Festival Newsletters

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Thursday, Jan 24, 2008

'The life of a full-time writer, as we know, is very rarely one of luxury. Work is sporadic, pay (if it comes) low and each new month sees the start of a desperate new hustle. For the self-employed writer, benefits such as pension, insurance and paid holidays are replaced by paranoia, insecurity and the various vices that self-employment allows ...

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Thursday, Jan 24, 2008

'John Stuart Mill wrote in Autobiography of a "crisis in my mental history", a crisis that began in the autumn of 1826 when "the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down [and] I seemed to have nothing left to live for".

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Thursday, Jan 24, 2008

The 2007 Philip K. Dick Award nominees, for "distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States," have been announced.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Thursday, Jan 24, 2008

All disheartened, kicked-in-the-teeth aspiring novelists should take heart: after being rejected by 14 literary agents, the 15th said yes, and former postwoman Catherine O'Flynn yesterday made off with one of the year's most prestigious literary prizes. Her novel, What Was Lost, was named winner of the 2007 Costa (formerly the Whitbread) first novel award after being longlisted but not winning the Booker and the Orange prize and being shortlisted for the Guardian's first book award. O'Flynn said: "I hope it does give people hope. It's very hard to get published and it's hard if you go in there with this burning ambition. I didn't have that, I was protected by my natural pessimism."

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Thursday, Jan 24, 2008

Hone Tuwhare, one of New Zealand's most celebrated and prolific poets died last Wednesday, aged 86. Hundreds of people turned out to commemorate the life of the much-loved national treasure as he was farewelled in Dunedin on Saturday. His friends told stories of his humour but also his need for solitude. Tuwhare's work was renowned for its accessibility to the general reader but his popularity did not come at the expense of critical acclaim. He was named New Zealand's second Te Mata Poet Laureate in 1999. Tuwhare won two Montana NZ Book Awards for poetry in 1998 and 2002, and was given honorary doctorates by the universities of Auckland and Otago.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Dec 21, 2007

The authorities have finally rumbled the England's most famous illegal immigrant. At a time of heightened sensitivity to mass immigration, the refugee background of Paddington Bear has persuaded Michael Bond to write his first novel about him for 29 years. In a surprisingly political opening chapter to Paddington Here and Now police interrogate the duffelcoat-wearing stowaway from darkest Peru about his residency status and right to remain in England.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Dec 21, 2007

"The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise ...

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Dec 21, 2007

A novel that tackles fraught questions of identity, dislocation and loneliness through the life of an Ethiopian émigré in the US has taken this year's Guardian First Book Award.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Dec 21, 2007

For other reading ideas have a look at some of the top hotlists:

The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of the Year
Christmas Reading from The Guardian
The Economist's Pick of the Bunch

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Dec 21, 2007

If you’re anything like the troops in the festival office, you’ll be looking forward to the next week or two as a time to open up those books that have been gathering dust next to your bed since last summer. Once the Christmas festivities are over – and with any luck you’ll come out the other side with even more books for your pile – you can escape to the beach/backyard/bed to blow the sand/grass/crumbs out of the pages from last year and catch up with some much needed time to read. Or sleep – sleep’s good.