Bill Culbert, New Zealand's artist for the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Did you always think the name Nigel was a bit of a liability?

I feel privileged and honoured. The recurring fear is: Have I wasted my life writing?

The final day of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival was bookended by standing ovations for two of New Zealand's ground-breaking writers of the past 50 years.

Rutherfurd, whose new tome is called Paris, had an extra hour added to yesterday's Writers & Readers schedule after selling out tomorrow and recalled having to speak to a row of schoolboys scowling at him.

A painting of actress Bea Arthur topless has sold for US$1.9 million at a New York City auction.

A Jean-Michel Basquiat painting has set a new auction record for the graffiti artist at a sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York.

Patua means "to hit, kill, subdue, ill-treat", and writer-director Renae Maihi bravely takes on the subject of child abuse in the 75 nicely paced minutes of this, her second play.

The city of Auckland was named after "a dud ex-colonial mediocrity who stuffed up on a quite spectacular scale", says British historian William Dalrymple.

Five colossal iron clydesdales have joined the array of sculptures adorning Sir Michael Hill's golf course and sculpture park in Queenstown. Sir Richard Taylor, of Weta Workshop, will unveil the horses at the seventh hole at The Hills tomorrow.

Cars slowed and heads turned as almost 200 brightly coloured mood sticks were carried through central Auckland by people with white gloves.

Works of art featuring the model Kate Moss have gone up for auction at Christie's in London. From an photograph of Moss from a Calvin Klein campaign in 1993 to a recent shot of her in a bronze body suit, the model is an iconic figure on the catwalk. The British model's career spans over two decades and she continues to front numerous campaigns today.

If there's one thing George Henare can't do to prepare for his latest role - as chauffeur Hoke Colburn in the play Driving Miss Daisy - it is draw upon his own driving experiences.

Julia Fischer's new CD with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich under David Zinman is a clever concerto combo that will hopefully bring the lesser-known Dvorak to listeners initially drawn to the more popular Bruch.