gender – and is the president of the Clarion Foundation which supports the teaching of sci-fi and fantasy writing. She speaks with Kate De Goldi.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Pip Muir & Kit Toogood.
We live in highly charged times. Since Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment, assault and rape by multiple women, the bastion of male privilege has been under sustained attack by the #METOO and #TIMES UP movements, with a roster of men called out for similar behaviour – not only in Hollywood but in the worlds of politics, media, art, sport, and high-end charity events. Some surprising characters have been netted in the maelstrom – Margaret Atwood (the author of the feminist novel The Handmaid’s Tale) for example, faces a feminist backlash over her voicing of concerns over the #METOO campaign. Is it possible to adopt a nuanced stance in such a climate? And what would that look like? For an analysis of this most extraordinary disruption of traditional male-female relations, and its likely long-term consequences, join Kurdistan poet and leader of the first gender studies programme in Iraqi Kurdistan Choman Hardi, Māori development and media specialist Ella Henry, US scientist Hope Jahren, and UK writer and comic actor Robert Webb. Convened by Charlotte Graham-McLay.
Returning for another extravaganza of spoken-word performance is Best of the Best, showcasing Aotearoa’s poets, in league with international guests. Te Karere Scarborough hosts an evening with John Carr and Jessie Fenton (both winners of Poetry Idol), Daren Kamali (founder of the South Auckland Poets Collective), Vanessa Crofskey (winner of The University of Auckland and Auckland Regional poetry slams), and the Dilworth School Team (winners of the 2017 inter-high school spoken-word poetry slam). Among those joining the local line-up are the novelist and poet Alex Wheatle (UK), and the renowned performance poet and artist Sonya Renee Taylor (US).
Comedy crafters par excellence Kura Forrester, Peter Helliar, and Oscar Kightley unpick a jokey script in conversation with Kanoa Lloyd. What’s funny, what’s not, and how to tell the difference.
Professor David Christian can navigate our complex 13.7 billion year history in just under 18 minutes. Since the 1980s, the US born, Australian-based scholar of Russian history has promulgated the idea of Big History, a metadiscipline which takes a wide-angle, multidisciplinary approach to history. It has been championed by philanthropist Bill Gates among others, and is now being taught in schools. Christian’s new book Origin Story: A Big History of Everything acts as a starting point for understanding the world from go to whoa. He sets out his all-encompassing approach in conversation with Geraint Martin.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Frances & Bill Bell.
The cultural critic Alex Ross is most widely celebrated for his 2007 book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a landmark history of music since 1900. He also has published Listen to This, a collection of his writings for The New Yorker, where he has been the music critic since 1996. For the magazine, he covers classical music from the Metropolitan Opera to the downtown avant-garde, and has also written on pop music, literature, history, and gay life. In 2008 he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Ross speaks with Fergus Barrowman.
Presented in partnership with Chamber Music New Zealand
Bitingly clever satire delivered with a well-timed drollness marked John Clarke’s work which included the black singleted, gumboot-cladded Fred Dagg, the alternative national anthem We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are, the groundbreaking mockumentary The Games, and weekly skits on the absurdities of Australian political life with longtime collaborator Bryan Dawe. To mark his death, and the republication of his novel The Tournament alongside two writing collections, friends and colleagues Tom Scott and Michael Heyward gather with Clarke’s daughter Lorin Clarke, herself an accomplished writer, to pay tribute to this remarkable man, chaired by Gemma Gracewood.
Singaporean writer Sharlene Teo’s debut novel Ponti won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writer’s Award and was praised by Ian McEwan for its “brilliant descriptive power”, and for characters which “glow with life and humour and minutely observed desperation”. Teo sets her twisting and haunting story of an intense and unusual friendship between two women against the humming, shifting atmosphere of contemporary Singapore. She speaks with Pip Adam about her breakthrough debut.
Supported by National Arts Council of Singapore.
One of Barack Obama’s top reads of 2017, Janesville: An American Story, traces the lives of workers and their families, and the response of public and private sectors in the wake of General Motors’ decision to close its Wisconsin assembly plant in 2008. Written by Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post journalist Amy Goldstein, it is essential reading for “anyone who wants to understand the economy of the Rust Belt – and its implications for America’s onceproud middle class” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). The Financial Times McKinsey Book of the Year, Janesville is an intimate human account of postindustrial decline, and a meditation on the future of work. Goldstein discusses the telling of the story with Toby Manhire.
Session presented with the assistance of an Embassy of the United States of America Cultural Grant.
Celebrated poet, teacher and feminist Choman Hardi arrived in Britain in 1993 seeking asylum from Kurdistan. She attended Oxford, London and Kent Universities, and was a Research Fellow at Oxford, before returning to her home city of Sulaimani in 2014 to teach English, and to found the region’s groundbreaking Center for Gender and Development Studies. Her two poetry volumes include Life for Us, and Considering the Women. She has also written insightfully about the impact of genocide on women in Iraq. Hardi discusses poetry, geography and women in the Muslim world with Paula Green.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patron Theresa Gattung.
The launch of Selina Tusitala Marsh’s third poetry collection Tightrope, longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, coincided with her taking up the mantle of Poet Laureate – “a wonderful opportunity to extend the poetic page and stage to this nation’s multi-coloured, multi-hued voices”, she said. An extraordinary poet, performer and advocate, Marsh’s work combines a warrior fierceness with humour, and explores the delicate and dangerous ways in which we navigate the abyss of forgotten memory. She speaks with Adam Dudding.
Alexander McCall Smith describes Scotland: The Autobiography, 2000 Years of Scottish History By Those Who saw It Happen as an unqualified triumph. Rosemary Goring’s book is composed of eye-witness accounts from Tacitus, Mary Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell, Adam Smith, David Livingstone, and The Big Yin, AKA Billy Connolly, but also from crofters, criminals, servants, housewives and poets. Goring is the literary editor of The Herald in Glasgow, and the author of two works of historical fiction: After Flodden (the 1513 battle in which the English annihilated the Scots) and its sequel Dacre’s War. Join her in an hour’s examination of her country with Jim Mora.
Supported by Heartland Bank.
In his new and controversial book Why I Am a Hindu, writer, Indian MP and former UN Under-Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor offers a re-examination of one of the world’s oldest and greatest religions, and considers its origins, key texts and philosophical concepts, as well as the dangers to a pluralist secular India posed by the new Hindu fundamentalists.
Supported by Asia NZ Foundation.
