The country’s biggest literary festival, the Auckland Writers Festival, is back from May 14-19, with more than 200 writers, including a gathering of the world’s literary stars, all of them in person and not just Zoomed to a screen near you. There’s a new management team in place, including artistic director Lyndsey Fineran, fresh from the Cheltenham Literature Festival. A quarter of the programme is free, organisers say, including much of the family programme and the Britomart Streetside readings sessions.
FOR THE GREY MATTER
Looking for big ideas, chewy thinking sessions? Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at the University of Oxford. His book, The Earth Transformed, which describes the arc from ancient to modern times through the impact of climate and humankind on the Earth’s environment, was judged one of the best history books of 2023, including by the Listener. India’s Shashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat, MP and author of a bestselling book about the British in India, is a regular international commentator on Indian politics and culture. Frankopan, Tharoor and Kiwi journo Anna Fifield will be on a panel discussing the implications of the wave of elections that are being held around the world this year.
Also appearing will be Anna Funder, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for her book Stasiland. Her latest book is Wifedom, an account of George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy – how she shaped his work but was effectively written out of his life story. British art historian Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art Without Men, will talk about great women artists. Classics expert – and stand-up comedian – Natalie Haynes will bring the world of Greek myth to audiences. A panel will discuss women pursuing intellectual freedom and creative work. Also speaking will be Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese-American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and commentator on race, politics and culture.
A panel of three artificial intelligence experts will discuss its – and our – future. There will be a no doubt polite and orderly discussion of the Treaty of Waitangi in one session. A panel of politicians and journalists will assess the new government six months in, and another will canvass the future of journalism. Kiwi actress Jess Hong, who stars in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem based on the famed Liu Cixin novel, will be part of a panel on the science behind science-fiction. Panels will discuss book bans, childless lives, group living and Janet Frame.
MAKING IT UP
An anthology’s worth of novelists are coming to Auckland. There’s Booker winner Paul Lynch for Prophet Song, Ann Patchett for her latest, Tom Lake, Abraham Verghese, whose The Covenant of Water the Listener said had “elegant, sweeping beauty”, Celeste Ng for Our Missing Hearts, K Patrick for Mrs S, Bonnie Garmus, author of the bestselling Lessons in Chemistry, which was made into a TV series, Leïla Slimani, author of the likes of Prix Goncourt winner The Perfect Nanny and the recent Watch Us Dance, Trent Dalton author of Boy Swallows Universe, Hagstone author Sinéad Gleeson, Booker winner Richard Flanagan, and The Vaster Wilds author Lauren Groff. Patchett and Garmus will talk with Patricia Grace about writing and creativity in later life. Ng is in a panel on writing female Asian rage.
On the local front, Becky Manawatu, Ockham Book Awards fiction winner for Auē, will debut her new novel. Also in Auckland will be Sydney-based Kiwi Meg Mason, author of the mega-successful novel Sorrow and Bliss, who is talking to All Blacks psychiatrist Dr Ceri Evans about how his book, Perform Under Pressure, helped her write again after serious writer’s block. Emily Perkins, Anna Smaill and Catherine Chidgey will talk about their Ockham-longlisted novels. Freddie Gillies, Saraid de Silva, Emma Hislop and Romesh Dissanayake will speak about their debut works of fiction, and Gillies will speak on a panel about writing the Kiwi male. A talk on Janet Frame in the centenary of her birth may just include some heavy-hitting aficionados.
PEOPLE & SOCIETY
Sam Neill will talk with Robyn Malcolm about his lively, gossipy memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? Comedian Dai Henwood will launch his memoir The Life of Dai. Former All Black Dan Carter will speak about his top-selling book on leadership and resilience, The Art of Winning. Also coming are Lil O’Brien, who is working on the screenplay for her memoir Not That I’d Kiss A Girl, Wavewalker author Suzanne Heywood, and TV legend-turned-kids-author Jason Gunn.
AWF’s honoured writer this year is Dame Anne Salmond.
