Festival's exciting line up of award-winning speakers

Dame Anne Salmond, 2013 New Zealander of the Year. Photo/supplied

Last night's launch of the Escape! festival programme revealed an abundance of award-winners coming to speak in Tauranga.

Dame Anne Salmond, 2013 New Zealander of the Year, will take to the X-Space stage in Baycourt on June 5 to talk to Rod Vaughan about her life, work and interest in Tauranga's history.

"I was an expert witness in the test case of the Treaty provisions in the Resource Management Act in Bethlehem some years ago, and worked on Tauranga local history in that context," she says. "It will be nice to be back."

Omanu-raised Steve Braunias has won numerous awards for his writing and journalism and will talk to Acting Judge Paul Mabey QC on June 5 about his latest book, Scene of the Crime, a collection of courtroom coverage.

Donovan Bixley had two books nominated in last year's NZ Post Children's and Young Adults Book Awards with his "part novel-part comic" Monkey Boy winning best junior fiction title. Last month he published Much Ado About Shakespeare, featuring his own sumptuous illustrations and published to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death.

Shakespeare is the focus of a panel discussion on June 4 when Mr Bixley joins No Holds Bard actor/writer Michael Hurst, Waikato University Shakespeare expert Mark Houlahan and journalist Rod Oram, a Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand ambassador, to talk about our continuing fascination with the Bard.

Siouxsie Wiles, head of the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab at the University of Auckland, has won the NZ Association of Scientists Science Communication Award (2012). She will give an illustrated talk on her "glow-in-the dark" work on June 3 and in a session on June 4 talks to NZ Herald science reporter Jamie Morton about why better science communication is imperative. She has been sponsored by Taylor Bros Transport to talk to school groups on Friday, June 3.

Rounding out the list of award winners is Greg McGee, the 2013 Katherine Mansfield Fellow and who, writing as Alix Bosco, won the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award in 2010, as well as having several awards for television writing. He talks to Nicky Pellegrino about his latest novel, The Antipodeans, on June 5.

the fine print
What: Escape!
When: Escape! runs from June 3-6.
Tickets: from Baycourt or www.ticketek.co.nz. TECT discounts only from the box office and only with a TECT card.