In Island Time Damon Salesa argues that while NZ has passively allowed a tacit segregation to take hold between Pakeha and Pasifika, the future of this country is Pacific, whether we are ready or not. Setting a course through the “islands” of Pacific life in NZ – Ōtara, Tokoroa, Ōamaru and beyond – Salesa envisions a country becoming “even more Pacific by the hour” and challenges us, in this year’s Michael King Lecture, to embrace our Pacific talent, and finally act like a Pacific Nation.
Big thinking philosopher A. C. Grayling has ranged widely in his books to date, among them: Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggle for Liberty and Rights that Made the Modern West; Liberty in the Age of Terror; The God Argument; and The Age of Genius and Democracy and Its Crisis. He is the founder of the private New College of the Humanities in London, an inveterate traveller and compelling public speaker. With Hannah August he discusses the evolution and importance of education, humanism and the humanities, all of which have informed his writing over the last 30 years.
The Times has said of Susie Boyt that “she writes with great precision and wisdom about the human heart under duress”. Her six novels include Love & Fame (a complex and witty exploration of grief), and The Small Hours (a psychological study set in a nursery school). The acclaimed author and Financial Times columnist has also recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James. Her much-loved memoir My Judy Garland Life examines, love, loss and hero-worship through the prism of the troubled star. Boyt is the daughter of the late artist Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund. Join her for a discussion of life, art and the landscape of human feeling, with Kate De Goldi.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Josephine & Ross Green.
Praised as ingenious by The New Yorker for its “technical artistry with an unfettered emotional directness” Jenny Zhang’s debut short-story collection Sour Heart interrogates the immigrant experience in eight linked stories told from the perspective of a first-generation, Chinese-American girl living in New York, and was the first acquisition of Lena Dunham’s publishing imprint Lenny Books. It follows poetry, essays and the chapbook Hags, all of which have contributed to marking Zhang out as one of her generation’s most provocative voices. In conversation with Rosabel Tan.
Labelled by Vulture as one of the most exciting debuts of 2017, and by Bustle as one of the most anticipated feminist releases of the year – alongside work by Rebecca Solnit and Roxane Gay – Durga Chew-Bose’s debut collection of self-referential essays Too Much and Not the Mood has established her as a member of the millennial intelligentsia. Taking its title from a Virginia Woolf diary entry, Chew-Bose’s lyrical collection offer insights into art, literature, pop-culture, and what it means to be a Bengali-Canadian. She speaks with Ella Yelich-O’Connor.
Supported by International Festival of Authors and Canada Council for the Arts.
Heralded as the Jane Goodall of botany in Science magazine, Hope Jahren is the recipient of three Fulbright scholarships, was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2016, and is the Wilson Professor at the University of Oslo's Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics. Her memoir Lab Girl – a National Book Critics Circle Award winner – is a visceral, funny tale of work and love, her relationship with her scientist father Bill, their adventurous global field trips, the complexities of the natural world, and sexism in and beyond the laboratory. She speaks with Siouxsie Wiles.
Supported by Te Pūnaha Matatini.
Freelance journalist Francis Wade has worked extensively in South East Asia and contributed to The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, Asia Times Online, the Democratic Voice of Burma and The Los Angeles Review of Books. In his riveting book Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim ‘Other’, he reveals the deep fissures that have spurred mass violence and refugee flight. The book has garnered praise from the BBC’s Fergal Keane, who lauded Wade for his “moral courage and intellectual insight”, and author Pankaj Mishra who praised its “historical depth and intellectual acuity”. Wade speaks with Hannah Brown.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Dame Rosie & Michael Horton.
Ockham New Zealand Book Award shortlisted Driving to Treblinka is the personal and profound story of journalist Diana Wichtel’s search for her lost father Ben, a Holocaust survivor, who was to follow his wife and children to NZ from Canada in 1964, but never arrived. In the course of Wichtel’s quest she scours the archives, travels the world, and unearths the story of her father and his Warsaw family, and their fate at the hands of the Nazis. The NZ Listener feature writer has carved a career out of deftly profiling others as well as critiquing television; she now turns her gaze on herself and those closest to her. She speaks with Jeremy Hansen.
The life of the foreign correspondent is a fascinating one – forever on the move, often at the coalface of the news cycle, and witnessing the unfolding of history. Freelancer and South East Asian specialist Francis Wade and former China correspondent Madeleine O’Dea, talk with journalist Mike McRoberts.
Anna Karenina, Antigone and the women of Beckett are just some of the roles that Irish actor Lisa Dwan has fashioned as her own in an illustrious theatrical career. As heated debate continues over the position and representation of women on and off the stage and screen, Dwan joins Fiona Samuel for a conversation about towering female literary characters, what they reveal about both the past and current stirred-up times.
Supported by Culture Ireland.
Fiona Farrell’s most recent novel, Decline and Fall on Savage Street, is often referred to as ‘a political novel’. Twin to her highly regarded nonfiction work, The Villa at the Edge of the Empire, the books form a wide-ranging analysis of the response to the Christchurch earthquakes. In this lecture, Farrell considers in general terms the ‘political novel’. What makes a work of fiction ‘political’? Where does imagination stop and journalism begin? What are the special challenges faced by writers creating fiction with a contemporary political element?
The writing of Witi Ihimaera (Te Aitanga-a-Mahāki, Tūhoe, Te Wha nau-ā-Apanui) has touchd generations of readers. The first Māori writer to publish both a book of short stories and a novel, he has since written more than 30 books for adults and children, as well as screenplays, scripts, essays and libretto. Born in Gisborne, Ihimaera worked in the diplomatic service through the 1970s and 1980s, eventually taking up the position of Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Auckland. His bestknown novel is The Whale Rider, made into the award-winning film. Other novels adapted for the screen include Nights in the Garden of Spain, Bulibasha and Medicine Woman. He is the recipient of numerous awards including: Book of the Year at the New Zealand Book Awards; an inaugural Star of Oceania Award from the University of Hawaii; a laureate award from the New Zealand Arts Foundation; the Toi Māori Maui Tiketike Award; the premiere Māori arts award Te Tohu Tiketike a Te Waka Toi; and the Premio Ostana International Award. He is a Distinguished Companion of the Order of New Zealand. Beyond the prizes, Ihimaera is a respected voice on Māori, Pacific and indigenous affairs, and advocates compellingly for Māori artists, as well as for Māori and New Zealand literature. Salute his remarkable achievements in an hour chaired by Paula Morris.
