By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Jul 11, 2008

Carl Shuker, a New Zealand writer living in London, has published his latest book, Three Novellas for a Novel, online. Shuker stepped into the public gaze when he won the Prize in Modern Letters in 2006 for The Method Actors. His second book, The Lazy Boys, is a bleak, unrelenting and brutal depiction of a young man’s student days in Otago. Shuker's work seems perfect for the random, lawless and often dark underworld of the internet.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Jul 11, 2008

Now that the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival has gone annual we can look forward to more inspiration through conversation on, and talks about politics, sustainability and the environment, philosophy, science and of course fiction (just to name a few genres) - but how to wait out the months before next May?

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, Jul 04, 2008

Four days after the 2008 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival finished, I hopped on a plane and landed 26 hours later in a very warm London. The Hay Festival organizers had very kindly offered me the chance to work with them, which meant free access to events, and I had been looking forward to the trip for some time.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Monday, Jun 30, 2008

"Be back next year!! Interesting, stimulating, entertaining & enjoyable" - Catherine Bull

"As a visitor from Christchurch not knowing anyone here I felt very comfortable. A friendly festival ... Have enjoyed being part of an Auckland experience which has emphasized being part of a group of like minded people, while at the same time felling connected to NZ as a whole and to the rest of the world. Auckland often gets (unwarranted) bad press elsewhere in NZ - the festival certainly is a wonderful ambassador for Auckland and New Zealand." - Anonymous visitor from Christchurch.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Monday, Jun 30, 2008

Junot Díaz and Witi Ihimaera.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Monday, Jun 30, 2008

TALKING UP A STORM!

The wonderful writers and throngs of book fans have left the Aotea Centre for another year - the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 2008 having come to an end. A big THANK YOU to all those who have contributed to this year's success! The Festival is only possible because of the generous people - audience members, writers, Sponsors, Funders, Patrons and Friends, volunteers, Festival Board members and Creative Directors (Stephanie Johnson and Peter Wells) - who put their time, energy, intelligence and passion into this engaging and inspirational world-class Festival.

By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Friday, May 09, 2008

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria, England. Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. Set in the 1930s, it focuses on one family - the Lightburns - and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-farmers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book). Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, wa
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By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Tickets to 'Do All Your Eating at a Table: Lunch with Michael Pollan' are selling fast. Join Michael Pollan, author of In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating and the bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and MC Lauraine Jacobs
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By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Peter Ho Davies was born in Coventry to Welsh and Chinese parents, and is the author of two volumes of short stories and a novel. His first published collection of short stories was The Ugliest House in the World (1998), which contains tales set in Malaysia, South Africa and Patagonia. This collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second collection, Equal Love, was published in 2000. In 2003, Davies was named one of Granta
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By Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on
Wednesday, May 07, 2008

John Burnside is a poet and novelist, born in Dunfermline, Scotland. The author of 21 books, he has won, among other prizes, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Feast Days (1992) and the Whitbread Poetry Award for The Asylum Dance (2000). George Szirtes has said of him: ‘his imagination relies on metamorphoses, hints of witchcraft, on notions and dreams of gender and family, and exile from these ... its antennae are tuned to the buzz and flap of nature’.