Auckland Writers Festival

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 ar...

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...

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,...

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 Par...

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....

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 syndicat...

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 a...

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 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 la...

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 Ze...

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 rece...

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 l...

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....

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 bo...

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 conv...

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...

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 fo...

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 Yo...

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 m...

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,...

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 lon...

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 G...

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 Crim...

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 Grassh...

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 Sa...