Level 1 great news for CHB Readers and Writers Festival

Anna Locker-Lampson, one of the committee members organising the first-ever CHB Readers and Writers Festival.

The organising committee of the upcoming Readers and Writers Festival, Between the Lines, has been carefully watching alert level updates in the hope that their festival can proceed next month.

Committee member Anna Locker-Lampson said "When so many other events, both locally and nationally were being cancelled, we held out hope that our festival would be able to proceed. It was really important to us that we all had something to look forward to post-lockdown".

Instead of cancelling, the committee put all its plans and authors on hold and awaited news that the worst of the pandemic had passed and they would be able to proceed with their planned festivities.

The approach has paid off, and the committee is now finalising the details of their four-day festival that includes seven events across CHB.

The range of events is broad and includes a poetry reading in the beautiful Tattertales store in Waipawa, a youth writing workshop led by Gareth Ward and several themed evening events being held fireside in local homesteads. There is also a Spotlight on CHB event being held at the CHB Museum, featuring five local authors.

"The events are all quite intimate, to create a real relationship between the authors and the audience", said Anna, "Most events have a maximum capacity of only 30-35 attendees".

The Covid-19 pandemic has made securing sponsorship for the event very difficult and the committee is very grateful to Agri-lab NZ, Friends of the Library, Creative Communities and the CHB District Council for their contributions, without which the festival would have been unable to proceed.

The Between the Lines committee is very grateful to the various venues that have donated use of their homes to the festival and also to Hawkes Ridge and CJ Pask for the donation of wine.

Details of authors attending and event locations can be found on the Between the Lines facebook page, and tickets are only available through Eventfinda at eventfinda.co.nz