Here's the fantastic line up for the 2017 Festival.
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To read the entire programme for the 2017 Festival, click here.
To keep up with our news please visit our Facebook page.
To read the entire programme for the 2017 Festival, click here.
C.K. Stead
C.K. Stead is one of New Zealand’s foremost literary figures. He is a fiction writer, literary critic, poet, essayist and emeritus professor of English of the University of Auckland. Stead's many prestigious awards and fellowships including the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship in 2005, and the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction in 2009. He was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand in 2007. He is one of only two living NZ writers to hold the ONZ. His recent collection of short stories, The Name on the Door is Not Mine was shortlisted for the 2017 Ockham NZ Book Awards. His latest novel is The Necessary Angel (2017).
Getting the Language Right 7.30 - 8.30pm Friday 6 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Nick Bollinger
Nick Bollinger was interested in music from an early age, and went on to become a bass player, a member of many bands, a writer, critic and broadcaster. He has been a music columnist for The Listener and presents The Sampler on RNZ National. He is the author of How To Listen To Pop Music, 100 Essential New Zealand Albums, and Goneville, which won the Adam Prize for Creative Writing in 2015. Goneville is both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of New Zealand music in the 1970s.
Writing, Music and Memoir 11.30am-12.30pm Saturday 7 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Fiona Farrell
Novelist, short fiction writer, playwright and poet Fiona Farrell is well known for her versatility in moving between forms. In 2013, she was awarded the Michael King Writer’s Fellowship to research and write twin books exploring post-quake Christchurch. The results are The Villa at the Edge of the Empire: One Hundred Ways to Read a City, a finalist in the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and the novel Decline and Fall on Savage Street (2017). Fiona has won many awards including the Prime Minister’s Award for fiction and was made an Officer in the New Zealand Order of Merit for Services to Literature in 2012.
Moving Between Forms 3.00 - 4.00pm Saturday 7 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Panel Discussion: Poetry and Place 10.00 - 11.00am Sunday 8 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Sarah Laing
Fiction writer and comic artist Sarah Laing is a previous winner of the Sunday Star-Times short story competition, the author of the collection Coming Up Roses, and two novels, Dead People’s Music and The Fall of Light. She is also known for her often humorous, often moving cartoons depicting family life, motherhood and a range of political issues. Her latest book Mansfield and Me is a daring graphic memoir charting her development as a writer alongside an account of the life of Katherine Mansfield. Sarah is one of three New Zealand writers appearing at Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2017.
Love, Ghosts and Making It 1.30 - 2.30pm Sunday 8 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) 
Jo Seagar
One of New Zealand’s favourite chefs, Jo Seagar has always looked outside the square, and with her latest book she has combined cooking with table manners. Until the Canterbury earthquakes intervened, she combined cooking with teaching when she opened her café and cooking school in rural Canterbury. She also takes culinary tours overseas and even has her own cooking school in Italy. Jo’s ten cookery books have sold in their thousands and her television shows and magazine columns have appealed to many. High Tea and Etiquette: Elbows off the Table, Please 2.45 - 3.45pm Sunday 8 October Pioneer Room, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $30 (Numbers limited, bookings essential) |
Roger Hall
Seventy years a theatregoer; fifty years a writer; forty years a playwright, theatre icon Roger Hall's first stage play, Glide Time, was produced in 1976. He has been writing a play almost every year since, along with musicals and pantomimes, and scriptwriting for film and television. His plays have toured widely and have been performed at international venues. Hall's awards include a QSO, a CNZM and the 2015 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.
Roger Hall's Middle Age Spread performed by Wanganui Repertory Theatre 7.30pm Friday 29 and Saturday 30 September 2.00pm Sunday 1 October 7.30pm Thursday 5, Friday 6, Saturday 7 October Wanganui Repertory Theatre, 4 Ridgway Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $25 (Adults), $20 (Repertory members/ Seniors/ Students), $15 (Children) Playwriting Workshop with Roger Hall 1.30 - 3.30pm Friday 6 October 2017 Venue TBC - contact CES ph. 06 3454717 Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House (limited numbers) Admission: $50 "Fifteen Years to be an Overnight Success" 10.00 - 11.00am Saturday 7 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Selina Tusitala Marsh
Selina Tusitala Marsh writes of her work: “The wondrous thing about a poem is that it’s an ‘ala’ – the proto-Polynesian word for ‘path’. As a ‘Tusitala’ my poems are paths between cultures and world views”. She was the first person of Pacific descent to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland, where she now lectures in creative writing and Māori and Pacific literary studies. Selina’s first collection of poems, Fast Talking PI, won the 2010 NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry. It was followed by Dark Sparring (2013). Her new collection is Tightrope (2017). She was the Commonwealth Poet for 2016.
A Poem for the Queen 1.30 - 2.30pm Saturday 7 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Panel Discussion: Poetry and Place 10.00 - 11.00am Sunday 8 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Adam Dudding
Award-winning journalist Adam Dudding’s first book, My Father’s Island, is a memoir about his father, the New Zealand literary editor Robin Dudding. Reviewer Nicholas Reid describes the memoir as “an extraordinarily candid, sad, funny, exhilarating and chastening story”. Steve Braunias writes “No one has ever had a family quite like the Dudding family but everyone can relate to the book’s portrayal of parents and children trying to get along in a Kiwi landscape of school, beach and vegetable garden”. My Father’s Island won Best First Book of General Non-Fiction at the 2017 Ockham NZ book awards.
My Father's Island - Writing Memory 11.30am - 12.30pm Sunday 8 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Hall, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) Christodoulos Moisa
Christodoulos Moisa is an award-winning poet and artist. He was born in 1948 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand to immigrant Cypriot parents. He spent five years of his childhood, and a further eighteen months in 1972/73, in Cyprus. Moisa has published six slim volumes of poetry and the critically acclaimed long poem The Desert. In 2010 his first book of short stories, Blood and Koka Kola, was published. In 2016 he published two novels, The Hour of the Grey Wolf and Overcast Sunday. His latest novel Wolves in Dogs' Clothing, the second in the Wolf Trilogy, will be published in September 2017. A former HOD of The Arts and Art at Whanganui Girls' College, Moisa lives and works in Whanganui.
Panel Discussion: Poetry and Place 10.00 - 11.00am Sunday 8 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) 
Terry Sarten
Terry Sarten (aka Tel) is a writer of short stories, short songs, newspaper columnist, medical journal contributor/editor and social worker. Having spend a few years living in Europe, Tel keeps a close eye on the wonders of the wider world in the belief that we should be learning from the mistakes of others rather than blundering about trying to find our national identity in a world where this is no longer necessary. This may be considered un-New Zealandish but it seems a logical response in a time when words without borders is the new literature. This October, Tel will travel to Germany to perform his solo show of songs and stories. Panel Discussion: Poetry and Place 10.00 - 11.00am Sunday 8 October Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre, Watt Street Bookings: Royal Wanganui Opera House Admission: $15 (Friends $12) |
