Irish writer Sebastian Barry charmed his largely female audience, clearly not for the first time. Barry, who comes from what he described as a "toxic" family, is inspired by the stories of some of his 19th and 20th century ancestors whose history has vanished. He most often doesn't know the exact facts but makes it all up from the basics, so "it is hokum, but hopefully benign hokum".
He performed a dramatic reading from his latest novel On Canaan's Side, building inexorably up to a terrible murder, and responded to a question about critics: "Criticism is like heart surgery as a hobby."
His beloved grandfather reacted badly to one of his earliest works and they never spoke again. What a price to pay.
British human rights journalist Caroline Moorehead's session with Carole Beu was an inspiration. Moorehead's speciality is long research and hard groundwork to uncover stories which are often otherwise pushed aside. Her 2005 book, Human Cargo, about the international refugee crisis, even touched on New Zealand, citing the Tampa boat drama and the Clark Government's benign response as an example of us being "the good guys".
When Beu pointed out the upcoming exercises to deter the alleged "hordes of boat people" bearing down on our shores, the audience laughed, but not in a good way.
But the main focus of Moorehead's session was to discuss her latest, A Train In Winter, about 230 French resistance "fighters" - all women - who never committed any violent acts but tried to help people, mostly Jews, escape. They were all betrayed and sent to Auschwitz, where the very young and very old women all died within months. One of them was a 15-year-old who had written "V" on a wall. In total, 49 women survived. Moorehead interviewed the four women who were still alive while she was researching the book.
