Since then, the trust has been meeting weekly to organise this month's event, the first stand-alone literary festival for the city in several years.
Ms Bligh said the trust wanted the festival to be about readers as much as writers.
''The aim is to bring together a community of readers and create a discussion point, with a festive atmosphere, and promote literature to all facets of the community.''
It was important it had a broad appeal and was inclusive.
''We didn't want it to be all highbrow.''
With more than 50 international, national and Otago writers, poets, playwrights, scriptwriters, illustrators, fellows, publishers, editors, politicians, commentators, bloggers, historians and speakers, across a range of genres and age groups (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, young adults and children's), and several free events, it was a ''fabulous'' line-up with something for everyone.
Prolific British adult and children's writer Alexander McCall Smith is one of the highlights.
Other international guests are Scottish writer Janice Galloway, who is starting her stint as the inaugural University of Otago Scottish Writers Fellow; British historian, maritime and polar exploration expert and author Huw Lewis-Jones, and Robert Burns expert Nigel Leask. Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton heads the national line-up.
The festival has attracted a Lonely Planet recommendation in its ''where to go in May'' listing, and the fact it was being held shortly after Dunedin's official bid to be a Unesco City of Literature was ''fortuitous timing'', Ms Bligh said.
50 reasons to go
More than 50 writers and guests appear at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival, which runs from Tuesday, May 6, to Sunday, May 11, at venues throughout the city.
- Programme: www.dunedinwritersfestival.co.nz.
- Bookings: Ticket Direct or the Regent Theatre box office.
