New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week 2010
- ‘Writing marathon’ starts festival with a blast - Read our interview with festival programme manager Laura Kroetsch.
- Follow NZ Post Writers and Readers Week on our blog
- View photographs of NZ Post Writers and Readers Week from our Flickr site.
Christchurch City Libraries connects you with the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week 2010. Part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington, events take place from 8 to 14 March.
Richard Liddicoat, editor of the library web site, will be posting about NZ Post Writers and Readers Week on our blog.
View photographs of NZ Post Writers and Readers Week from our Flickr site.
Richard Liddicoat with New Zealand author Kate de Goldi.
Top talent
Forty-four events with household names like historian Simon Schama and Neil Gaiman, Margo Lanagan and Audrey Niffenegger, as well as top Kiwi talent in Bill Manhire and James Belich, Charlotte Grimshaw and Emily Perkins.
Sarah Waters, author of the saucy Victorian tale Tipping the velvet, and screenwriter for UK spy drama Spooks, Neil Cross, get their turn in the spotlight along with poets, journalists, publishers and popular scientist Richard Dawkins.
Festival Authors
Here is a list authors and panellists featured at the festival and held by Christchurch City Libraries. The list is in alphabetical order by last name. See our premium websites Books and Authors, Literature Resource Center, LitFinder and NoveList for more detailed author information.
- Gil Adamson
- Author of The Outlander. A mysterious, desperate young woman flees alone across the icy western wilderness of the Rocky Mountains; bloodhounds track her through the trees. Her name is Mary Boulton. She is nineteen years old. Half mad. Already a widow, she is pursued by her husband’s murderers. She is forced to flee even deeper into the mountains.
- James Belich
- New Zealand historian, author and presenter of television series The New Zealand Wars.
- Judith Binney
- Winner of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in non-fiction, Judith Binney is a noted New Zealand historian.
- Gavin Bishop
- Christchurch author and illustrator.
Kate Camp- New Zealand poet and editor.
- Laurie Chittenden
- Editor, HarperCollins Publishers.
- Geoff Cochrane
- New Zealand poet.
- Fifi Colston
- New Zealand author, illustrator, TV presenter.
- Kevin Connolly
- Award winning Canadian poet
- Joy Cowley
- Celebrated New Zealand writer of children’s stories.
- Neil Cross
- Thriller writer and scriptwriter for Spooks television series.
- Richard Dawkins
- Saturday paper called him “The greatest atheist on Earth”. Evolutionary biologist and science writer.
- Geoff Dyer
- Travel writer, essayist and novelist. Latest novel Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi. Regular columnist with The Guardian.
- Sam Elworthy
- Director of the Auckland University Press.
- Dianna Fuemana
- Internationally acclaimed playwright.
Neil Gaiman- Bestselling English author of comic books, graphic novels, prose novels, children’s books, short fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays.
- David Geary
- New Zealand playwright, a writer of fiction and short stories, and a poet.
- Miria George
- New Zealand playwright.
- Patricia Grace
- Celebrated New Zealand Māori writer of novels (including Potiki), short stories, and children’s books.
- Briar Grace-Smith
- New Zealand playwright, screenwriter, poet and short story writer.
- Paula Green
- New Zealand poet and children’s writer.
- Charlotte Grimshaw
- Montana Book Award winning New Zealand writer (novels and short stories) and reviewer.
- Fariba Hatchtroudi
- French Iranian writer, 2009 writer-in-resident at Randell Cottage.
- Pip Hall
- New Zealand playwright.
- Michael Heyward
- Australian author and editor, Michael is also the managing director and publisher of Text Publishing, a multi-award winning independent publishing company in Melbourne.
Philip Hoare- British writer and journalist, winner of the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for Leviathan.
- Chloe Hooper
- Award winning young Australian writer of fiction, non-fiction and short stories.
- Derek Johns
- British author and literary agent.
- Eli Kent
- Young New Zealand writer whose third play won “Best Theatre” in the NZ Fringe Festival 2009.
- Margo Lanagan
- Australian writer for children who has also worked as a freelance book editor and technical writer.
- Joan London
- Australian author of novels and short stories.
- Bill Manhire
- New Zealand poet, anthologist, essayist, broadcaster and teacher of creative writing.
- Glyn Maxwell
- English poet who has won the Gregory, Maugham, Forster and Faber Memorial awards.
- Lisa Moore
- Canadian author of short fiction and novels who Richard Ford states has "an unswerving instinct for what’s important in life."
- Susanna Moore
- Celebrated American novelist whose novels frequently deal with young women from unhappy families. Bruce Allen commented in the Chicago Tribune Book World. "Moore’s prose … succeeds admirably in casting her troubled characters in vivid relief".
Audrey Niffenegger- American author whose popular novel The Time Traveler’s Wife has recently been made into a movie.
- Rod Oram
- New Zealand financial journalist.
- Jenny Pattrick
- Bestselling New Zealand author of historical fiction, Pattrick’s new novel Inheritance is set in the present day and Samoa in the 1960s.
- Emily Perkins
- New Zealand author and winner of the 2009 Montana Medal for Fiction.
- Simon Schama
- Best known as the writer and presenter of the BBC’s 15-part documentary A History of Britain, Simon Schama was educated at Cambridge University and is currently Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His first book Patriots and liberators won the Wolfson History Prize in 1977 and he has since written 13 other titles including an exhaustive three volume history of Britain to accompany the BBC TV series. Schama appears at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in conversation with Sean Plunket.
Kamila Shamsie- Author of five novels, mostly recently Burnt shadows published by Bloomsbury in 2009 and short-listed for the Orange Prize, Shamsie was born in Pakistan in 1973. Kamila splits her time between Karachi and London, and uses the theme of cross-cultural identity in her writing. Both Shamsie’s mother and grandmother are writers and she says she
always wanted to be a writer - it’s an inextricable part of my life
. - Peter Singer
- Australian born, Princeton philosopher Peter Singer doesn’t take any prisoners in his quest to end world poverty. He donates between a quarter and a third of his income to charities like Oxfam and through titles such as The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty he encourages his readers to do the same. The author of over 25 books, Singer appears at the New Zealand Arts Festival in conversation with freelance writer Keith Ovenden.
- Anna Taylor
- New Zealander Anna Taylor’s short story collection Relief was published in 2009 and includes several stories she completed while gaining a Masters in Creative Writing at Victoria University. She cites authors such as William Trevor, Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro as short-writing influences. Anna lives in Wellington and currently works as a tutor in creative writing.
Iliya Troyanov- Publisher, translator, novelist and travel writer, IIiya Troyanov’s family fled Bulgaria in 1971, eventually finding political asylum in Germany. He subsequently spent much of his childhood in Kenya and has since travelled extensively in Tanzania and India, also completing the Hajj to Mecca. His fictional biography of Sir Richard Burton the legendary explorer and linguist The collector of worlds was published in English in 2008 to great acclaim.
- Sarah Waters
- One of Granta’s prestigious "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2003, Sarah Waters has published five novels, most recently the 2009 Man Booker short-listed The little stranger. Waters first three novels are all set in Victorian England and explore themes of criminality, sexuality and spiritualism. They have also been successfully adapted for television. She has a PhD in lesbian and gay literature and would love to have written Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
- Ian Wedde
- Former head of Art and Visual Culture at Te Papa, Wedde is a poet, novelist and critic. His 14th poetry collection Good business was published in 2009 and features a sequence of poems named after Wellington businesses and institutions. He was awarded an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2006.
March 2010