By century’s end our landscape will be transformed, and hundreds of millions of people will retreat inland as coasts are inundated. In The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilised World acclaimed journalist and Rolling Stone mildly gonzo contributor Jeff Goodell, travels to 12 countries and reports from the front lines of global warming. The book follows previous award-winning work on cooling the planet and big coal, and cements his place as one of the world’s leading climate change journalists. He discusses the future and its watery crisis with Dan Salmon.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Julienne Brown & David McLean.
To The Guardian David Eagleman is “a little bit of a genius”, to The Times he’s “the hottest thing in neuroscience”. He’s an adjunct professor at Stanford University; director of the Centre of Science and Law; co-founder of NeoSensory (a brainy outfit which “creates novel sensory experiences”); and The New York Times bestselling author of non-fiction titles Incognito, The Brain, and The Runaway Species. He has also presented a groundbreaking BBC series on the brain and written the short fiction collection Sum. The busy Eagleman speaks with Toby Manhire on the contents of our heads, and just what makes us human.
Supported by The Creative Thinking Project.
Democracy and Its Crisis is the latest book from leading British intellectual A. C. Grayling. In it he traces democracy’s birth in ancient Greece to its bastardisation in the 21st-century. He delivers a lecture on democracy’s current lowpoint, and the pressing need for reform.
Supported by Craigs Investment Partners
From Peep Show to Mitchell and Webb, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Cold Feet, Robert Webb’s screen achievements as a creator, writer and actor have seen him become one of the most recognisable and best-loved faces in British comedy. How Not To Be a Boy is the actor and author’s frank memoir, about a life shadowed by his tempestuous father and the early death of his mother. It’s also a refreshing rumination on masculinity. In this wide-ranging conversation with Noelle McCarthy he talks about his life and work, and the way in which concepts of family and fatherhood continue to evolve.
Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Betsy & Michael Benjamin.
Indian MP, former diplomat, contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek International and TIME, and author of 16 books that range across history, culture, literature and politics, Shashi Tharoor has achieved rock star status in India and abroad. He has described India as “not …an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay”. In one of Tharoor’s latest book Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India he tackles the concept of Empire and its effect post 1947. He speaks, in a wide-ranging conversation, with Michael Williams.
Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation.
Norwegian literary phenomenon Karl Ove Knausgård leapt to notice with his arresting cycle of six autobiographical novels My Struggle (Min Kamp), described by The Paris Review as “extreme in its candor, by turns earnest and satiric, attentive to the minutiae of postmodern family life”. His latest works are a contemplative four-volume series named after the seasons and inspired by the birth of his daughter, and Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game co-written with Fredrik Ekelund, about football and more. Knausgård is also an informed speaker on Edvard Munch and Dante and the author of A Time for Everything. The book world’s man of the moment joins Paula Morris in conversation.
Supported by Norwegian Literature Abroad.
“In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence; or you may find the afterlife contains only people whom you remember. In some afterlives you may be split into all your different ages, or forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been.” Lauded by fans – including Brian Eno, Philip Pullman and Geoff Dyer – for its genius and originality, Sum is a set of funny, wistful and unsettling short tales concerned with what’s next, written by the polymath American neuroscientist David Eagleman. He is joined by special guests Courtney Sina Meredith (NZ) Neal Stephenson (US) and Robert Webb (UK) for readings from the collection interspersed with mystically-inspired music from one of the acclaimed Blackbird Ensemble.
In her most ambitious book to date, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlisted Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds, Anne Salmond reframes our understanding of NZ. Beginning with the earliest encounters between Māori and European New Zealanders, Salmond suggests that the legacy of those clashes and exchanges provides us with an opportunity to rethink our relationship to the waterways, the land, and each other. Salmond puts forth her thesis with Chris Wikaira.
The Emmy-winning Veep, the Bafta-winning The Thick of It, and Little Englander Alan Partridge are just some of the satirical creations of the writer, producer and director Armando Iannucci. The sharp Glaswegian greatly admires Charles Dickens, Woody Allen and the Pope, but not former UK prime minister, the “bum-faced southern ponce” David Cameron. His current projects include a movie about Stalin’s last days. Iannucci talks with Toby Manhire about his work, and whether the new world order is putting satirists out of a job. Supported by South Pacific Pictures
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
For many women 2016 registered as an annus horribilis, one which made it clear that the battle for sexual equality – in political and sporting circles notably – is anything but won. Writers and advocates Michele A’Court, Roxane Gay and Mpho Tutu van Furth suggest courses of required action. Susie Ferguson in the chair.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Praised as a ‘sublime’ writer by The Guardian, the Nigerian-American writer, art historian, photographer and champion of the artistic merits of Twitter, Teju Cole, has wide-ranging pre-occupations. His novel Open City explores spatial relations, immigrant experience and Manhattan bird life, and has attracted comparisons to the work of W.G. Sebald. His essay collection Known and Strange Things, takes in subjects from Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and V.S. Naipaul to Barack Obama, Boko Harum and Instagram. Cole talks with Kevin Rabalais.
In January this year the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, creators of the Doomsday Clock, assessed the world to be 30 seconds closer to annihilation due to threats posed by climate change and nuclear weapons, as well as strident nationalism, fake news, and an intemperate Donald Trump. Chair of the Bulletin’s science and security board, theoretical physicist and author of The Greatest Story Ever Told – So Far Lawrence Krauss returns to the Festival to talk climate change and offer advice on how to stay the apocalypse.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Described as radical and gossipy when published 20 years ago, writer and critic Chris Kraus’ novel I Love Dick, set in New Zealand and New York, has turned out to have enduring clout, netting fans such as Lena Dunham with its confessional format and its interrogation of misogyny. The book is now a television pilot, directed by Emmy-winner Jill Soloway and featuring Kevin Bacon and Kathryn Hahn. Its success has also prompted the re-release of another Kraus novel Torpor, described by Slate as resisting “the cult of relentless positivity” by “cultivating a much-needed counter-aesthetics of despair”. Kraus speaks with Kevin Rabalais about who gets to speak and why.
Supported by New Zealand Contemporary Art Trust
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017 According to science writer and polymathic thinker James Gleick, H.G. Wells was the first to combine the words ‘time’ and ‘travel’, thus creating an entirely new mode of thought. Gleick’s latest book Time Travel: A History distils literary criticism, philosophy, and physics in an investigation of our obsession with the moving, bending and twisting of time. With Graeme Hill, this multi-award-winning author of Isaac Newton, Chaos: Making A New Science, and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, discusses the writing of science and why, sadly, time travel does not and cannot exist.
