WONDERFUL WOMEN WRITERS FROM WELLINGTON TALK TO THE BOOKMAN AT THE AUCKLAND WRITERS & READERS FESTIVAL

I had the privilege of chairing a panel at the Festival this morning which comprised Joan Druett, Barbara Else and Mary McCallum, three wonderful women writers from Wellington.

The name given to the session was I MUST GO DOWN TO THE SEAS AGAIN taken of course from the John Masefield’s famous poem SEA FEVER which all students of a certain age will remember having to learn back in their high school days.
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by”.

The title, and the poem, were most relevant to today’s session as in all three books the sea plays a major role in the development and outcome of the story.

I interviewed each author about their book, then they each read a piece from the book, and following that we members of the audience asked questions of them.

It seemed to go well, we didn't run over time which was important as the session was being recorded by Radio New Zealand for later broadcast.

Joan Druett is a martitime historian who has 18 books to her credit but today she was talking about, and reading from ISLAND OF THE LOST. While this is a non-fiction title it is a real page turner and has a fiction feel about it.

Barbara Else, best known for her cutting contemporary novels, was talking about and reading from her latest book, WILD LATTITUDES, an historical novel set largely in Dunedin in 1864 when it had turned from a sedate little town into a heaving wild west sort of frontier town.

Mary McCallum's novel, The Blue, is set on Arapawa Island and its whaling community in 1938 and her handling of the actual whgaling, the sighting, chasing, harpooning and processing, (all abhorrent to us today), are most skilfully handled.