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New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week
14-19 March: Tickets to all sessions on sale!
The glorious world of words takes the stage once again as the Festival's much-loved literary event, New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week, returns for six stimulating days of readings, discussion and debate.
Download a PDF format of the full programme.  Writers & Readers programme(3.66 MB).
Or pick up a copy of the Writers & Readers programme in your area.
Tickets range from $13 to $50. Concession passes offer a substantial discount and allow you to choose single tickets for up to 15 Writers Upfront and Writers in the Regions events of your choice for $150 [Friends $140]. All events are General Admission.
At home in the sumptuous surrounds of the Embassy Theatre and The National Bank Festival Club, New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week opens with the showcase event Writers International. The week includes a rich daytime programme with Writers Upfront, early evening non-fiction discussions with Flashpoints, a Saturday Brunch treat and the awarding of the prestigious $60,000 Prize in Modern Letters. Expand your mind and delight your spirit as an exclusive selection of the world's best writers invite you to explore worlds familiar and unfamiliar, guided by literary adventure, journalism, travel, the experience of exile and the power of graphics.
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View the 28 Individual and Panel Sessions showcasing the Festival's international literary guest list.
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Join international and New Zealand literary guests for three sessions held in Otaki, Wairarapa and Porirua.
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Unsettling stories, intelligent questions, satisfying reads ... these are the pleasures of reading award-winning Spanish crime writer José Carlos Somoza,and accomplished New Zealand novelist Nigel Cox. Both writers craft fine fiction about the intricacies of crime and culture.
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SPECIMEN DAYS is a beautiful and disturbing novel, a meditation on life and death that, Whitman style, celebrates the human spirit. Michael Cunningham has been described as a master stylist, a gifted storyteller and an ambitious thinker.
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Sri Lankan-born Australian writer, linguist and editor Michelle de Kretser is drawn to periods of historical turmoil because “they oblige people to make choices.” Her two novels explore romance and rose-growing in France, and the damage wrought by colonialism and challenges the stereotype of the exotic ‘other’ in Ceylon.
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 Few journalists would argue that absolute objectivity is possible, yet the debate about the role of the journalist continues. Robert Fisk, John Campbell, Helen Garner and Karl du Fresne discuss how they define their jobs, and try to answer the questions: If reporting is inherently value-laden, what does the public need to know to negotiate the news?
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The New Generation's slogan 'Poetry is the new rock 'n' roll' may have been coined for Simon Armitage, but it goes only part way towards capturing his immense talent and appeal. His sharply observed poetry combines savvy British vernacular with relaxed formal control and has its finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary British life.
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A fine critical mind as well as a rare artistic sensibility, Shaun Tan is one of the most important voices in contemporary literature's most boundary-breaking form.
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Engage with Armand Marie Leroi as he discusses the challenges of science in a memorable early evening session.
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Storytelling as a cultural practice is central to indigenous literatures. Louise Erdrich, Katerina te Heikoko Mataira, Ngahuia te Awekotuku and Mere Whaanga are four literary women who rely on storytelling as an integral part of their work.
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Join distinguished international writers Lyndall Gordon, Aleksandar Hemon and Teresia Teaiwa, as they read from their work and discuss the legacy of their cultural origins. All three share the experience of having left the cultures that shaped them and learned to live elsewhere.
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Notwithstanding the horrors of war, there can be little doubt that one of the fruits of conflict is debate. In this wide-ranging discussion Robert Fisk, Joe Sacco, Nuruddin Farah and Aleksandar Hemon will challenge each other and the audience with their opinions, experience and knowledge of writing about and in the midst of war.
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Peter Wells began his career in the arts as a filmmaker but is today equally well known as a novelist, short story writer, memoirist, essayist and editor. Although a committed and publicly gay writer, he has long eschewed the tag. Wells' work is noted for its lyricism and has been described as 'theatrical' and 'visually vivid.'
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Helen Garner, one of Australia’s most distinguished writers and journalists, has written novels, short stories, screenplays and two controversial books of non-fiction. Having made her name as a feminist fiction writer, Garner has subsequently found herself at odds with the feminist community, who have taken issue with her non-fiction work, especially that which explores gender politics.
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History looks to the past while science drives us forward. Both disciplines are often employed in the business of prediction and advances in each are hotly debated. Ronald Wright and Armand Marie Leroi discuss the question: Do we demand too much of science and history as our guides to the future, or do they bear news that is essential for the survival of the species?
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Lyndall Gordon’s celebrated literary biographies reflect her search for both the ordinary and the extraordinary in people’s lives. Gordon has observed that only the vainest of biographers could overlook the fact that their discipline, and the prying into private affairs it demands, is morally indefensible. Fortunately this knowledge has not prevented her from becoming one of the most accomplished practitioners of the craft.
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Be present to celebrate the achievement and potential of six exciting young writers in a set of readings leading up to the moment in which one of them will be named winner of the 2006 Prize in Modern Letters. At $65,000, this biennial award is the world’s largest prize for emerging writers, and this year's finalists are a diverse and talented group.
