Overview
With over 150 speakers spread across five days and over 100 events, you’re virtually guaranteed to find something that excites your brain cells and gets your thoughts flowing. This year has a staggering breadth of programming, which caters for everyone from the die-hard intellectual to the most casual of readers. Events include a wide range of talks, theatre performances, more workshops than you can throw a book at.
To help you choose which events to head along to, we've listed off ten of our favourites to see at this year's festival.
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Atholl Anderson and Aroha Harris, (along with the late Judith Binney) wrote Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, one of the most important books to have been published in New Zealand.
This book tells a complete history the Mäori people, starting before the first arrival in New Zealand and ending in the modern day.
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Phillip Ball is a celebrated and prolific science writer with 20 books to his name on a staggering breadth of topics. He’s written books about physics in Nazi Germany, pattern formation in nature, invisibility, and colour in art.
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Hollie Fullbrook formed Tiny Ruins in 2009 and ever since this project has grown – in size, as well as critical and popular acclaim. Fullbrook will talk about the craft of songwriting with writer and documentary maker Julie Hill, and if we’re lucky we might even get a song or two. This is a free and unticketed event, so an easy way to spend your Saturday afternoon.
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Alexander has dedicated her life to food, running renowned restaurants. She wrote the veritable cooking encyclopaedia The Cooks Companion, which has sold over 1.5 Million copies worldwide.
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Alan Cumming is a man of many talents. He is a dynamic actor, widely celebrated for his work on the stage and screen. His list of credits ranges from Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United to an award winning performance of Hamlet to Sex in the City. He has worked as a photographer, and perfumer (having released the humorously named fragrance line ‘Cumming’).
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His culturally transcendent books exist in over 50 languages, and have collected a plethora of international awards. Murakami has a unique style of Kafkaesque works with dominating themes of loneliness and isolation, which incorporate fantasy and magical realism.
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He broke the UK’s scandalous phone hacking story, exposing the malpractice of fellow journalist against politicians, the royal family, and members of the public. He has worked alongside Julian Assange to support the work of WikiLeaks, and his work helped Clarence Lee Brandley to get released from wrongful imprisonment. Davies is much celebrated, having received the Journalist of the Year, and Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards, among other accolades.
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Ten lyrical athletes go head to head to compete for the grand prize of $500 smackers and the prestigious Festival Champion Crown.
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Kim Thúy is a delicate and beautiful writer with a unique history. Born in warring Vietnam, Thúy arrived at the young age of 10 with her family in Canada as a boat person. Her first book Ru speaks to the refugee experience.
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The stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf”s Mrs Dalloway promises to be riveting. Rebecca Vaughan returns to the festival after last year’s 5-star performances of Austen’s Women in order to bring to life the character of Clarissa Dalloway, a London housewife struggling to come to terms with the challenges of life immediately after WW1.