Highlights of Auckland Writers & Readers Festival on Radio New Zealand National : a six-part series beginning at 4.00pm, Sunday 8th July, 2007

At 4.00pm on Sunday 8th July, Radio New Zealand National begins a series of highlights from this year’s most recent literary celebration, the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.

This presents a great opportunity to listen to sessions you missed at the Festival.

Hats off to the Fesival and Radio New Zealand National on this initiative.

The top sessions at this major literary event held in May have been selected to complement the coverage which occurred around the time of the event on Radio New Zealand National.

From the 65 sessions available, editor Paul Bushnell selected six panel discussions to allow audiences to hear how a line-up of international and local writers interacted with each other. He’s very pleased with the result, saying “There is a generous amount of reading by the authors from their own material. Fortunately, this pays off superbly as so many of them are also great performers.”

The discussion, too, ranges widely, from the intriguing technical detail of the session about translating books from one language to another, to deep consideration of ethical issues associated with many kinds of writing.
Bushnell feels that this Auckland event represents a further refinement of the writers festival format, commenting that “festival schedules have always provided substantial encounters between a single author and the audience, but as these sessions show, there’s also a great deal of interest in discussions between writers about a particular theme.”

And the themes are varied, including discussions of bad fathers; the challenges of writing about contemporary visual art; how books can be translated into another language; the explosive growth in local non-fiction writing; concluding with some entertaining anecdotes from travel writers who have found themselves in sticky situations of one sort or another.
According to Bushnell, Radio New Zealand’s first-time involvement with the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival marks both the company’s desire to reflect literary events outside Wellington, and the increasing strength and vigour of this particular enterprise.
He adds “it’s great to be able to allow a far larger audience than could ever fit into a single venue access to these marvellous writers, and to hear what they have to say to the audience and each other.” And the good news for book lovers is that Radio New Zealand’s plans for coverage of more book festivals in the future are well-advanced.

Programme 1: Auckland Writers Festival – Bad Dads in meltdown
Broadcast time: 4.06pm Sunday 8th July 2007
9.06pm Tuesday 10th July 2007

Chaired by Festival co-director Peter Wells, this lively session includes extensive reading by three very different authors whose autobiographical work provides different perspectives on growing up with fathers who behaved abusively and damagingly towards their families. Intriguingly, the theme of post-colonial experience is common to The Wah-Wah Diaries by Richard E Grant, Heartland by Neil Cross, and Deep Beyond the Reef by Owen Scott.

Programme 2: Auckland Writers Festival – Demon seed and damaged babies
Broadcast time: 4.06pm Sunday 15th July 2007
9.06pm Tuesday 17th July 2007

Nightmare childhoods and damaged lives are laid bare in the very different work of Lionel Shriver, author of the award-winning We Need to Talk about Kevin; and Paul Broks, whose study of neuropsychology Into the Silent Land was a surprise bestseller. Despite their different approaches to storytelling, both writers find a lot of common territory in a conversation moderated by psychiatrist Dr Jan Reeves.

Programme 3: Auckland Writers Festival – The art of translation
Broadcast time: 4.06pm Sunday 22nd July 2007
9.06pm Tuesday 24th July 2007

The international publishing scene depends on translation, as it opens books to new markets and audiences. Three writers who have an intimate knowledge of translation consider the complexities and challenges of the process, which at its best involves a high level of collaboration between translator and author. The panel features the award-winning Andreï Makine (born in the USSR, but now based in France), Linda Olsson from Sweden, and France’s Pierre Furlan, who has translated both Elizabeth Knox and Alan Duff into French. Local translator Jean Anderson is in the chair.

Programme 4: Auckland Writers Festival – Writing about visual art
Broadcast time: 4.06pm Sunday 29th July 2007
9.06pm Tuesday 31st July 2007

This session Talking the Talk brings together New Zealand’s most senior writer on art, one of the most lucid of our younger generation of critics and curators, and a leading figure from the UK. Linda Tyler chairs a wide-ranging session in which Hamish Keith, Justin Paton and Matthew Collings consider the practice of their craft. From the paintings and writings of Colin McCahon to the media coverage of the Cool Britannia generation, this conversation moderated by Linda Tyler provides fresh insight into what makes good (and bad) art description, commentary and criticism.

Programme 5: Auckland Writers Festival – Non-fiction in New Zealand
Broadcast time: 4.06pm Sunday 5th August 2007
9.06pm Tuesday 7th August 2007

The Real Stuff is the subtitle of this panel discussion, which explores the extraordinary growth in popularity of locally-produced non-fiction. Two publishers (Peter Dowling from Reed, and Mary Varnham from Awa Press) and an expert in creative non-fiction (Harry Ricketts) map out the salient features of this rapidly-unfolding literary territory. Graeme Hunt is in the chair.

Programme 6: Auckland Writers Festival – Travel Writing
Broadcast time: 4.06pm Sunday 12th August 2007
9.06pm Tuesday 14th August 2007

“Haven’t they got anything better to do” is the ironic subtitle of this encounter between a group of very different travel writers. Travel stories from the USA are recounted by Jo and Gareth Morgan (Backblocks America); bicycling in South America in Eleanor Meecham’s Llamas & Empanadas; and travelling in Tibet in Ian Robinson’s alarmingly-titled You Must Die Once. TV cameraman Geoff Mackley chases bad weather all over the world in Extreme Danger, and Pico Iyer reflects on the relationship between travel and globalisation in Sun after Dark.
Graham Reid controls this international traffic in a busy and entertaining session.