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Enjoy good food and a refreshing glass as the author of Tolkien’s Gown & Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books joins first edition collector John Campbell to celebrate the joy of books and to traverse the literary tradition.
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Award winning Spanish crime novelist José Carlos Somoza’s work is dazzlingly clever, seductive, intellectual and sometimes disturbing. Provocative and fascinating, Somoza’s novels are deeply satisfying both as explorations of culture and as murder mysteries.
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"The best journalism contains some art and the best art contains some journalism." Born in Malta, raised in Australia and the United States, Sacco trained as a journalist before he began writing comics. Telling the stories of real people, Sacco "has singlehandedly created a media subgenre: comix journalism." (TIME MAGAZINE)
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For many writers and readers today, travel is both a necessity and a privilege. International writers Ronald Wright, Michelle de Kretser, Suketu Mehta and Robert Hass join New Zealanders Ian Wedde, Tusiata Avia and Peter Wells in a spirited homage to the places that have captured their imaginations.
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Hear literary luminaries Michael Cunningham, Louise Erdrich, Nuruddin Farah and Simon Armitage read from their work at the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week Gala Opening.
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Born in Sarajevo, Hemon was visiting America in 1992 when his home city came under siege. Granted asylum, he settled in Chicago and set out to master English as his writing language.
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Engage with Robert Fisk as he discusses the challenges of politics in a memorable early evening session.
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Engage with Ronald Wright as he discusses the challenges of science in a memorable early evening session.
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The poetry of Robert Hass both delights the senses and seduces the intellect. Hass has been awarded a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship and is a two-time recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He currently teaches at the University of California.
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In 1992, Aleksandar Hemon travelled to Chicago from Sarajevo for a month-long journalist exchange programme. When war erupted at home, Hemon was granted asylum as a political refugee. Hemon’s fictions are set in his native Bosnia-Herzegovina and in his ‘new world’; in both he uses autobiography as a starting point to chronicle experiences of war and immigration.
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Do words interwoven with sound qualify as literature? What is the relationship between language and the evolution of popular culture? Join four people who work in both media as they come together to explore the worlds of music and text, sound and art, and cultural expression in the face of globalisation.
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With considerable technical innovation, José Carlos Somoza and Michelle de Krester move beyond mere crime ‘solution’ to explore themes as varied and profound as colonialism and class, human exploitation, literary practice, the morality of the art market and the nature of philosophical truth. Similarly, Helen Garner has pioneered a singular and much-debated approach to reporting and reflecting on crime in Australia.
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Born in 1945 in Baidoa, now known as Somalia, Nuruddin Farah grew up speaking Somali while learning Amharic, Italian, Arabic and English. Exiled from his homeland in 1976, Farah has lived in Africa and Europe and currently resides in Cape Town. He writes in English and has dedicated his writing life to telling the story of Somalia and its people as they negotiate civil war and famine, liberation and its subsequent chaos.
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With the 1984 publication of her ground-breaking first novel Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich established herself as a significant new voice in contemporary American literature. Her work has been credited with bringing the Native American experience into the literary mainstream and inspiring an entire generation of Native American writing.
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Writing is transformative – it can change the lives of writers and their readers. Lyndall Gordon joins Michael Cunningham for a discussion about writers, writing and changed lives.
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Three writers who map the human condition via its intersection with the landscape read and reflect on the significance of place in their work. Californian Robert Hass champions a concept of community that extends to the natural world. Many of Brian Turner’s poems are deeply embedded in the Central Otago landscape he calls home. Cilla McQueen's latest poems evoke the textures of life in Bluff.
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The graphic book’s comprehensive acceptance by the literary mainstream is one of the most startling publishing developments of recent years. Hailed as the bastard child of Peanuts, MAD magazine and comic artist Robert Crumb, the form has become for youth culture what the guitar was to the 60s: a pre-eminent means of counter-culture expression.
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Bombay, known for its Bollywood glamour, its diversity and the inevitable squalor that comes when square miles shelter a million people, will soon be the world’s most populous city. Writer and journalist Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City is a remarkable account of this seething metropolis, extending its philosophical reach well beyond geographical borders.
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Although Janet Frame published just one poetry collection, The Pocket Mirror (1967), she never stopped writing poems. Today, a second collection – The Goose Bath – will be launched as part of New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week. It seems timely to revisit Frame’s literary legacy and ask how a new generation of readers might approach the work of New Zealand’s most famous 20th century writer.
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The Janet Frame Literary Trust and publishers Random House are proud and delighted to announce a major publishing event: the launch of Janet Frame’s posthumous collection of poems, THE GOOSE BATH, at New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week.
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The experience of going to war has left an indelible mark on the evolution of our nation. It has also enriched our literary landscape. Three New Zealanders, Patricia Grace, Leon Davidson and Barry Soutar share stories that draw on this legacy.
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Well established as an essential introduction to New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week, these seminars ensure you get maximum enjoyment and value from the week’s events. Over three weeks, Victoria University’s Jane Stafford and Harry Ricketts present a series of introductions to the featured international writers.
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