Supported by Royal Society Te Apārangi
Lloyd Geering and A.N. Wilson both know The Bible inside out. Geering is widely recognised as one of this country’s leading biblical scholars, and Wilson wrote The Book of the People: How To Read The Bible. They discuss the big book, its provenance and power, with Hannah August.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Ireland’s Fiction Laureate Anne Enright writes unsentimentally on the family unit, and the tidal pull it exerts. Her latest book The Green Road is an exploration of a clan reunion, during which the complicated matriarch takes to her bed –the “horizontal solution” comments her son. Enright, writes James Wood in The New Yorker, is an unusual talent: “She is a rich lyrical prose writer, who cascades among novelties – again and again, she finds the unexpected adjective, the just noun… But she is at the same time a brisk and satirical aphorist, who often conceals more than she displays.” Enright talks to Kate De Goldi.
Supported by Culture Ireland
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
The hit of the WORD Christchurch Writers Festival in 2016, Canadian performer, writer and filmmaker Ivan Coyote is one of the funniest and provocative storytellers around, grappling with questions of identity, gender, family, and social justice. The author of numerous books including latest Tomboy Survival Guide, “Coyote is to Canadian literature what k.d. lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture” (Ottawa Express). In conversation and telling stories with Kirby-Jane Hallum.
Supported by Canada Council for the Arts and International Festival of Authors
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
At 99 years of age, theologian Lloyd Geering has lived a full and engaged life which has shaped beliefs that range across life after death, the fallibility of The Bible, the divinity of Jesus, the evils of fundamentalism and the ethical requirement to care for the planet. From his early days in Rangiora to a ministry in the Presbyterian Church, a controversial heresy trial, and a distinguished teaching career, Geering is supremely situated to assess our spiritual and temporal progress over the last century. Celebrate the life journey of this profound thinker and his new book Portholes to the Past, in conversation with John Campbell.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Stan Grant wrote Talking to My Country in the wake of fans’ abuse of Aboriginal Sydney Swans’ footballer Adam Goodes in 2015. His book is a personal and powerful response to racism in Australia from one of its most successful journalists, and Wiradjuri tribesman. With a direct gaze Grant examines the “deep wound” that he attributes to dispossession, manifest in Indigenous Australians’ low life expectancy, and high levels of incarceration and suicide. Grant challenges his country to do better, and all of us to address our prejudices. In conversation with Carol Hirschfeld.
Supported by Australian High Commission
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
New Zealander Max Harris is on the ascendant: a Rhodes Scholar who, while studying public policy and law at Oxford University earned an All Souls Fellowship and returns home for the Festival to advocate a new politics. In his recently published book The New Zealand Project, he argues that academics and intellectuals have failed to deepen the political discourse, that politics is dominated by pragmatism, and that technocratic policies have replaced value-based ones. In this year’s Michael King Memorial Lecture, Harris calls for a strategic intervention – inspired by the tenets of care, community and creativity in an Aotearoa New Zealand context, and driven by the imagination and impatience of the young to create a better country.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Writer Hera Lindsay Bird burst onto the literary scene with her 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlisted eponymous poetry collection. Bill Manhire, whose latest collection is Some Things to Place in a Coffin, has made a unique contribution to the canon of NZ poetry, and to the literary landscape more generally. With Paris-based NZ poet Andrew Johnston they discuss the development of the country’s poetry practice, and its likely trajectory.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Paris-based Australian author Caroline Brothers bears witness to the cost of human conflict. A former foreign correspondent, she has written War and Photography: A Cultural History, and two unsentimental and powerful novels which examine displacement: The Memory Stones, which begins with the Argentinian military coup of 1976 and tells the story of the Disappeared, and Hinterland, which follows two asylum-seeking Afghan boys on a perilous journey across Europe. Brothers speaks with Dan Salmon.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Three times Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, and the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, The World is Flat, The Lexus and the Olive Grove and his latest, Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. He takes the Auckland stage fresh from interviewing Bill Gates at the CEOs Summit in Seattle, and not long after attempting to question Donald Trump in his post-election meeting with The New York Times. These are extraordinary times; Friedman is an acute observer of world affairs. In a wide-ranging discussion with Michael Williams he discusses his new book and other matters.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Auckland University emeritus psychology professor and Rutherford Medal recipient Michael Corballis has spent a career researching the human mind. In his new book The Truth About Language: What It Is and Where It Came From he takes on Noam Chomsky and Stephen Jay Gould to argue that language evolved much earlier than generally assumed. He puts his case to Siouxsie Wiles.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
A novelist, memoirist and journalist “who writes sagely and elegantly about food, family, culture, technology and money” (The New York Times) John Lanchester is the author of four novels, including The Debt to Pleasure, and Capital (now a BBC television series), and the bluffer’s guide How To Speak Money, a demystification of the workings of the global economy and the financial markets. He has been feted with prizes and translated into many languages. He joins Finlay Macdonald to talk fiction and fact, food and football, Brexit and other low points.
Supported by Heartland Bank
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Pre-eminent Shakespearean scholar, Columbia University professor James Shapiro convinces that Shakespeare matters. His books include 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, and 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. His Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? dealt definitively to the baloney peddled by authorship conspiracists. The most accessible of Bardologists is in conversation with Michael Neill.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of the groundbreaking Backlash Susan Faludi has now produced a memoir. In 2004, she received an email – with the subject line “Changes” – from her long-estranged Hungarian father telling her he had undergone gender-reassignment surgery and changed his name from Steven to Stephanie. In the Darkroom is the sometimes funny, often painful tale of a father and daughter reacquainted in interesting circumstances, set against the backdrop of resurgent extremism in Europe. Faludi charts a complex negotiation of identity and history across the span of a decade. She speaks with Noelle McCarthy.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Lincoln in the Bardo is the long-awaited genre-busting first novel from Syracuse University professor George Saunders, a multi-faceted writer with a back catalogue of acclaimed short stories and widely considered to be one of the best contemporary writers working today. At the dawn of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln is grieving the death of his 11-year-old son Willie, who is trapped in a transitional realm – in Tibetan culture the “bardo”. In New Zealand for the first time, Saunders talks with Paula Morris about his work and life, and some of its weirder moments.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
In the years before the First World War, the great European powers Britain, Germany and Russia were ruled by three cousins: George V; Wilhelm II; and Nicholas II. They presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of one of the deadliest conflicts in history. Miranda Carter, author of The Three Emperors, scrutinises the trio and their times.
Supported by Heartland Bank
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
NPR Shanghai correspondent Rob Schmitz has created an unforgettable portrait of modern China through the eyes of an array of real-life people living along a single street in Shanghai in his book Street of Eternal Happiness. From Zhao the shopkeeper to Auntie Fu, a fervent capitalist, and musician and café owner CK, here are stories that provide a tale of 21st century China, its multi-layered past and the influence of the state on individual dreams. He speaks with Guyon Espiner about his life as a foreign correspondent and the streets of Shanghai.
Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
As a writer and advocate Dame Fiona Kidman has contributed an astonishing amount to NZ literature. Born in Hawera in 1940, she has published more than 30 works – fiction, non-fiction, short stories, poetry, plays – and has been a script writer, radio producer, journalist and librarian. She has won several national and international awards, holds both an Order of the British Empire and a NZ Order of Merit for services to literature, and is the recipient of a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. From her first novel, A Breed of Women (1979) through to two books in 2016 – the novel All Day at the Movies and the poetry collection This Change in the Light – her ability to delve deeply into character and subject so illuminating the ordinary and the extraordinary, is evident. Kidman has also dedicated herself to the literary community: she has been a national president of PEN (NZ) and of the NZ Book Council, and a founding trustee of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust. Known and respected for her warmth, humour and insight, Dame Fiona Kidman is our 2017 Auckland Writers Festival Honoured New Zealand Writer. Chaired by Paula Morris.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
The singer Annie Lennox praised The Book of Forgiving for its “groundbreaking insights as to how we resolve our lifelong burdens”. Mpho Tutu van Furth who co-authored the book with her father, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is no stranger to heavy loads: her father was a leading opponent of apartheid in South Africa, and she herself was forced to relinquish the Anglican priesthood over her same-sex marriage. Tutu van Furth has also co-authored a biography of her father, Tutu, and the book Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference. She discusses her life and the place of forgiveness with Marianne Elliott.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
The Wish Child – ‘a brilliant, brilliant novel…a masterpiece’ (Radio NZ) – is the long-awaited fourth book of Catherine Chidgey. Set in Nazi Germany and told from the perspective of two children and a mysterious narrator, it earned Chidgey the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction prize. Chidgey’s previous novels are In a Fishbone Church, The Transformation, and Golden Deeds, voted book of the year by Time Out magazine (London). In conversation with Jennifer Levasseur.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
A must-read cultural critic, Roxane Gay’s writing is marked by directness, intelligence and wit. She followed her best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist – dubbed by Time magazine as “a manual on how to be human” – with the novel An Untamed State, set in Haiti, her parents’ birthplace. Her latest work, the story collection Difficult Women, illuminates the lives of more than 20 resilient women. Gay is also a competitive Scrabble player in the U.S. and writes for Marvel comics. Hear this powerhouse talent, in conversation with Charlotte Graham.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
The British biographer, historian, novelist, journalist, essayist A.N. Wilson has an all-encompassing temporal and spiritual beat – from Jesus, Paul (the apostle), Milton, Dante, Tolstoy, Queen Victoria, Josiah Wedgwood, Hitler, Iris Murdoch and C.S. Lewis to, most recently, the explorers aboard Captain Cook’s Resolution. Wilson is in erudite discussion with Simon Wilson.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
In Paul Beatty’s Man Booker Prizewinning novel, The Sellout, the hero – a grower of artisanal marijuana and water melons – attempts to reintroduce slavery and segregation in his LA neighbourhood. Beatty’s savage satire, reflecting as is does the hypocrisies of contemporary America, often reads like reportage. Join one of America’s most exuberant and tuned-in voices, poet, editor and author of three previous novels in a discussion with Paula Morris.
Supported by the Embassy of the United States of America
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
It’s 30 years since the hard-boiled Inspector Rebus was given his first airing in Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin; twenty-one installments later Rebus is still on the case, still living in Edinburgh, but is seemingly off the fags. Rankin’s work encompasses not only Tartan Noir, but short stories, a graphic novel and a play. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards, the Grand Prix du Roman Noir (France), and the Deutscher Krimi Prize (Germany). He is in conversation with Mark Sainsbury.
Supported by Craigs Investment Partners
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
The Festival gala once again showcases the story-telling chops of eight writers who deliver a seven-minute true story, propless and scriptless, inspired by the theme “The Heart of the Matter”. Flexing their muscles are: Gina Cole (NZ); Glenn Colquhoun (NZ); Ivan Coyote (Canada), Anne Enright (Ireland); Lloyd Geering (NZ); James Shapiro (USA); Ian Rankin (Scotland); and Mpho Tutu van Furth (South Africa).
Supported by New Zealand Listener
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
A year of surprises, 2016 saw Britons vote to leave the European Union and Americans elect Donald Trump as president, leaving many dumbstruck and locked in an us-and-them tussle across politics, economics, race, gender and geographies. Join Pulitzer-Prizewinning journalist Susan Faludi (Backlash and Stiffed), Australian journalist Stan Grant (Talking To My Country), UK writer John Lanchester (Capital), and Paula Morris (On Coming Home) as they discuss yawning divides and propose possible bridges. Convened by Andrew Johnston.
AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Who doesn’t like a David and Goliath story? Striking Gold, written by Suzanne McFadden, is a social history of NZ and the Olympic games by way of the triumphal story of the extremely fit hockey-playing team who improbably won gold at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Medal winners Selwyn Maister, Arthur Parkin and Ramesh Patel (former CEO of Hockey NZ), join Sarah Sandley to relive the tale of the little team that could. Supported by Barfoot & Thompson
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 “When does philanthropy end and dirty self-promotion begin?” asks UK philosopher Julian Baggini in a recent newspaper article. The question comes as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defends his limited liability foundation from accusations of doing bad under the guise of doing good, and charities struggle to raise funds as the wealth gap widens. Does it matter if cash for causes is tainted, that philanthropists may not be entirely altruistic? For an exploration of the sinuous ethics of philanthropy, of high-minded purity versus pragmatic utilitarianism, join Baggini, Kate Frykberg and Gareth Morgan in conversation with Wallace Chapman. Supported by Auckland Communities Foundation
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 A forensic account of Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war told by one of India’s most talented writers, Samanth Subramanian, This Divided Island was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2015. The witty and urbane Subramanian, writer for The New Yorker, amongst other publications, brings his journalistic rigour to bear on the story of a little reported conflict that forever marked the lives of those caught up in it. In conversation with Steve Toussaint. Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The cultural phenomenon Ai Weiwei has called Xu Zhiyuan “the most important Chinese intellectual of his generation”. Journalist, editor and co-founder of One Way Street Library, a bookshop and literary meeting place in Beijing, Zhiyuan’s book Paper Sky is a collection of his journalism written over the last seven years, and an eye-opener into the rapidly evolving social, cultural and economic landscape of China. He speaks with Jeremy Rose. Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Dubbed Zimbabwe’s answer to Zadie Smith by cultural magazine The Skinny, the multi-talented and energetic Petina Gappah is a prizewinning author with three law degrees, including one from Cambridge University. In her day job, she works as an international trade lawyer in Geneva. In 2009, she won the Guardian First Book prize for her short story collection An Elegy for an Easterly. She’s now published a debut novel, The Book of Memory. Gappah talks with Bianca Zander about writing, social justice, and juggling a high-flying career with creative pursuits.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The transcendent, unclassifiable novel The Book of Strange New Things is award-winning Michel Faber’s eighth, and his declared last. A pastor is sent to a far-off planet. His job description? "Minister (Christian) to indigenous population". It’s a dystopian tale of love and faith that reviewers have observed is intent on making us kinder. Don’t miss this profound writer on what it is to be human. Faber talks with Paula Morris.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The pre-eminent scholar and distinguished novelist, playwright, short story writer, poet, biographer and librettist Vincent O’Sullivan wears his considerable knowledge lightly. His writing is wry, erudite and generous, informed by a childhood spent in suburban Auckland and a deep interest in the multiplicity of humanity. A graduate of the Universities of Auckland and Oxford, O’Sullivan has also made an outstanding contribution to NZ literary scholarship, illuminating the work of John Mulgan and James K. Baxter, and co-editing the five-volume edition Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Letters and the two-volume Complete Fiction. Away from the academy he served as the Books’ Editor for the New Zealand Listener where he was also a trusted critic. He has been feted often, including with a Prime Minister’s Literary Award (2005) and a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (2000), and has won the NZ Book Awards, in its various forms, three times for fiction and three for poetry. We celebrate a life well lived in letters in this free session with Vincent O’Sullivan which brings the Festival to a close on a high note. Chaired by Fergus Barrowman.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Iraqis likened Emma Sky to the early twentieth-century British adventurer Gertrude Bell, one of the architects of modern Iraq. She is a formidable internationalist, with experience spanning the fields of development, diplomacy and defense. As a civilian and staunch opponent of the invasion of Iraq, she became political advisor to US general Ray Odierno in that country. Her book The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq, shortlisted for the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize For Non-Fiction, fathoms Middle East politics and the rise of the self-styled Islamic State and sheds light on the difficulties of navigating a decidedly foreign land. In conversation with Simon Wilson. Supported by Westpac
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 It’s no surprise that hard man Irvine Welsh likes Omar Musa’s debut novel Here Come The Dogs, finding it a work of “such swaggering exuberance that it will make most other fiction you read this year seem criminally dull”. Malaysian-Australian Musa has published two poetry collections and two solo hip hop albums besides, and describes his writing as “poetry of unease”. He applies his provocative voice to issues of migration, racism, violence, masculinity and loneliness. Musa is in conversation with Selina Tusitala Marsh.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Maxine Beneba Clarke is a prize-winning Australian writer, essayist and slam-poetry champ of Afro-Caribbean descent with a newly released poetry collection Carrying The World, and an upcoming memoir The Hate Race. Tusiata Avia is a leading Pacific poet who has travelled the world with her one woman show Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, and launches her new collection Fale Aitu | Spirit House in Festival week. These two formidable talents discuss their lives, their drives and cultural amalgamations.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 YA writer Michael Grant grew up in a military family and is quick off the mark – he moved in with his wife a day after meeting her, and has published three series of books, including the dystopian Gone, the multi-platform BZRK, and his new Front Lines trilogy set in World War II. He creates worlds where adults go AWOL, to be replaced by horror of all kinds. Hear this master storyteller talk about his craft and what makes for great fiction with Jane Higgins. Supported by The Embassy of the United States of America
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 In 1970 David Hare’s take on sisterhood, Slag, launched his prolific and stellar career as a playwright prepared to rigorously engage with the times. Since then his plays have included Pravda, a Fleet Street satire, Skylight, a Thatcherite critique currently on revival on Broadway, and Stuff Happens, about the Iraq War. Theatre aside, Hare has written a swag of material for the screen, and received Academy Award nominations for adaptations of The Hours and The Reader. His memoir The Blue Touch Paper (a reference to the instructions on British fireworks) is currently attracting praise for its unvarnished elegance and insight. One of Britain’s finest dramatists talks with Simon Wilson about his life, theatrical daring, and the formative cultural development which went on in Britain in the 1960s and 70s.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The American hybrid journalist-activist Gloria Steinem is one of the twentieth century’s most influential feminists. She was famously a Playboy bunny, but one who wrote a magazine article entitled “A Bunny’s Tale”, revealing the exploitative working conditions bunnies endured. She shot to prominence as a feminist leader with her 1969 article “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”. In 1972, she co-founded Ms. Magazine and a few years later she wrote “If Men Could Menstruate” for Cosmopolitan magazine. Contrary to common belief, she did not coin the phrase “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, although it’s easy to see why people thought she did, such has been her feminist reach. Her activism has seen her protest the Vietnam War, the apartheid system in South Africa, the Gulf War and to recently campaign for disarmament in Korea. In her first ever visit to this country, the remarkable 81-year-old public intellectual looks back and references her just published memoir My Life on the Road. She is in conversation with Edinburgh Book Festival Director Nick Barley. Supported by Embassy of the United States of America
