Lit. Whanganui Festival features authors Airini Beautrais and Louise Wallace in conversation

Whanganui author Airini Beautrais will join Louise Wallace in conversation for the Lit. Whanganui Booklovers’ Festival. Photo / Skye Boniface

Award-winning authors Airini Beautrais and Louise Wallace will converse about exploring genre, the New Zealand writing community and balancing life with creativity at the Lit. Whanganui Booklovers’ Festival.

Both authors studied at the International Institute of Modern Letters and initially focused on poetry before experimenting with other genres.

Beautrais’ latest book The Beautiful Afternoon is a book of “personal essays on different subjects”.

“It’s a different form – previously I’ve written poetry and fiction, and this is non-fiction so it’s a new genre for me,” she said.

The essay topics in The Beautiful Afternoon include history, literature, Star Wars, sea hags, beauty products, tarot, swimwear, environmentalism and pole dancing to explore how we become who we are.

Beautrais, who lives in Whanganui, said it was a “great place to live creatively” due to its art communities.

“Writers here may be quieter than in big cities, but there’s plenty of us around,” she said.

The Beautiful Afternoon is Beautrais’ sixth book and was longlisted for the Ockhams General Non-Fiction Prize in 2025.

Her previous books include Sweet Heart, Western Line, Dear Neil Roberts, Flow: Whanganui River Poems and Ockham award-winning short stories collection Bug Week.

Beautrais hopes to encourage others to experiment with writing poetry.

“Poetry is like singing or dancing – everyone should give it a go. A lot of people have a notebook of poems in a drawer somewhere or song lyrics they are writing down.”

Dunedin-based writer Louise Wallace is the author of four poetry collections and her latest release, fiction novel Ash.

Author Louise Wallace will join Airini Beautrais in conversation at Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery for the Lit. Whanganui Booklovers’ Festival. Photo / Ebony Lamb

Wallace is a recipient of the Biggs Prize for Poetry and a Robert Burns fellow.

She attributes the start of her writing journey to her experience at university when she took an undergraduate poetry workshop.

“It was an expansive and life-changing time for me where I was introduced to inspiring contemporary New Zealand poetry and made lifelong friends in the poetry world,” she said.

She was drawn to poetry because of the flexibility and creativity of its language.

“Language is like clay. You can mould and shape it and, once you know the rules, you can bend them to achieve what you want in a poem.”

Wallace is the founder and editor of biannual online magazine Starling, which focuses on writers under 25.

“You can literally be anywhere in New Zealand and send in your writing. It’s an amazing community to be part of,” she said.

Wallace will join Beautrais in conversation at Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery on Saturday, September 20, at 10am.

“It’s an interesting format because we will be interviewing each other,” Beautrais said.

“Instead of being a panel or a solo talk or a person being interviewed, we will just have a discussion between the two of us.”

There are no set topics for the conversation but Beautrais expects certain points of similarity to arise.

“We are both parents so I think we might talk about how we managed work, creativity and parenthood,” she said.

“I think we will also talk about working in different genres because she’s also a poet and fiction writer, and then what it’s like to be a literary writer in New Zealand in this day and age – what kind of community we have and how we feel about this career choice.”

Beautrais will run a creative writing workshop on Saturday, September 13, from 2-4pm at the Alexander Heritage Library. Bookings to nzsacentraldistricts@gmail.com are essential.

Pre-sale tickets for Louise Wallace and Airini Beautrais: In conversation are available from literaryfestival.co.nz for $15; door sales $20.

Olivia Reid is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.