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A Booker Prize winner, rock star, former politician, comedian and journalists are among more than 30 guests featured during this November’s Queenstown Writers Festival.
Taking advantage of the timing of the eighth festival — which falls over election weekend — there’ll be a special post-election discussion with former ministers Chris Finlayson KC and Kiri Allan, and journo Mike White, facilitated by Queenstowner Vic Crockford.
Festival chair Tanya Surrey says there’s something for everyone in this year’s programme and she’s beyond proud of her team and their work in collating a “smorgasbord of literary events”.
“It’s always a joy to see readers, writers and everyone who enjoys a good yarn be enthralled by our speakers.”
They include Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the 2022 Booker Prize for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a funny, murderous and mystical political satire set in 1990s Sri Lanka, focused on the afterlife trials of a dead war photographer.
A writer in residence at Canterbury University, he also writes about cricket and other sports, music and travel for high-profile publications such as The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and National Geographic.
He’s hosting a workshop, “Once Upon The End” — how to start, and finish writing projects — and will discuss writing, fame and his 22 unfinished stories with former foreign correspondent Charlotte Glennie.
Separately, Glennie will discuss her memoir, Every Second Counts, which stretches from a near-fatal accident in Europe to her years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, talking about reporting on people living in extreme circumstances and what it’s like to be there alongside them.
1News’ award-winning journalist Barbara Dreaver’s spent 30 years covering the Pacific, during which time she was locked up in Fiji, threatened in Papua New Guinea, detained in Nauru and faced danger in the Solomon Islands, all of which have contributed to her memoir Be Brave: The life of a Pacific correspondent, which she’ll discuss with former local journo Tsehai Tiffin.
Former Shihad frontman Jon Toogood, who’s recently released his memoir Home Again, will reflect on a 37-year career that helped define rock music and the personal cost that came with it, with Queenstown journalist and singer Leanne Malcolm.
Local lawyer Bryony Shackell will sit down with former Labour minister Kiri Allen, who’s memoir Go Hard or Go Home traverses her six-year political career.
That included a terrorist attack, volcanic eruption and a global pandemic played out in public, while in the background she coped with divorce, new parenthood, cancer and the mental health struggles that culminated in the car crash and her resignation.
Kiwi funnyman Pax Assadi — the son of Iranian and Pakistani immigrants — will talk about his debut book, Mortified, Things I Have to Laugh About, while Sarah-Kate Lynch is joining the festival from Melbourne to talk about her shift from writing chick lit to crime novels.
There’ll also be panel discussions, writing workshops and free workshops for children with local Laura Shallcrass, along with two staged play-readings by Remarkable Theatre.
The festival, at Te Atamira, runs from November 5 to 8, and includes a gala opening on November 6 — for more information, and tickets, visit qtwritersfestival.nz
tracey.roxburgh@scene.co.nz
