For a PDF of the Literary Festival Brochure click on front or back. On this site you can check out the Fringe Festival programme, go to the News page to read about 'Books by the River' where writers will read from their children’s books at the Riverside Market or check out the Two One-Act Plays. Go to the Events page to read the profiles of featured authors at 2009 festival or find background on the festival director, Joan Rosier-Jones. On this site you can also find a listing of all the events and prices, and check out the programme from the 2007 Literary Festival.
 

On Friday the 18th of September the Wanganui Literary Festival is running a programme of writers in the schools with Kate De Goldi visiting primary schools and Dylan Horrocks visiting secondary schools. Contact us if your school is not booked and you would like to take part in the Writers in Schools programme.

Kate De Goldi’s latest book is The 10PM Question which has been shortlisted for this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. She will be coming to the Wanganui Literary Festival to talk to primary school children about her work and life as a writer. She is an engaging speaker who is guaranteed to delight the young people of Wanganui. If there is room interested adults will also be able to attend!

Kate De Goldi writes short stories and novels and is especially renown for her writing for children. Her first collection of short stories, like you, really, written under the pseudonym, Kate Flannery,  is impressive. It consists of eleven stories about the same Catholic family in Christchurch which documents the changes that occur over the scope of the novel. It reads as a satisfying family history, but with a substantial emotional impact. Landfall reviewer Anna Smith noticed that beneath the surface detail, the collection ‘insists on another kind of language sadness, anxiety, a longing for love and happiness’. The sense of identity through kinship implied in the title is the unifying concern.’

As Kate De Goldi she published Sanctuary in 1996, a young adult story of teenage perplexities and crises, described by Ronda Cooper as ‘an authentic modern fable somewhere between a cautionary tale and a "how to" guide for pouty girls.’ It won the overall Children’s Book Award in 1997. A second novel on adolescence, Love, Charlie Mike, was published 1997.

In 2000 Penguin published her young adult novel, Closed, stranger which received an honour award in the 2000 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. Kate was named an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate in 2001, receiving a $30,000 cash grant. In 2004 Kate turned her considerable talents to writing for younger children. Clubs: A Lolly Leopold Story was widely acclaimed by critics and warmly received by both parents and children. It won the New Zealand Post Best Picture Book Award in 2005. Several other  Lolly Leopard books followed. Her work has received a number of awards. As well as the New Zealand Post Awards she has won the American Express and BNZ/Katherine Mansfield short story awards and the Esther Glen Medal.  Kate was the presenter for TVNZ's Bookenz programme and currently has a fortnightly children's book review slot on National Radio's Saturday programme with broadcaster Kim Hill.  She tutors the Children's Writing and the Young Adult Novel Workshops at the Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.  In 2004 Kate was the recipient of a scholarship from the Susan Price Children's Collection to research and write a book about international children's literature. 

Dylan Horrocks, award-winning graphic novelist and comic artist, was appointed University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Literary Fellow 2006. He is the author of Hicksville, an award-winning graphic novel, and many shorter works in comic form that have been published around the world. He has lectured on writing, art and the history of comics and presented papers at academic conferences around the world, and has written extensively on graphic novels, comics, art and literature for magazines and journals in New Zealand and the USA.

‘In recent decades the graphic novel has become an increasingly important literary form,’ says Dylan. ‘Many writers and artists are now choosing comics as a means to create serious fiction, autobiography and history. Comics are now widely studied in universities around the world.’

Hicksville explores geographical and cultural colonisation in New Zealand, was named one of the best five books of the year by the USA’s leading magazine on comics criticism, ‘The Comics Journal’. It won an Eisner Award (USA) in 2002 and was nominated for five further awards in USA and Europe. As well as being translated into three foreign languages, it has been included in a number of university courses in the US and Europe, including courses on ‘Comics as Literature’ at Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT).

Dylan Horrocks has contributed short stories in comics form to many anthology books and comics around the world. He has been a scriptwriter for commercial comics such as Batgirl in the USA, has drawn regular comic strips for New Zealand Listener and Investigate magazine, and has contributed cartoons and illustrations to numerous New Zealand magazines and newspapers, including New Zealand Listener, New Zealand Herald and New Zealand Political Review.

His work has appeared in exhibitions in New Zealand, Europe and Canada and has taught classes on graphic novels, comics, writing and art at the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology, Unitec and Massey University. His later works include two new graphic novels as well as a number of shorter comics that explore the politics of superhero comics and the meaning of America since 9/11. During the festival he will talk to groups of students from secondary schools and the Graphic Arts department at UCOL, as well as the general public.

 

For a PDF of the Literary Festival Brochure click on front or back. On this site you can check out the Fringe Festival programme, go to the News page to read about the Poetry Luncheon with Glenn Colquhoun and Kevin Ireland at the 2009 Wanganui Literary Festival or check out the Two One-Act Plays. Go to the Events page to read the profiles of featured authors at 2009 festival or find background on the festival director, Joan Rosier-Jones. On this site you can also find a listing of all the events and prices and check out the programme from the 2007 Literary Festival.
 

This page was last updated 21/07/2009