CHRISTCHURCH WRITERS FESTIVAL 2008
Thursday night’s big opening event.

COOK’S TOURS
An Evening with Vanessa Collingridge

Vanessa Collingridge is an over-achiever; a hugely impressive multi-talented author, broadcaster, television presenter, biographer, researcher, historian, linguist, trainee cosmonaut, geographer and mother of three. And to top it all off she is also a glamorous, redheaded knockout!

She was introduced to a capacity audience in a very funny and entertaining manner by TV presenter/actor Peter Elliott. Then for about 30 minutes she presented an illustrated lecture on the life and times of James Cook whom she described as the greatest explorer the world has ever known. She detailed a list of his remarkable achievements with great enthusiasm and delighted the audience with her entertaining presentation, she is a pro.
Then she moved into conversation mode on the sofa with Peter Elliott whose knowledge of Captain Cook is also pretty impressive and he elicited some interesting responses from the author with his thoughtful questioning.

The only trouble here was that Elliott didn’t seem to have a watch and 20 minutes after the 90 minute session should have ended, and only then after prompting from organizers, he finally asked the audience for questions.
So often at Writers Festivals the chairpersons seem to forget that we the paying punters have come along to hear the guest speaker not the chair. Had this been one of the daytime sessions then the whole Festival programme would have been thrown into disarray by his failure at time-keeping.
In spite of Elliott’s shortcomings it was an excellent opening to the Festival and augurs well for the days ahead.

Friday morning.

Today is largely about crime fiction for me, one of my favorite subjects. At noon I will be at Killing Time listening to three crime fiction writers and then tonight it is An Evening with Dame Ngaio Marsh which will see Elric Cooper in conversation with Dr.Joanne Drayton, author of the new Ngaio Marsh biography published this week.

In between I have the sisters Knox, - Elizabeth & Sara - and an interview with Kate Atkinson about her latest novel, When Will There Be Good News. Tomorrow there is “An Hour With Kate Atkinson”, (pic left, The Times), when she will be in conversation with Lynn Freeman of Radio New Zealand’s Arts on Sunday programme.
Exciting.
More later.

And be sure to drop in on the Christchurch libraries site, they are the great, highly committed library bloggers and have a dedicated roving team covering the Festival. Link here.