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The lofty Australian Peter Garrett has strode many a stage, whether as frontsman for the band Midnight Oil, Labour Party minister, or environmental and social justice campaigner. In the past he has argued that Australia would be transformed if music were at its centre. His memoir Big Blue Sky provides the starting point for a conversation with Greenpeace executive director Russel Norman about more personal transformations, staying staunch and, if the audience is lucky, the alleged megalomania of Kevin Rudd.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Fresh from Washington D.C., literary critic, essayist and historical novelist Thomas Mallon gives the skinny on the capital. Sometimes compared to Gore Vidal – who he used to edit at GQ – his novels navigate 20th century USpolitics and display crisp wit as well as finely-grained historical context. Mallon’s latest Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years has received glowing reviews. Tim Wilson grills the author on the process of massaging facts into a fictional collage, and the 2016 battle for control of the White House.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Israeli strategic consultant Yossi Alpher’s experience as an intelligence official for Mossad, director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and special advisor to then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the 2000 Camp David Summit, makes him well placed to analyse the challenges facing Israel and the policies it currently operates. He has documented his views in two recently published books: Periphery: Israel’s Search for Allies in the Middle East and No End of Conflict: Rethinking Israel-Palestine. Alpher speaks to Jeremy Rose.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Australian slam poet and hip hop artist Omar Musa and New Zealand hip hop legend King Kapisi come together for an acappella match-up. Each artist has 25 minutes to impress with their rhymes and beats. Expect an inventive earful. Musa’s debut novel Here Come The Dogs, a mash-up of poetry and prose, tells the story of disaffected youth in small town Australia; Kapisi is one of the country’s most accomplished hip hop recording artists. Supported by APRA / AMCOS
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 New Yorker Vivian Gornick – journalist, essayist, critic and author of 11 books including a biography of the anarchist Emma Goldman – is also the queen of the personal narrative. Her reputation as such was made with the publication of her first memoir Fierce Attachment (1987), about her relationship with her overbearing mother. Her latest foray into the genre The Odd Woman & the City covers a lot of ground: friendship, feminism, class, sex, living alone at 79, and New York. It’s part paean and part elegy – Gornick spoke for many of us recently when she told The Paris Review that she would have liked to have been invited to better parties. She talks with Jolisa Gracewood about personal narratives, both on and off the page.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 THE MICHAEL KING MEMORIAL LECTURE In 1985 the late historian Michael King published Being Pakeha, a book which fathoms what it is to be a non-Maori New Zealander. Three decades on, the accomplished Chinese-NZ writer, reviewer, actor and director Helene Wong has published her memoir, Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story, which explores the experience of being of Chinese descent, being both part of this place but also set apart.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Daughter of Chilean revolutionaries, and subsequently a political activist herself, Carmen Aguirre now lives in Canada where she is an actor and playwright. She is also the author of two memoirs: Something Fierce: Memoirs of A Revolutionary Daughter, and the newly published Mexican Hooker #1, in which she writes of confronting the man who raped her, and being typecast as maids and Mexican hookers. She speaks with Dan Salmon.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 All eyes turn to America as the presidential race to be the 45th President of the United States plays out. From a distance, this vast and powerful country can sometimes seem redolent with contradictions and division – gender, race, class, security domestic and international - but what is it really like coast to coast? Cosmologist and writer Janna Levin and historical novelist, essayist and critic Thomas Mallon join iconic feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem to take the measure of their homeland, foreign and domestic – and to explain what gives with Trump. Chaired by Guyon Espiner. Supported by Craigs Investment Partners
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The 2015 tour de force A Little Life has provoked intense conversation among readers and critics alike, winning the Kirkus Prize and being shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. The 720-page novel charts four classmates making their way in New York, and is about “the limits of friendship, about the depths of pain and shame that a human can endure, about the unending legacy of abuse” (The Guardian). Hanya Yanagihara discusses this, her remarkable second novel, with Anne Kennedy.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 The 1975 anti-diet book with the killer title - Fat Is A Feminist Issue - became and still is a bible for millions of women. Its author, Susie Orbach, has since continued to write about women's relationships to their bodies and to food, on public and private emotions, on friendships and love, on therapy. She has consulted for The World Bank and Britain's NHS and brings the insights of the psychotherapists' consulting room to the wider public through writing and broadcasting. She is involved with the worldwide campaign endangeredbodies.org which tackles body hatred. Orbach speaks with Carole Beu.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Jane Smiley arrives in NZ flush with the success of her Last Hundred Years trilogy – an investigation of American identity through the Midwestern Langdon clan, from the 1920s to the 2020s. Be prepared for a wide-ranging conversation with Paula Morris. Smiley’s back catalogue includes an essay on knitting, Why Bother?, a novel on the horse-racing business, Horse Heaven, and the Pulitzer-winning King Lear-inspired A Thousand Acres. Supported by Ponder & See.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 Our annual sell-out smorgasbord of stories – invariably funny, moving, and rousing – signals the start of three days of public programming. Eight writers deliver a seven-minute true story, propless and scriptless, inspired by the theme Altered States. Don’t miss the literary gymnastics of Chilean/Canadian playwright, actor, memoirist and former revolutionary Carmen Aguirre; NZ/Samoan poet Tusiata Avia; Christchurch raconteur Joe Bennett; Cambridge-educated trade lawyer and rising Zimbabwean star Petina Gappah; erstwhile Midnight Oil front man and politician Peter Garrett; New York woman of letters Vivian Gornick; author of the European sensation The Dinner Herman Koch; and the incomparable UK writer Jeanette Winterson.
Auckland Writers Festival 2016 In 2015 more than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe, most fleeing the war-torn region of Syria. The exodus is ongoing. Meanwhile, Donald Trump argues for a wall across the border of the US and Mexico, and closer to home Australia operates one of the harshest border policies in the world. How porous should borders be? Do nations have the right to refuse sanctuary? Are refugees collateral damage as the search for strategic long-term solutions to bloody conflicts stumbles on? Three Festival guests – Israeli strategic consultant Yossi Alpher, Medecins Sans Frontieres co-founder Jean-Christophe Rufin, and British Middle East expert Emma Sky parse the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II. Convened by British philosopher Julian Baggini.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 New Zealand’s pre-eminent advocate, Sir Peter Williams QC, recalls the people and cases that have defined his remarkable career. Ronald Jorgensen, Arthur Allan Thomas, “Mr Asia”, James K Baxter, Winston Peters and many more will be discussed, as will his enduring commitment to justice and penal reform as canvassed in his memoirPeter Williams: The Dwarf Who Moved. A celebration of one of this country’s legal legends, chaired by Bill Ralston.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 The quest for justice has seldom been more grippingly documented than in the book This House of Grief. The Australian novelist, essayist, screenwriter and journalist Helen Garner witnessed the trial of Robert Farquharson, charged with murdering his three children by drowning. This is not her first attempt to grapple with complex issues of justice and truth – Joe Cinque’s Consolation and The First Stonecanvas equally disturbing territory. The much-awarded, sometimes controversial, Garner talks to Mary Peters.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Clever, provocative and fun, the work of UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy is the perfect counter to anyone who would deny the allure of poetry. One of the most influential poets of the day, Duffy writes for children and adults alike, champions language and teaches English at Manchester University besides. She speaks with John Campbell about her life in letters and reads from her work in what promises to be a life-affirming session. A British Council Series event.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 We’re witnessing wild times in the world of media when traditional models are beseiged by technological advances and decreasing revenues, not to mention spurned by the digital generation. Ken Auletta – “Annals of Communications” writer in The New Yorker and author of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It – is well placed to fathom it all, from the influence of Netflix to broadsheets and everything in between. Chaired by Shayne Currie. Supported by Westpac Business Bank & Wealth.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Kim Thúy and her family fled Vietnam as boat people, arriving in Canada via a refugee camp when she was ten. With a previous career as a restaurateur and with degrees in law, linguistics and translation, she has now authored two poetic novels: Ru which mirrors her refugee experience and Mãn, a tale of love, homeland and identity. The vivacious and thoughtful Thúy discusses her work and life with Kate De Goldi.
Supported by Canada Council for the Arts.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Canadian Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel Station Eleven was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Awards. In it, the world is decimated by influenza and a Shakespearean troupe with the motto “Survival is insufficient” hits the road to cheer up unlucky survivors. Exploring notions of art and kinship and the cyclical nature of life, as well as yearning, the apocalyptic work confirms Mandel’s status as a star ascendant. She speaks with Jolisa Gracewood.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Tim Winton is a leading exponent of short and long form fiction. Most recently the Guardian reviewed his novel Eyrie as “a superb tale of disillusionment and redemption, loss and beauty” – a description that could equally apply to his other novels including Cloud Street, Dirt Music, The Turning and Breath. Fiction aside, Winton has written on class, hospitals and the “chronically underrated” Western Australian town of Albany. He is in conversation with Jim Mora.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 “Our most irresistible literary critic,” says The New York Times Book Review. Daniel Mendelsohn is an elegant stylistic polymath – a reviewer but also an essayist, memoirist, classicial scholar and translator of the Greek poet CP Cavafy. In his memoir The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million he excavates his family history; in his essay collection Waiting For The Barbarians he disses Mad Men as “melodrama rather than drama”. His new project is a literature-and-life book, recounting the year he spent reading The Odyssey with his late father and the revelations of that experience. He speaks with Ian Wedde.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Anthony Horowitz mines the world of spooks and gumshoes to craft great books. Creator of The Diamond Brothers, Alex Rider and The Power of Five (aka The Gatekeepers) series for younger readers, and the author of Conan Doyle estate-approved novels The House of Silkand Moriarty for grown-ups, he also writes extensively for television including for cosies Poirot, Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. His latest commission from the Ian Fleming Estate, is a new James Bond novel. A session for all the thrill-seeking family, chaired by Michael Williams.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 English historian, poet, naturalist and illustrator Helen Macdonald once bred hawks for Arab sheikhs. She is also the winner of the Costa Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for H is for Hawk, a chronicle of her attempt to tame Mabel the goshawk as a means of assuaging grief after the death of her father. “Grief,” she writes, “is just love with nowhere to go.” Referencing the similar attempts of T. H. White (of Once and Future King fame) to master falconry, Macdonald’s memoir is described as, pun intended, “a soaring triumph”. Chaired by Noelle McCarthy.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Atul Gawande writes profoundly about medicine. He’s a surgeon, author, researcher (with a particular interest in patient safety and care) and staff writer for The New Yorker. Being Mortal is his fourth book, and in it he wrestles as a clinician and as a son with dilemmas concerning end-of-life care. In conversation with Middlemore Hospital ICU specialist David Galler, Gawande will prompt us to rethink our relationship with medicine, during our life and, most crucially, at its close.
Supported by Summerset.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Not long ago Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri caused a stir, writing in the Guardian that black and African writers should “not be expected to write about slavery, poverty or racial injustice. The greatest literature comes not from the heaviest subjects but from freedom of thought.” Okri has written many poetry, essay and short story collections, as well as ten novels including his Booker-winningThe Famished Road. His recent novel The Age of Magic is imbued with what Okri dubs “dream logic”, as well as with sensibility and imagination as he charts the journey of a group of documentary film makers on their way to film a piece on happiness in Arcadia, Greece. He speaks with Paula Morris.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Former Wallaby lock, newspaper columnist, broadcaster and author Peter FitzSimons joins us from Sydney to talk about his latest bookGallipoli, alongside other work including his biographies of the Second World War Two spook Nancy Wake and the authority-averse Ned Kelly. He will also expound on his “little theories of life”. The frisky FitzSimons is joined by Graeme Hill.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 English comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes would rather we not see “Ancient Rome as a toga party to which our invitation went astray.” An Ancient Guide to the Modern Life is her manifesto for the relevance of classics to the 21st century. In a similar vein her novel,The Amber Fury, brings teenage and Greek angst together in an Edinburgh classroom. Haynes takes to the stage to give us old tips for modern living. Let’s not forget that it was Cicero who said “one nail drives out another”. In conversation with Iain Sharp.
An irreverent and stinging session should be forthcoming as Steve Braunias, author of Mad Men, and David Slack, Metro contributor, gather with writer and editor Stephen Stratford to discuss satirical writing.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 C.K. Stead is one of New Zealand’s foremost literary figures. A distinguished novelist, literary critic, poet, essayist and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland, Stead has won many awards and fellowships. He became a Member of the Order of New Zealand in 2007, and is one of only two living writers to hold that honour. Internationally published and reviewed, Stead’s major novels include Smith’s Dream, All Visitors Ashore, My Name WasJudas, Mansfield, Talking About O’Dwyer, The Singing Whakapapa, and The Secret History of Modernism, alongside essays, criticism and major poetry collections. Stead is known for his quick mind and frank views, a confessional voice, and an ease of prose that makes him both accessible and deeply meaningful. His singular place in the cultural life of this country is celebrated in this free session to end the Festival, chaired by Ruth Harley.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 One of the world’s leading investigative journalists, Nick Davies broke the phone hacking story in the UK, worked with Wikileaks’ Julian Assange to publish classified material in the Guardian and has recently authored the bestselling Hack Attack. He joins New Zealand Herald columnist Toby Manhire to discuss media ethics, journalistic malpractice and more besides.
Supported by Platinum Patrons Rosie & Michael Horton.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Critics occupy an uncomfortable position, often finding themselves in the firing line from all sides: too harsh, too fawning, not constructive enough. But just what is the job of a critic? What value do they add? And what makes a good or a bad critic? International Shakespeare critic Peter Holland and New Zealand art critic Wystan Curnow front up for a discussion with Rosabel Tan, editor of the NZ online magazine The Pantograph Punch, about the place of the critic in the cultural conversation.
Auckland Writers Festival 2015 Playwright, novelist, poet, memoirist and blogger Renée has documented New Zealand’s social history in the latter part of the twentieth century in acclaimed work including Wednesday To Come and Setting The Table. Of Scots and Ngati Kahungunu descent, Renée blogs weekly, and publishes her new novel – a trilogy – chapter by chapter online. She talks with Stephanie Johnson.